Amazon Makes Changes to Associates Program
If you’re a publisher of the Amazon Associates Program, you may need to find new ways of generating leads.
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.
If you’re not sure if this change affects you, please visit this page for FAQs.
Basically if you use Google, Yahoo, MSN, and other search engines, and their extended search networks to drive traffic to either Amazon.com, Amazon.ca or Endless.com, you will not be paid referral commissions.
It seems a lot of affiliate programs are doing this lately. This is the third network I’ve seen in the last few months that is banning all paid search traffic. Although, the new rules don’t say anything about Facebook advertising. *evil grin*
Tweet This Post!
April 6th, 2009 at 11:31 am
Hi,
I don’t do PPC as i don’t know how. But why do you think networks are doing this? What’s going on.
Thx for the industry update. I started using Amazon a few months ago and there program is very comprehensive – so alot to learn.
Let me know. (and thx!)
April 6th, 2009 at 1:10 pm
@Missy: It could be a number of things. I’ve heard that most companies don’t like marketers bidding on their trademarked terms or names, so some have become crafty in doing this anyway using “black hat” methods.