Amazon sent out an announcement to affiliates this morning about a new rule prohibiting keyword bidding through pay per click search engines.
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.
I’m sort of surprised Amazon didn’t do this sooner. Many affiliate programs I’ve managed in past years added this sort of provision way back. But, there were often exceptions for a few people in affiliate programs I managed that had PPC policies of this kind.
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Try to create landing page as me http://www.storeassociates.com. I’m using AOM, easy site management for Amazon.
Thank you for the generous offer, but I already dismantled that site, so not much to show right now. It was a financial site, part catalog, part reviews, with original reviews on the books. Anyway, I’ll try on another subject and if it won’t work investigate more carefully what’s going on. May be an interesting result to alert affiliate community
And thanks again for your interest! Really appreciate it.
Your Message@El:
If you’re willing to share, what sort of site do you have, products you’re trying to sell, and conversion rate you’re seeing?
Your Message@Shawn Collins:
Thank you! It’s good to know that it works for some people. Apparently, I am doing something wrong. I know I am sending quite a bit of well targeted traffic there, so the only explanation I can come up so far is that it’s somehow contaminated with somebody else’s Amazon affiliate links.
Your Message@El:
I’ve been promoting Amazon steadily since 1997. I would have stopped long ago if I wasn’t seeing competitive returns.
I am wondering more about another question: how well Amazon associates program work at all? It looks like it’s so much spread over the Internet that even with hundreds clicks per day from your links, the chances are that most of them will already have somebody else’s cookies, and you won’t be paid anything. At least that’s my impression of working with them on books. In my case their performance is dismal. Am I doing something wrong, or I am right that they are.. suboptimal to say the least?
Your Message@Peachy:
Per the announcement, “This change applies only to the Associates programs in North America.”
does this also apply to amazon.co.uk?
I spoke with Internet Retailer yesterday and they posted an article about the Amazon PPC decision – http://www.internetretailer.com/dailyNews.asp?id=30026
Click on the FAQ link in the copy of the email posted by Shawn. It is ok to send PPC to the affiliate’s site.
“Q: If my paid search advertisement directs a user first to an interstitial page, then to http://www.amazon.com, http://www.endless.com, or http://www.amazon.ca, will I earn referral fees?
A: No. However, if you place paid search advertisements to send users to your own website, and then your website displays links to http://www.amazon.com, http://www.endless.com, or http://www.amazon.ca in accordance with the Operating Agreement, you may earn referral fees for qualifying purchases made by users who click on your paid search ad, click through to your site, then click through to an Amazon site. “
Just re-read the letter. It is just the DTM (direct-to-merchant) paid search ads are they are referring to, as you cannot “send users to http://www.amazon.com, http://www.amazon.ca, or http://www.endless.com through keyword bidding and other paid search” but nothing is said about PPC bidding and sending traffic to affiliate’s own website.
So is it all PPC or just DTM PPC? Cf: http://www.jangro.com/a/2009/04/06/amazon-kills-associate-direct-paid-search/
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