Bye-bye Amazon [Affiliate Program]

[Rhea]

I'm calling it quits with Amazon. First they messed around with the commission structure. Then they introduced 'Pick Up in Store' (no affiliate commission). The proverbial nail in the coffin is they're now running third-party affiliate links on product pages in competition with their own products. As in the following example:

Customers interested in Absolutely Fabulous may also be interested in:
Sponsored Links (What's this?)

Absolutely Fabulous
Find the Lowest Price Here! Prices, Reviews, Specs, and More
www.pricegrabber.com

$78.98 for Complete DVD
Cheaper than Amazon and Others Complete Ab Fab Season on DVD
www.comedycatalog.com

I've sent them hundreds of my visitors this month and had one marketplace sale, the worst month I've had in years. Not good enough. Bye-bye, Amazon.

[Nintendo]

Can you post a URL to an example? I can't find that any where.

[Rhea]

It was on this page, but it's gone now.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0671527142/

[Czar]

That looks like the Google AdWords distro deal coming into effect:
http://www.geekvillage.com/forums/sh...threadid=20770

Definitely not good news for affiliates.

[sdarken]

You really have to wonder how many off-site links they can throw on the page without effecting (affecting?) their sales. I would imagine they will proceed very very carefully with Adwords. Those are definitely AdWord Ads. If you search for "absolutely fabulous" on Google, you will see the same ads mentioned appear on the right side of the Google search results page.

I don't know if you noticed but one of those ads is pretty funny, given where they are appearing ..... "Cheaper than Amazon and Others"

[maddeningcrowds]

It all seems a little odd to me, Amazon being an online store, you'd think they'd concentrate on sales & looking after their affiliates, and not have any advertising at all.

I think its really unprofessional when I see ads on ecommerce sites.

[Rhea]

Simon, it was that particular phrase that angered me. And I'm guessing that it's that particular phrase that caused the adwords to be pulled by Amazon. Odd that it was there one day, I posted about it on the Amazon associates' BB, and then *poof* it disappeared.

And you know what I found? BBC America, a CJ advertiser, sells that DVD set for the same price that comedycatalog.com advertises it. So my Ab Fab link now goes to BBC America. Their commission rate is 15 percent.

[alteredskate]

I think I might follow Rhea eventually, but right now I have $76 stuck in my account, so I have to try and make it to the minimum.

Because I only advertise video games I'll likely go with http://www.chipsbits.com/ . They pay 10% commission instead of 5%, and they have games available for pre-order sooner than Amazon. They also have a lower minimum earnings. The only thing I don't really like about the program is their stats system. It's a weekly (I think) email that shows your sales.

[njpete]

Yeah i gave up an amazon a long time ago. I only have some remnent pages with them on it (for now), recently it just seems to be one thing after another with them. The raising of their min balance was it for me.


I also don't get why they are being cute now because things seem to be going great for thier company.

[jnestor]

I suspect that the AdWords deal is of interest to amazon because: 1) It'll bring them a lot of money (even from people who don't buy anything) and 2) it was pitched in a way made it seem like it would be other items of interest that Amazon doesn't sell. I suspect #2 because of some of the phrasing in the announcement. If google can really do that it'd probably be worth it for Amazon. If they can't I suspect it'll go away. I mean things like an ad on the AbFab page for a convention where one of the stars will be appearing or something like that. Or concert tickets on a page about a band. Something that wouldn't compete with amazon's own sales.

[kryton]

I've never been happy with Amazon. They were always just very convenient because their wide range of stock. I'll never stop using them because it would be a huge undertaking to replace their links, even though all my sites are automated in that respect. So I'm stuck with them. I'm sure they have ****** in many people like me, who's sites have just grown and grown over the years, and can not be bothered to replace their links with others.

[AhmedF]

Altered .. havent used either of them much, but I once did a survey, and most popular was ebgames.com for gaming.

HTH

[Nintendo]

:::They were always just very convenient because their wide range of stock. I'll never stop using them because it would be a huge undertaking to replace their links, even though all my sites are automated in that respect. So I'm stuck with them.

That's exactly why I'm using them. They offer so many items and let you link to any itme!! Plus there the most populer store on the internet, and when you get big fat checks from them, it's real hard to stop using them. Plus, thanks to AWS, I'm now able to make over 700 SSI pages in one day advertising products, thanks to making a few changes to Mr. Rats COOL script!!!!! It might suprise you but until the end of last month I was always bashing and flaming the AWS services!!! That changed after testing it out and seeing a huge increase in 'Add to Shopping Cart' orders!!! When I run out of new ways to advertise them, and new products to advertise, then I'll try other Affiliet programs, but I got a long way to go until I run out!!!!

I think of the first 10 months of the year as geting ready for the holiday season!!!! Last year I made about $400 per quarter for the first three quarters, then the holiday season came geting me around $3,700 even though I didn't do any Amazon work during the first two quarters of that year. Thanks to a lot of work and new ideas since November, I made $1,821.34 during the last quarter, so I see a HUGE holiday season this year. So no, I don't plan on leaving Amazon!!!!

[alteredskate]

Originally posted by AhmedF
Altered .. havent used either of them much, but I once did a survey, and most popular was ebgames.com for gaming.

HTH

I had a quick look. They offer 5% commission as well. I would have to sell twice as many games to end up with the same income. I think I'll stick with chipsbits. I've had an account with them for a long time, but I haven't been using it while I've been with Amazon.

[Timo]

I was reading the aws board and there are several large earners who use the google adwords ppc to make sales. If I remember correctly, it was not very successful.

If memory serves me, a SEO guy did a test and made $8900 in commish after spending $8000 of it on google. I wonder if the $900 profit was worth the work?

What happens now to those people sending clicks to amazon within googleadwords? I can just see someone visiting az to look for a particular book, not like it, consider the adwords, click on one, and be redirected back to the same product they decided not to buy.

Or have they been filtered out?


Rhea:

I am with you. We just switched over to B&N for books and vids, and only offer AZ products if we can't find it anywhere else. Will be interesting to compare the overall conversion rate.

OT-I wonder how yahoo has been doing with B&N?

Nintendo:

Its hard to part with money. AWS makes it so easy to become 100% dependent upon them. But remember that sometimes sacrificing a little bit of revenue for the purposes of testing other programs could uncover a goldmine of opportunities somewhere else.

When I created my sites, as part of risk management, I promised myself that I would never allow any merchant or rep company to control more than 15%-25% of my total sales at both the site and network level. I think this makes just as much sense today as it did back then. Now if someone send me a program change I dont have to freak out, because the impact will at most affect 20% of my revenues, giving me at least some leverage in negotiations and/or time to make changes.

What would you do If AZ one day said we are dropping commish rates? While I know you have a private program (congrats by the way) with all of those AWS pages, it would take you months to make changes to other programs if the changes were too harsh.

Tim