Will Amazon close their affiliate program soon?

With the rates that keep becoming lower and lower, do you think that they will close their affiliate program anytime soon?
I don't see why they wouldn't do that, as they have thousands of websites promoting them and closing their affiliate program will keep giving them traffic while not having to pay publishers.

Little bit clickbaity.. just a little

Don't think they will close it in the forseeable future, but do think they will keep squeezing rates to 1-3% across all direct product categories and sales in unrelated categories to below 0.5%.

Amazon and their associates know how well amazon convert and until a strong competitor/ restrictive monopoly legislation enter into the fray then amazon have the upper hand.

VSYNC said:

Little bit clickbaity.. just a little

Click to expand...

Yeah my bad, looks like something magically changed it to a better title

Indeed its a little clickbaity. To not give our amazon affiliates a heart attack i have changed the title accordingly.

Take advantage when that happens.

1 - Buy old Amazon sites
2- Turn them into dropshipping

The title almost take my breath away. I have already invested thousands dollar.

hh2489 said:

Take advantage when that happens.

1 - Buy old Amazon sites
2- Turn them into dropshipping

Click to expand...

That's a great idea actually.

I don't think they will close the affiliate program anytime soon. They might lower the rates or don't let any new people in. But I think they would miss out on a lot of traffic coming from third party sites.

I don't think Amazon really needs affiliates at this point. I mean, it was great with getting them the huge market share they got, but they probably don't even need it at this point. I'm certain that they will determine that they will make more money by closing down the program at one point in the next few years.

Heiko said:

Indeed its a little clickbaity. To not give our amazon affiliates a heart attack i have changed the title accordingly.

Click to expand...

Still had a mild attack.

Never gonna happen, the moment amazon close their affiliate program, they will face:

• the decline in the number of sales
• the decline in amazon brand/and links on the Internet, causing ranking of manufacturer's sites higher on Google
• increase in competition from e-bay, Wallmart, Flipkart(India)
• Increase in Dropshipping (as hh2489 Mentioned)
• original brand manufacturers will start their affiliate program(many already have)

There are still so many good brands that are happily willing to pay you to commission to promote their product. After this, this thing will thrive.

but yes, there have to be some good competitors of amazon, and with an increasing amount of thin affiliate sites, amazon will do something...

I doubt they would close an affiliate program that brings in so much money.

Blackhat Lifter said:

With the rates that keep becoming lower and lower, do you think that they will close their affiliate program anytime soon?
I don't see why they wouldn't do that, as they have thousands of websites promoting them and closing their affiliate program will keep giving them traffic while not having to pay publishers.

Click to expand...

Not by a long shot. They've reduced the commissions to the point that they make massive profits just doing that. Whole aff are forced to keep the websites running since they've invested lots of time and cash so they don't' afford to lose it so the Amazon has an edge over that. It will be around enough until another player comes in and makes them healthy competition.

Dont think so, they are still getting lots of traffic

Not a chance. They’ve been killing it through the pandemic.

In India flipkart (amazon like site) closed doors for new affiliates.

May be Amazon do like this in future.

All any of us have is speculation of course but my guess would be no.

It's nothing to do with needing affiliates at this point but everyone linking to them seems like it would add to their 'being a household name' schtick. Amazon plays the long game so there's likely more to this than the payouts they give affiliates vs what they'd get by dropping affiliates.

If dropping rates didn't hurt their affiliate traffic before they might well do that again though.

hh2489 said:

Take advantage when that happens.

1 - Buy old Amazon sites
2- Turn them into dropshipping

Click to expand...

This.

I went looking for deals when they dropped the payout rates a few months ago.

It's not gonna happen. Atleast for few more years, they will have the affiliate program running. If affiliates turn elsewhere for more profits, they might even raise the rate a tiny bit

hh2489 said:

And how did it work?

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Didn't end up closing on anything sadly. I think most affiliate sites selling around that 30x mark are still massively overvalued and the dip in rates didn't drop it enough,