Amazon reviews its referral fees for Associates
You may have heard this news on the internet already over the last few days. I know many of you are reluctant to promote Amazon's associate program due to the limited life of the affiliate cookie and the lower end percentage payments for affiliates. In the recent past I have made my feelings clear on the Amazon affiliate program, I think that promoted in the right way, in the right niche it can be very lucrative indeed.
So what changes have been made? Basically, Amazon have made the decision to no longer pay any referral fees to Associates who send potential customers to Amazon.com, .ca or to endless.com where the referral was made through paid search means. In essence this means that any traffic referred to any three of the aforementioned sites will not accrue any affiliate commission if the customer was referred through Google Adwords or yahoo/MSN equivalents.
The change is going to be effective as of the 1st of May and the change will be affecting the standard Associates program along with the Amazon data feeds.
Overall this should have no affect on you as long as you aren't using paid search to promote the Amazon affiliate program directly. This means that even if you use PPC to advertise a website on which you publish Amazon links/products you will still earn your commission providing you comply with the usual terms and conditions.
Obviously if you have a website which doesn't promote Amazon.com, .ca or endless.com then you can still use paid search to promote other international Amazon sites which fall outside of the above bracket.
For a full list of FAQ's you can visit the Amazon Associates home page right here .
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Scott (3)
Kelvin (1)
seo California (1)
stew (1)
I don’t promote much from Amazon because of the low commissions. I have promoted a few magazines for a couple of my niches where I couldn’t find them elsewhere but have never made a single sale.
Hi Ben,
Reading your post I have realised how categories work now! (Bit slow on the uptake, I know). I like the look of your site.
Enjoy the journey.
Mandy
James
I have been doing much better with Amazon of late, I agree their comissions are not the best which is probably in part down to the short cookie life.
In my experience I think Amazon works well if you are in a high paying niche which is quite popular and has items in which are commonly bought off Amazon rather than somewhere else such as eBay.
Ben
Mandy
Don’t worry, it took me a while before I got it :).
Ben
I thought your post was going to tell us how you purchased that castle with the earnings you made from eBay. :)
Oh I wish :)…..Not yet but maybe in a few years…never say never. It was a lovely place to stay though and the owner was very friendly. If it counts I paid for the few nights we stayed there courtesy of eBay :).
I’ve actually had a lot of success the past few months with the Amazon affiliate program. And although it only starts at 4% I’m always at 8% or 8.25% by the end of the month.
It’s actually not as hard as it might seem to make $ from Amazon. As long as you can get someone to Amazon thru your site, you have a good chance of selling something. I get a lot of sales every month that have absolutely nothing to do with my niche. This is because a lot of people, myself included, buy regularly from Amazon.
You just need to get the people or niches that would buy things online and your chances go way for making a sale.