Amazon Cutting Commissions on April 21st

[cindyrose888]

It's even better than unemployment guys. Don't worry. We are going to see lots of lay offs.

SAD day for many families................

 

[Commoner]

Hello All,

I felt the kick in the arse.

My aff site is making close to 10K and the other is about 2-3 ish, seems like the time has come. I've predicted it but not so soon...

Okay, the next update will be Amazon asking us to pay for their advertising commissions, aff-links placements, and a must to put Bezos faced in the "About Us" page...

Time Has Come,
Commoner

 

[theRevolt]

Whole i agree with you this is mostly the case with the "amazon affiliate" sites, it is not the case with a good quality site or blog.

Use search "how to take stunning landscapes" >>
Reach on a photography tips blogpost >>
Blogger recommends a wide angle lens and refer him B & H./ Amazon

Now if course the reader may search on Amazon. even if the blogger did not refer him to Amazon. But this traffic was bon existant to Amazon prior to the reader going through the blogpost and figured out that he needs t a wide angle lens.

Like you said Amazon has grown to be the richest ecommerce firm and they will do fine without affiliates. But affiliates contributed a lot to their success.

I can understand a company cutting down expenses ( commisions) when the business in trouble. But screwing affiliates when they are making the most money shows that they don't give a fu@k about us affiliates anymore.

You have to realize that all these huge corporations are very sophisticated with data and analyzing it. I know what all I can track and analyze for sites and that is already amazing, so imagine Amazon...

Where I am getting at is that they likely did not simply do this move with no thought. They have tons of data
- Repeat customer or not? --> If yes, why need affiliates
- Referral URL --> Check if sites provide true value to get someone interested that would otherwise not have done that

and that was just the very simple Stuff. They likely got the result after analyzing all the data running an ML algorithm on it and realizing they do not make incremental $$$ because of affiliates and by doing this they will save money and still get mostly the same revenue.

Again, realize how many searches START on Amazon. Then you may read stuff etc. but many ppl just consider Amazon then try to find better deals, reviews etc.. so it is not like the majority brings traffic that would have never existed...

Either way, affiliates on average will suffer more, as most do need Amazon, not the other way around.


Sucks, but dwelling on it, or some utopian BS some write as in launching an own alternative are just laughable. Move on see what you can do now, there is no chance Amazon will change something because some affiliates send emails.

 

[Stitches and Burns]

Glad that I'm in the display advertising space. Was about to jump into Amazon but saw the writing on the wall.

 

[ranga]

ou have to realize that all these huge corporations are very sophisticated with data and analyzing it. I know what all I can track and analyze for sites and that is already amazing, so imagine Amazon...

Where I am getting at is that they likely did not simply do this move with no thought. They have tons of data
- Repeat customer or not? --> If yes, why need affiliates
- Referral URL --> Check if sites provide true value to get someone interested that would otherwise not have done that

and that was just the very simple Stuff. They likely got the result after analyzing all the data running an ML algorithm on it and realizing they do not make incremental $$$ because of affiliates and by doing this they will save money and still get mostly the same revenue.

Again, realize how many searches START on Amazon. Then you may read stuff etc. but many ppl just consider Amazon then try to find better deals, reviews etc.. so it is not like the majority brings traffic that would have never existed...

I agree that huge corporations have lots of data and analysis to make their decision. But do they make the right decision NAH. Many big corporations are known to have made big bad decisions even after having all the data.

I see this as an opportunity for Amazon competitors to step up and take the fight to them as a big VOID is there. If Ebay was working like it was a decade back Amazon could not have taken this step.

 

[ranga]

From 20 March here in Europe I noticed a huge increase in my affiliate income, I think the same is happening in the US. Both conversion rate and earn per click are increased. More or less both conversion rate and earn per click are more than 2 times the same period last year.

So Amazon balance for affiliation was upset by this pandemic and Amazon urgently needed to remedy this insane increase in conversion and earnings per click and so make this insane cut in affiliate rates.

I don't agree with this assessment. A big decision like this, which may have long term effects, is not taken in a short period of time based on short term disruptions like coronavirus.

 

[RezTheCEO]

According to similarweb “In Q1 2020, affiliates were the third-largest traffic driver to amazon.com, behind Direct and Organic Search. ”

Source: https://www.similarweb.com/corp/blog/what-does-amazons-plan-to-cut-affiliate-rates-mean-for-competitors/

 

[please read]

Sure third largest but look how small it is.

 

[RezTheCEO]

Yah, Also Their direct traffic has grown big time in last 28 days.

 

[PassiveJ]

I would be interested to know if these rates are the same across the board, or if the big boys (Wirecutter etc.) get different (better) rates?

Also how will Amazon market their newer products if influencers move onto something else?

 

[rafark]

Sure third largest but look how small it is.

I'm guessing all of those blogs linking to amazon help them with SEO, so part of that "organic search" must be in part thanks to all the backlinks from affiliate blogs.

 

[neo]

Response from Income school guys.

 

[jstover77]

This couldn't be more apropo:

 

[punk434]

I think other platforms will follow this too

 

[Brighter Faster]

I think other platforms will follow this too

I don’t know that that’s true.

In addition to my affiliate sites, I have an e-commerce (Shopify) company in the home goods space (bedding products). I spent the day emailing every amazon affiliate that ranks for keywords relevant to our products saying that we would love to work with them and are still paying 10% on share-a-sale.

If you have a niche e-commerce site in a category that Amazon has chopped, there is absolutely no better time to recruit high-quality affiliates to promote your products.

 

[theduke60]

Boys, this petition certainly won't reverse the decision, but it might be enough to make some noise - and that's always good.

https://www.change.org/p/jeff-bezos-amazon-affiliate-want-their-rates-back

Doesn't cost a dime, just a minute of your time. It's cathartic, at the very least, like sending a middle finger to Bezos.

 

[punk434]

I don’t know that that’s true.

In addition to my affiliate sites, I have an e-commerce (Shopify) company in the home goods space (bedding products). I spent the day emailing every amazon affiliate that ranks for keywords relevant to our products saying that we would love to work with them and are still paying 10% on share-a-sale.

If you have a niche e-commerce site in a category that Amazon has chopped, there is absolutely no better time to recruit high-quality affiliates to promote your products.

I am not talking about other affiliate sites but exactly about other revenue sharing companies like AdSense and YouTube

 

[guyman73]

They will probably shut it down if they don't find much difference in sales

Good point

 

[guyman73]

What about luxury beauty?
Is it 4%?

I was wondering that myself. Do the non-listed categories remain unchanged?

 

[Sceptic]

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but other affiliate programs for physical products aren't any better. Take the home Improvement niche, for example. Home Depot is the closest competitor in that field, and they have a 2% commission and a lower conversion rate. Walmart offers 4%, and BestBuy less than 1%. Any retailer that offers high commissions does so because it sells products at insanely high prices compared to Amazon. Amazon's higher rates have always been the anomaly in the retail affiliate marketing world, not the other way around. Not to mention that nothing converts as good as Amazon.

I see people dreaming about 20-50% comission. Well, no. The only place to find such commissions is shitty Clickbank products. Also, please forget about uniting our efforts to take Amazon head on. That's some utopian shit that's never gonna happen. As someone else has mentioned, for better or worse, Amazon is the one doing you a favor by accepting you into their aff program, not the other way around.

Now, I too think this is a bitch move, especially during this time of need, and especially on such a short notice. But let's look at it from another perspective and see the opportunity here. The number of clicks waiting to be harvested is the same.

Large publishers with high content production costs aren't going to bother with low volume keywords anymore. At the same time, the ton of casual marketers with cheap blogs clogging up low to mid volume keywords aren't going to be able to sustain operations. This leaves any publisher that can control costs in a position to harvest all the low to mid volume traffic

If 100 clicks were being diverted to 10 sites then, they will now be shared by 3 sites. Higher volume, lower rates should balance out.

Take this as a lesson. Learn from it, diversify your sources of income, and move on. Whining isn't going so solve anything.

Also, jeez people, stop blaming Bezos for everything that's happening. It's not like he's sitting on an iron throne making such decisions alone. They're the results of extensive data research.