Amazon Plunge In Earnings? Check This...

Hi Guys,

I was, am, an associate for Amazon.

Like many I have seen a huge drop in earnings since the summer. I have moved on to other projects, but not knowing why the drop in earnings came about has been irksome to me.

Same or better rankings, higher clicks, non seasonal products...it just didn't make sense.

So I had some time off yesterday and did a quick bit of looking around and found...

"Get an instant $50 discount on this product when you apply and are accepted for an Amazon Rewards Card" lol

So all of my links have this promotion under the product price. Een when people are looking for a $50 product they get $50 instant discount once accepted to the rewards programme. Therefore, getting the product for FREE.

Could it be that Amazon's rewards programme is hijacking my traffic and once the rewards programme accepts the customer application then the session cookie is closed hence the drop in earnings and conversion?

Any thoughts guys?

PJ

As a seller on Amazon, that never affected me or my sales, in the pozitive or negative. What you should look REALLY CAREFOULLY is your backlink to the offer. Are thowse links still your own? Even if it is your website, better yet, especially if it is your website you need to check this. Afterwards, see if there is that stupid hack that changes your affiliate link to something else. This becames quite vizible on other devices since thowse are targeted. Why do i tell you this? If mods and other ppl had this problem or simmilar, maby you do to.

Hi hellrete,

Yes, this was one of my first checks, but if clicks are recorded and increasing how would this be possible? Wouldn't I see an overall drop in clicks proportionate to sales?

I have only just noticed the instant savings discount so not sure if this is affecting conversions.

Still a puzzled.

This is interesting, 1st off the bat that " get $50 off your 1st purchase" is active for approx 8 months on my listing so. Not really sure about that. The second thing I would check is were is my trafic coming from and if he really changes from cold trafic to warm trafic. And, on top of that, please check if the trafic and such are ok, maby it is because of the holyday season. The short version is: research". And if you figure it out congratz. Post the solution so others, like me , may benefit. I am still learning stuff myself so my advice might not be the best.

Warm buyer traffic from Google.com.
Search terms are primarily "best" and "review".
High rankings in Google inc several position zero and top 1-3 rankings .
Non seasonal items.
High ticket items have almost disappeared during the last three months.

There is a huge thread on the official amazon associate forum, with many associates experiencing a very similar scenario.

I am at a loss apart from the $50 savings as I have not noticed this before, although it may have escaped my attention.

The 1st part is chinese for me. The second is the same. So sorry I don't know what or how to help you further. The $50 Is on my listing for quite a while since I look at it 4 - 10 times / day.

The only other thing I might check is if : the products you are linking to have changed the listing and if the product has received some negative feedbacks, reviews, or the seller has some bad rep recived last month/s.

If any of the customers enter and start reading reviws and there are negatives right at the top, boom. If the seller has done something shady that the customer can find, boom. And if the listing has changed, .... you have a really big problem, i should know, a simple pic will change your listing from no or very low convertions to something profitable.

Like I sayed I am still learning but this things i might also check, since holiday season is starting and a simple fkup can turn evreything upsidedown if tou are not 10000% certain.

On the sidenote, carefoully check if the product you are linking to has variations. The seller might unwillingly done a new listing or reindexed the old one and the Amazon algo would only sometimes cach your links.

Amazon is Hijacking your sales, you can look no further. It has been discussed and they do it in more ways than one. In addition to that, they've been gradually doing this for most of the niches. There is a thread on amazon associates discussion boards about it called ""Expert Reviews" jack move.".

They basically chose a big reviewer and put him at the top of search results (on amazon) for most products. When your traffic clicks on them, you lose your cookie and Wire Cutter (name of the reviewers) get it.

Besides that, with the new fees amazon presented (2nd time this year) many 3rd party sellers found a way to game the system. They put their products under wrong categories, so combined with new fees you are stuck selling something for 1-4% commission which you actually should get 2-8 times more for. Before, the percentage would increase with amounts sold, now you are just stuck.

Then there are other tricks amazon does too, so I would suggest you consider looking for a new affiliate program.