Amazon Cutting Commissions on April 21st

[Hamza SEO Anchor]

Can we publishers make a union against them and stop promoting Amazon products. We should go with alternatives and remove their links.

If they have been taken a decision, we should also.

 

[BloggerTonmoy]

Jeff to affiliate marketers: Desperate times call for desperate measures. Sorry fellas, can't continue the same deal in the future.

Jeff to himself: make money money money money.



That's really a big loss. I's going to flip few or my sites but I think, i won't get that much money right now ..

Amazon really sucks. I really need to move to something else. But it's also true, when you are into physical products, Amazon comes to the 1st position.

Maybe, we should to buy stocks of Amazon. It's rapidly increasing.It seems like only that can compensate my losses.

 

[umpteen]

holy moly. been struggling to get started started on this. But now i guess my motivation is gone

 

[umpteen]

fck amazon, they're actually having more sales now than usual. Look how greedy humans can be

 

[papiforreal]

1) How does this impact the valuation of current affiliate sites?
2) What will be its ripple effect? Demand for content writers, PBNs, Cost of Links, etc?

Everybody would be hit

 

[goflippa]

Everybody would be hit

Yes you are right.

CNBC Confirmed again: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/14/amazon-slashes-commission-rates-for-affiliate-program.html

 

[Elvlin]

Can we publishers make a union against them and stop promoting Amazon products. We should go with alternatives and remove their links.

If they have been taken a decision, we should also.

You can make petition about this, than make supporting article that make out how bad amazon is, and how we are the victim(better article, better impact) . Than ask all im to contribute promoting the article, and petition. Well if all stick to it, with high quality article than you show how the community is against it.

Stop promoting amazon won't show them anything, there will always new affiliate for the site. And i am sure they have researched the data, before making this decision. Mean they know it won't hurt much even if most old affiliate stop.

 

[Doctor Sleep]

And this month I make the first $17 from Amazon..

Next mont $6 will be enogh for one beer

 

[peachseo]

Jeff made a decision for end of his career

 

[theRevolt]

Not very likely they will reverse anything. In my opinion it's not covid-19 related entirely, mostly is their and Bezos's greed in play, as there is more and more online sales going on right now, and they do know that people will go to Amazon anyway, so they want to play us out as commission cuts will earn them way more than all the peoplewho decide to move away from Amazon, at least in short term. So basically, it's just getting the profit up, stock price up until Bezos is out. At this point, they don't really care about affiliates, we were only means to build up a company and we succeded. Now, we are only collateral damage in their game, so no, commissions will never go back.
First, I also thought that they are lowering due to covid, as a means to decrease the actual price of the products, but then noticed that FBA program increased it's fees, basically confirming that Amazon just want's to suck up as much as profit as possible.

Time to find new a program, or even to make one, as this opens hell of a possibility for similar companies. It's a marketplace, if Amazon and Ali-xx could make it, what's stops us? We have freaking promotion channels (thousands of our websites), only thing we need is to come together and make it. Only crowd from BHW would cover most of categories, so what stops us. We can even introduce payments with crypto along the way, and we are one step in front of them, as they are big, equals slow. So, let's use that and make something better out of it.

Anyway, let's talk.

Some valid points but then mixed with utopia... So a bunch of guys from BHW taking on a trillion $ company? Oh yeah remember all the ebay knockoffs, that even were free... do you use them? Offerup etc may have something but even with eBay struggling, they have not overtaken them. No one, i repeat no one would buy from a brand new vendor unless you basically give stuff away for free/ultra cheap and lose money. You got that kind of $$$$$$$?

Remember jet.com? That is what they did, their only play was a smart one to get acquired, it was never sustainable. I never ordered 1 item after that as the prices were not the same or more than Amazon, before they were often awesome offers.

this is the biggest slap to the face I have ever seen a company do it's actually insane. I just read a news article about how Amazon because of the increase of e-commerce from stay at Homer's has had one of the best quarters in its history. Some affiliates are actually increasing commissions you would think that having your best quarter you would want to give back but somehow they decided that it would be the perfect time to take even more money and completely destroy the affiliate commissions.

Let's be honest here Amazon is the biggest e-commerce retailer out there by a massive margin these typesof cuts is huge to the entire affiliate marketing sector. Sure you can move to other affiliates and go off and say they offer more commissions by the conversion is never going to be the same as Amazon conversion it's just not going to happen they have the monopoly and they are the most trusted name.

A cut like this during a pandemic when a lot of people are relying on this income to feed their families and survive is absolutely disgusting even Google has been postponing updates because they don't want to rock the boat during the shaking times.

honestly at this point building websites and micro niche sites to try and make Amazon commissions is just completely a dead art. The cost and time investment to do this is nowhere near the return you would be better off trying PPC or a sass product. If you do have your own products or find a great affiliate this is the way you can continue on. But I suspect after this change there is going to be a lot of saturation in those little shareasale niches that offer good affiliate programs.

Make no mistake a lot of people are still going to continue with Amazon because they don't have anything else and the conversion is so high also the workload to change a average site with over 150 pagesto another affiliate is pretty taxing so they're going to bank for quite a while.

This. It sucks but it's not a simple as now I just move to Walmart or XYZ, there are many downsides (conversion rate obviously etc.) that it's a huge impact.

Here's what I emailed to the feedback link (https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/home/contact?feedbackSource=/help/operating/compare), you're welcome to use this template:

Hello,

We have been an affiliate with Amazon Associates for _____. However, the rate change on April 21, 2020 is forcing us to reexamine our relationship with Amazon. We refer multiple [hundreds|thousands|millions] of dollars of purchases to Amazon in the _____ category every year. This proposed rate adjustment will [half] our revenue from Amazon and force us to substitute our current Amazon links with other retailers like _____, _____, _____, and _____, who will have [twice] the commission rate of Amazon at the current industry standard.

Please reconsider.

Sincerely,
​

Edit the "half" and "twice" for whatever happened to your niche(s). I know it's a long shot but let's fire all the shots we have.

They do not care. Just that you write shows you are the desperate one, as otherwise, you would just move to XYZ if they paid you more, and it would generally make you more money.

Anyone know how much traffic they get from affiliates?

The question is: How much traffic they would not get otherwise?
Some people will look at reviews, coupons etc. and land at Amazon through that, but it is not like you made them even consider Amazon, they already were. Remains to be seen if you redirect same traffic to say Walmart now if they buy, my guess is the will check on Amazon if the price is the same or cheaper/free shipping --> Amazon

Amazon has plenty of promotion channels too. Are you seriously hankering to take on Amazon with a bunch of retarded made for amazon "niche sites"?

Stop looking at what they list on generic sign up pages. Basically every retailer or manufacturer that I have emailed (other than Amazon and Walmart and Apple) was willing to offer better terms than what they list as the default commission. (Best Buy in particular might not since electronics is a damn low margin business.)

You really have to do some leg work if you're going to make other programs work.



Yes, of course.

- Yeah, but which of those are the ones you can use for many of your sites?
- How many of those are vendors people would actually buy from compared to Amazon?
- You will never negotiate anything with a large brand that you would need to simply replace Amazon through only XYZ...maybe depending on your niches you may find A,B,C etc ..so one for each site

Def sucks, but the reality is Amazon is dominating big time and will be even more when this passes..

 

[lifehero]

1) How does this impact the valuation of current affiliate sites?
2) What will be its ripple effect? Demand for content writers, PBNs, Cost of Links, etc?

the era of amazon affiliates and building amazon sites from here forward will slowly start to diminish and shit away

 

[theRevolt]

the era of amazon affiliates and building amazon sites from here forward will slowly start to diminish and shit away

It depends, but of course, the valuation of sites are now not the same. Obviously, since this is set in stone you have to now figure out how much revenue was coming from which category, adjust for new percentage then apply the multiplier...and you are left with 50% less or even more ...

Edit:
I recall this guys' journey thread(@Bloooop ) and he sold his site, lucky him or would have been in that same boat.

Tough times let's see what tomorrow brings.

 

[theduke60]

What a damn joke. As if they weren't already stupidly low. Just got out of an account warning and now this - it's the final nail in the coffin for me, I'll be moving to other revenue streams completely and start drafting a plan to salvage the Amazon niche websites. I'm thinking about contacting the individual brands of my best selling products and striking a deal with them while leaving all the secondary less converting items with Amazon. It's just too much work to replace them all, not to mention the likely Google hit you'll take if you completely restructure articles.

It's a sad, sad day but also a wake up call to everyone - diversify your income streams and NEVER be dependent on anyone or anything. To hell with Amazon.

 

[Willyfish]

I planed on future to try amazon affiliates but was not sure about it, seems like I will not take this road. Sad for everybody that made a good business out of this :/

 

[FatBee]

Guess i made a right decision not to spend more money for articles and spend time on my affiliate site. Too bad, it just turns 8 months and it got some traction.

 

[BrandingCat]

If you want to play margins you need to approach the suppliers of the products you promote directly and offer them a deal.

^

 

[theRevolt]

Guess i made a right decision not to spend more money for articles and spend time on my affiliate site. Too bad, it just turns 8 months and it got some traction.

Yep, much more of a gamble now to calculate a breakeven. Even if you still rank :
a) Are people going to be buying from the new vendor you chose?
b) If amazon then how much longer will it take to recoup the cost for articles.

etc. Foreseeable when you have a brand that everyone knows..such as Google would never do PPI on chrome...

 

[eral123]

Edit:
I recall this guys' journey thread(@Bloooop ) and he sold his site, lucky him or would have been in that same boat.

Tough times let's see what tomorrow brings.

Actually, he invested a lot of money for new sites, he has like 5-10 new sites that ( I think ) he was planning to use amazon affiliate program.

 

[Brighter Faster]

- Yeah, but which of those are the ones you can use for many of your sites?
- How many of those are vendors people would actually buy from compared to Amazon?
- You will never negotiate anything with a large brand that you would need to simply replace Amazon through only XYZ...maybe depending on your niches you may find A,B,C etc ..so one for each site

Def sucks, but the reality is Amazon is dominating big time and will be even more when this passes..

You have to do some work to go apply to programs for each of your sites, things like Walmart (in my experience) are crap. You need to tell people why they should buy from the particular place you are sending them.

All of them are places people buy from. My largest site (which got hit last year in the cut on clothing from 7% to 4%) now does 90% of its business on places other than Amazon, and makes more (per click) than it did when I was using Amazon alone. I have replaced Amazon with huge brands in the niche (comparable in size/recognition to Coca-Cola, say).

These huge brands were ALL willing to negotiate their rates. They listed "default commissions" as anywhere from 1%-4%, but sending them an email with information on my site, and asking if they could improve those rates was almost universally successful. Many places went from ~4% to ~10%. I get paid 8-10% from almost all of them on a category that is 4% on Amazon, and the cookie duration is far better (generally 30 days).

It really just takes a lot of work of establishing relationships with these people. There was also a lot of work in evaluating conversions... some places had terrible conversions, while others were awesome. I have no idea about why that was the case, but I just monitored earning per click that I sent to them and cut off the ones that sucked.

I've also managed to get links directly from some of these huge brands since I was able to email the affiliate manager and say "I have a new review up of your latest Gizmo, if you guys are interested in linking to it that would be great for both of us!" That would have been much less likely if I were just another Amazon site.

Also, as I said earlier, telling your readers why they should avoid buying this type of product on Amazon is very effective.

 

[theRevolt]

Actually, he invested a lot of money for new sites, he has like 5-10 new sites that ( I think ) he was planning to use amazon affiliate program.

Yeah, I don't know the details about that, but pretty sure he will have $$$$$ left that would now take forever to earn with his old site. So either way, I'd say could be worse for him, and likely is for others that were planning on making this their main income and working on it for a long time.