Amazon Associates Drops A Bombshell – Or Is It?
Just a few days ago the Amazon Associates Program dropped a basket of rotten eggs on many affiliate doorsteps.
Here is the email they sent out.
We’re writing to let you know about a change to the Amazon Associates Program. After careful review of how we are investing our advertising resources, we have made the decision to no longer pay referral fees to Associates who send users to www.amazon.com, www.amazon.ca, or www.endless.com through keyword bidding and other paid search on Google, Yahoo, MSN, and other search engines, and their extended search networks. If you’re not sure if this change affects you, please visit this page for FAQs.
As of May 1, 2009, Associates will not be paid referral fees for paid search traffic. Also, in connection with this change, as of May 1, 2009, Amazon will no longer make data feeds available to Associates for the purpose of sending users to the Amazon websites in the US or Canada via paid search.
This change applies only to the Associates programs in North America. If you are conducting paid search activities in connection with one of Amazon’s Associates Programs outside of the US and Canada, please refer to the applicable country’s Associates Program Operating Agreement for relevant terms and conditions.
What does this mean? Initially I got a flood of email from many concerned subscribers thinking that this is the end of PPC to Amazon products and that this was the end of the world for many.
Well to some it may be. For many it’s a new opportunity.
If you read carefully they are only limiting Paid Search advertising to DIRECT AFFILIATE LINKS. You can still send PPC traffic to your own site which has amazon links on it.
All of the direct linking on PPC ads have to be taken down… well I guess you could leave it up… you just won’t get paid!
This is getting to be the norm for most programs these days. It wasn’t too long ago that Ebay Partner Network did the same thing.
So where is the opportunity?
All the competing PPC ad space that is going to open up.
This is a perfect opportunity to get your affiliate sites better positioned with Adwords now. You are going to get a lower conversion rate because of the extra “Click” buyers have to go through but if done correctly it can still be very profitable.
PPC to Amazon can still be a nice gig but I wouldn’t make it your core business. Build some niche sites for the long term strategy and your efforts will be rewarded.
Joel Peterson
http://TheMiniSiteFormula.com
http://JoelsNews.com
Tell me what you think. I’d like to know your experiences with Amazon Affiliate program and if this is going to affect you.
Spreading Your Affiliate Comission Risk
Those of you who do a lot (or a little) affiliate marketing, better read today’s post and act upon it.
Ask yourself this question:
“Is my affiliate business hanging by a thread? If ___________ (fill in the blank) didn’t pay me next month, could I survive?”
If answering that question makes you feel a little squirmish…… it’s time for you to take action and protect yourself.
Several years back, affiliate marketers only had to worry about getting stiffed on commissions if a company went out of business or ran into financial troubles. Now affiliate commissions are “yanked” for all kinds of reasons including but not limited to:
1. Accusations of fraudulent traffic, clicks, or cookie stuffing.
2. Breaking the terms of service by bidding on disapproved keywords on PPC……. company trademark or product terms….. etc….
3. Lack of valuable content on your landing pages or “Not engaging” the user experience…. (nice one Ebay)
There are other reasons. One of the scariest things that has been happening…….. as companies are trying to make as many cuts as possible to remain profitable……. affiliate managers for some companies have been instructed to “find” ways to get out of paying some affiliate commisions….. either by reducing the amount of pending payments or cutting them out all together. They then tell the affiliate that they are on a watch list for suspected fraud or other infringement.
I have two associates who last month called me with that above scenario.
Scary.
So how do you protect yourself?
It’s pretty simple really.
You need to have multiple business entities and spread your affiliate commissions and sites around these companies you setup.
It’s really a statistics game. Your playing the game that if one account gets hit your others will remain.
The hard part is to keep everything separate. You can’t just switch over half of your sites one day to new affiliates links under your new company….. it doesn’t work that way. You pretty much have to start all new affiliate ventures under your new entities and links.
How do you set it up? Well that’s going to be different for everyone but the general method of practice is to setup on Corporation and have several LLC’s under the name INC. (Talk to a profession about this)
The other issue you need to think about is affiliate account logins…….. you don’t want to login from the same IP address into multiple accounts you have setup. They will be most likely linked together.
So the big question is this ethical?
I’m not going to answer that for you. You make the call. Just realize that at the end of the day, most affiliate managers, especially with the big dogs don’t give a “Jack” about you and your company.
Take eBay for example……. last summer, affiliates who were driving huge amounts of traffic with legitimate ways had their accounts ripped from under them………. most of them without explanation.
Just think if those affiliates had spread their traffic over 3 or 4 affiliate accounts….. many would still be getting a monthly check…..
I’ll let you make the call.
The One Event Of The Year Affiliates Can NOT miss.
If you haven’t already made your plans January 11-13, then you better get yourself down to Las Vegas to attend The Affiliate Summit. Never been to it or don’t know what it is?
Well, if you are an affiliate marketer or have the idea that you want to become one…. it’s the place to be to learn and interact with “All Things Affiliate Marketing”. From the looks of it, the panels and speakers are addressing some of the most important issues facing many of us who do affiliate marketing as a living.
You don’t have to be a Super Affiliate to attend. I would recommend attending if you don’t know ANYTHING about affiliate marketing but would like to learn. I would spend some time beforehand doing as much learning as possible……. so you won’t be a complete newbie.
I think some of the hottest topics this year will be taking advantage of Social Networking and the new game plan for PPC.
Let me know if you are attending. I’ll put something together one of the evenings for us all to mix and mingle….
