Amazon Bans Affiliates From Using Paid Search
By Anna Johnson on April 7th, 2009In a massive snub to affiliate marketers, Amazon announced yesterday that it will stop paying referral fees to affiliates that generate sales via paid search engine marketing.
As of May 1, 2009, Amazon won’t pay members of its North American Amazon Associates program for any customers referred as a result of Associates bidding on keywords or engaging in other forms of paid search marketing on Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc, or their content networks.
Furthermore, the company will stop making data feeds available to Associates for the purpose of sending users to the U.S. or Canadian Amazon websites via paid search.
Amazon did not explain why it made the change. Maybe because the online retailer wants less competition for keywords it wants to bid on.
And while it’s certainly Amazon’s prerogative to do this… it’s hardly helpful to affiliates. And hardly an incentive for any affiliates involved in paid search to remain in Amazon’s program.
Presumably that’s what Amazon wants. But who is it kidding?
If an affiliate is doing particularly well in paid search for, say, TVs, it doesn’t take much for them to change their affiliate link from Amazon to one of the many other online retailers that sell TVs.
Sure, another retailer’s landing page may not convert quite as well, but at least the affiliate has the chance to get a commission on selling something… as opposed to a zero commission on selling something.
Source: Amazon, “Change to Amazon Associates program,” The Official Amazon Associates Blog, April 6, 2009
April 8th, 2009 at 6:53 am
amazon will make more profit after cut out the PPC competitor.
and I loss my income ~1500 per months.