How Service-Based Businesses Can Earn Passive Income with Amazon Affiliates

Most affiliate marketing advice is written for bloggers, YouTubers, and influencers. But there’s a massive group of professionals who are already driving hundreds of thousands of dollars in product purchases every year, and earning nothing from it.

We’re talking about service-based businesses: contractors, interior designers, real estate agents, personal trainers, IT consultants, and anyone else who regularly recommends products to their clients as part of the work they already do.

If that sounds like you, this guide explains exactly how to turn those recommendations into a real income stream using Amazon’s affiliate program, without changing how you run your business.

The Hidden Revenue Stream Most Service Businesses Ignore

Here’s a scenario we see constantly at our agency.

A kitchen and bathroom contractor sits down with a homeowner to plan a remodel. Together, they browse catalogs and websites, picking out faucets, vanities, lighting fixtures, tile, shower systems, and appliances. The homeowner writes everything down, goes home, and orders it all from Amazon or Home Depot.

The contractor just influenced a $10,000+ purchase. His commission? Zero.

One of our clients, a Sacramento-area contractor, estimated he’s steering at least $500,000 per year in product purchases. When we ran the numbers on Amazon’s affiliate commission rates, even the conservative estimate came out to $15,000/year in passive income from doing something he was already doing.

He wasn’t blogging. He wasn’t making YouTube videos. He was just recommending products to his clients during normal business operations, and leaving money on the table every single time.

Why Amazon Associates Works for Service Businesses

There are dozens of affiliate programs out there, but Amazon’s program has a few specific advantages that make it ideal for service-based businesses:

Your clients are already buying on Amazon. You don’t need to convince anyone to use a new platform. Amazon has the trust, the selection, and the Prime shipping that your clients are already using. You’re simply giving them a convenient link to products you were going to recommend anyway.

Cart-wide commissions change the math. When someone clicks your affiliate link for a bathroom faucet and then adds a shower head, a bath mat, towels, and a soap dispenser to their cart, you earn a commission on every item, not just the faucet. For service businesses whose clients tend to buy multiple related items in one session, this multiplier effect is significant.

Zero operational overhead. Unlike starting a side business selling products, Amazon handles all the inventory, shipping, returns, and customer service. You don’t stock anything. You don’t ship anything. You don’t deal with a single customer complaint about a damaged package.

It’s free to join. There’s no cost to sign up for Amazon Associates. The only requirement is that you have some form of online presence, a website, blog, or social media profile, where your affiliate links can live.

Which Service Businesses Benefit Most?

The pattern is the same across industries: if your work naturally involves recommending products, you can monetize those recommendations. Here’s how it plays out for different professionals.

Contractors and Remodelers

This is the most obvious fit. Every remodel involves selecting fixtures, materials, tools, and appliances. A contractor working on bathroom, kitchen, or whole-home renovations is guiding product purchases worth thousands of dollars per project.

What to link: Faucets, vanities, lighting, tile, tools, bathroom accessories, kitchen appliances, cabinet hardware. At Amazon’s 3% Home Improvement rate, a single $5,000 project order earns $150.

The play: Create a curated “Recommended Products” page on your website, organized by project type. When you meet with a client, send them the link instead of just rattling off product names. Every purchase through that page earns you a commission.

Interior Designers

Designers curate entire rooms, furniture, decor, lighting, textiles, accessories. A single living room design might involve $8,000–$20,000+ in product selections.

What to link: Furniture, rugs, throw pillows, wall art, lamps, curtains, decorative objects. Furniture earns 3%, while some decorative items fall under higher-commission categories.

The play: Build an Amazon storefront or “design boards” that mirror your client mood boards. Instead of sending clients a PDF with product names, send them a shoppable list with your affiliate links built in.

Real Estate Agents

Every closed deal creates a new homeowner who needs to furnish, upgrade, and equip an entire house. Smart agents already send “new homeowner” checklists or welcome packages, but most don’t monetize them.

What to link: Smart home devices, cleaning supplies, tool kits, storage solutions, kitchen essentials, lawn care equipment. The average new homeowner spends an estimated $10,000+ in the first year on home-related purchases.

The play: Create a “New Homeowner Essentials” page on your website and include the link in your closing packet. Every client you close becomes a potential source of affiliate income for months afterward.

Personal Trainers and Nutritionists

Trainers recommend supplements, protein powders, resistance bands, yoga mats, foam rollers, meal prep containers, and fitness equipment every single day, usually verbally or via text, with no monetization.

What to link: Supplements (Health & Personal Care, 1%), fitness equipment (Sports, 3%), kitchen tools for meal prep (Kitchen, 4.5%). The commission rates vary, but the volume of repeat recommendations adds up.

The play: Build a “My Recommended Gear” page and share it with every new client during onboarding. Update it seasonally with new product picks.

IT Consultants and Tech Advisors

IT professionals routinely recommend hardware, peripherals, networking equipment, and software to their business clients. A single office buildout can involve thousands of dollars in tech purchases.

What to link: Monitors, keyboards, mice, routers, cables, webcams, headsets, laptop stands. PC and components earn 2.5%, while headphones earn 3%.

The play: Maintain a “Recommended Tech Stack” page organized by use case (home office, small business server room, conference room setup). Share it with clients as part of your consulting deliverables.

How to Get Started: A Step-by-Step Walkthrough

Setting up Amazon Associates is straightforward, but there are a few things service businesses should know to do it right.

Step 1: Make Sure You Have a Web Presence

Amazon requires an active website, blog, YouTube channel, or social media profile to approve your application. If you already have a business website (which you should), you’re covered. If you don’t, even a simple one-page site with your business info and a “Recommended Products” section will work.

Step 2: Sign Up for Amazon Associates

Visit affiliate-program.amazon.com and apply. The process takes about 10 minutes. You’ll need your website URL, a description of how you plan to use affiliate links, and your payment information.

Step 3: Build a Curated Recommendations Page

This is the most important step for service businesses. Instead of scattering affiliate links across random blog posts, create one or two dedicated pages on your site:

“Our Recommended Products” a master list organized by category
Project-specific pages like “Bathroom Remodel Essentials” or “New Homeowner Checklist”

Use Amazon’s SiteStripe toolbar (available once you’re logged in as an Associate) to generate affiliate links for any product on Amazon.

Step 4: Integrate Links Into Your Existing Workflow

This is where service businesses have a huge advantage over bloggers. You don’t need to generate traffic from Google, you already have a built-in audience of paying clients.

In-person meetings: “I put together a page with links to everything we discussed, here’s the URL.”
Email follow-ups: “Here are the products we selected for your project” with links to your recommendations page.
Client portals: If you use project management software, add your product recommendation links to the project documents.
Business cards or leave-behinds: Add a QR code linking to your recommendations page.

Step 5: Stay Compliant

Amazon and the FTC both require disclosure. Add a simple statement to any page with affiliate links:

“As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.”

Also remember: Amazon requires you to generate at least three qualifying sales within your first 180 days, or they’ll close your account. Since you’re already recommending products to active clients, this threshold should be easy to hit.

Running the Numbers: What Can You Realistically Earn?

Let’s look at a few scenarios across different service businesses.

Business Type	Annual Product Influence	Avg. Commission Rate	Estimated Annual Earnings
Contractor (bath/kitchen)	$500,000	3%	$15,000
Interior Designer	$300,000	3.2% (blended)	$9,600
Real Estate Agent (20 closings)	$200,000	3%	$6,000
Personal Trainer (50 clients)	$25,000	2.5% (blended)	$625
IT Consultant	$150,000	2.5%	$3,750

These are conservative estimates based on Amazon’s current commission structure. The actual numbers could be higher depending on the product mix, how consistently you use affiliate links, and whether your clients add additional items to their carts during the same shopping session.

The contractor and interior designer stand out because the dollar value of the products they influence is so high. But even the personal trainer earning $625/year is making money from recommendations they were already giving for free.

Beyond Amazon: Stacking Multiple Affiliate Programs

Amazon is the easiest starting point because of its massive product catalog and consumer trust, but it shouldn’t be your only affiliate program. Here are a few others worth considering based on your industry:

Home Depot offers commissions up to 8% on certain categories, with access to over 500,000 products. For contractors, this can sometimes beat Amazon’s 3% Home Improvement rate.

Houzz pays 5% with a 30-day cookie window (compared to Amazon’s 24-hour window) and has over 9 million products. Interior designers in particular may find Houzz’s product catalog more aligned with their recommendations.

Wayfair runs an affiliate program through several major networks with competitive rates on furniture and home decor.

The smartest approach is to compare commission rates for your most-recommended products across multiple programs and use whichever one pays the most for each item. It takes a bit more setup, but the earnings difference can be substantial.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Not disclosing affiliate relationships. The FTC requires it, Amazon requires it, and your clients deserve transparency. Hiding affiliate links erodes trust. Be upfront, most clients will be happy you’re making their purchasing process easier.

Only linking verbally. If you tell a client “go buy the Delta Faucet Model 1234 on Amazon,” you earn nothing. If you send them a link from your recommendations page, you earn a commission. The shift from verbal to digital recommendations is the entire difference between $0 and $15,000/year.

Ignoring mobile. Most of your clients will click your links on their phones. Make sure your recommendations pages are mobile-friendly.

Setting it and forgetting it. Product links break when items go out of stock or are discontinued. Check your links quarterly and update them. Amazon also changes commission rates periodically, stay informed so you can adjust your strategy.

Trying to be a blogger. You don’t need to write 2,000-word product reviews to earn affiliate income as a service business. Your competitive advantage is the personal, trusted recommendation you give during the course of your work. Lean into that.

The Bottom Line

If your business involves recommending products to clients, and you’re not using affiliate links, you’re giving away free money. The setup takes a few hours. The ongoing effort is minimal. And the income is genuinely passive once your systems are in place.

You don’t need to become a content creator. You don’t need to learn SEO. You just need to take the recommendations you’re already making and route them through a trackable link.

Need help setting up an affiliate strategy for your service business? At HM Marketing, we specialize in helping businesses build new revenue streams through ecommerce consulting and digital marketing. Contact us today for a free consultation.