"How much can you make with Amazon affiliate" has no single answer. It is a function of four variables: category commission rate, average order value, conversion rate, and views. This post fixes the last three at conservative levels and solves for the remaining one — how many views USD 1,000 a month costs.
Assumptions, stated so you can change them
- 60 videos a month at 800 views each — 48,000 views/month. That is one person posting steadily, not a big channel.
- 2% of viewers click through to Amazon. This is the weakest variable in the whole post: it depends on content, and I have not measured it.
- 3% of clickers buy. For cheap, already-wanted goods that is reasonable.
- 6–10% of orders are returned or cancelled before payout is deducted.
- FX at 25,846 VND/USD and 158.22 JPY/USD on 21 Oct 2026.
Result: views needed for USD 1,000 a month
- Electronics, USD 900 at 4%: USD 32.40/sale → USD 0.972/click → 51,440 views. Supply of 48,000 is short by 1.07x.
- Computers, USD 700 at 2.5%: USD 15.75/sale → USD 0.473/click → 105,820 views. Short by 2.2x.
- Watches, USD 300 at 4%: USD 10.80/sale → USD 0.324/click → 154,321 views. Short by 3.2x.
- Luxury beauty, USD 60 at 10%: USD 5.40/sale → USD 0.162/click → 308,642 views. Short by 6.4x.
- Kitchen, USD 45 at 4.5%: USD 1.82/sale → USD 0.055/click → 914,495 views. Short by 19x.
- Grocery, USD 80 at 1%: USD 0.72/sale → USD 0.022/click → 2,314,815 views. Short by 48x.
The top row and the bottom row differ 45x in views required, while the commission rates differ only 4x. The rest comes from order value: USD 900 against USD 80 is 11x. Picking the category matters more than picking the caption.
Bounties: the income type eBay does not have
Beyond percentages, Amazon pays flat amounts for certain actions: Prime trial USD 12, Audible Standard trial or purchase USD 20, Amazon Business signup USD 15, Audible Premium Plus annual USD 25, Kindle Unlimited USD 3. For an audience already interested, this is easier than selling, because nobody has to buy a specific product.
- Audible USD 20 at 0.5% of clicks: USD 0.262/click → 190,840 views. Short by 4.0x.
- Prime USD 12 at 1% of clicks: USD 0.120/click → 416,667 views. Short by 8.7x.
- Amazon Business USD 15 at 0.3%: USD 0.045/click → 1,111,111 views. Short by 23x.
Japan: a different schedule and one cap that kills everything
Amazon.co.jp uses a completely different schedule: 5% for drugstore/beauty/pets, 4.5% for Kindle/Fire/Echo/Ring, 4% for DIY/industrial/baby/sports, 3% for books/toys/kitchen/home, 2% for everything else. And a hard cap of JPY 1,000 per unit.
- JPY 5,000 item at 5%: JPY 250 = USD 1.58 → 1,172,030 views. Short by 24x.
- JPY 20,000 item at 5%: JPY 1,000 = USD 6.32 → 293,008 views. Short by 6.1x.
- JPY 40,000 item: still JPY 1,000. No increase.
- JPY 80,000 item: still JPY 1,000. No increase.
The JPY 1,000 cap flattens the entire top of the market: selling an JPY 80,000 item is worth exactly as much as a JPY 20,000 one. The US has no such cap — a USD 1,200 item at 2.5% pays USD 30, nearly 5x the Japanese ceiling. If the audience is not Japanese, Japan is the worse market.
Three conclusions you can act on
- Do not build content around groceries, cheap books, or 1% categories. They need 45–48x the views to match one electronics video.
- Order value beats rate. 2.5% of USD 700 is better than 10% of USD 60.
- 48,000 views/month is not enough. Reaching USD 1,000 in a good category needs roughly 100,000–160,000 views, which is 130–200 videos a month at 800 views each.
The whole table comes from a Python script calling the same formula, with asserts pinning every published figure. Running it twice produces byte-identical output. The formula: commission = price × rate (capped) × 0.9 (clawback); revenue per click = commission × conversion rate + bounty; views = target ÷ revenue per click ÷ 2%. Next in this series: the 4 rules that lose you an Amazon account.