Amazon Disses Paid Search Affiliates
Monday, April 6th, 2009
Amazon to forbid affiliates linking from paid search ads.
In an email to Amazon Associates today, the company announced it will no longer allow affiliates to send traffic directly to its site from pay-per-click ads on Google, Yahoo, and MSN.
Affiliates may still bid on search engines to send traffic to their own web sites, which in turn link to Amazon.com through its affiliate program.
I used to be active at affiliate arbitrage. In a nutshell, that means buying traffic on Google or Yahoo and sending it to an affiliate site to reap the cost-per-action revenue. Thankfully, I got out of that business a long time ago. But some people still make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year doing it. Some of those people do it strictly with Amazon.com, using sophisticated algorithms to automatically change bid prices based on earnings and Amazon’s inventory. On May 1, when this new rule goes into effect, their business will be wiped out. (The rules apply only to North America; other regions’ programs are subject to different rules).
I saw the writing on the wall when affiliate programs started forbidding direct search linking and restricted keyword use. In many ways it’s like the domain parking industry; we rely on Google and Yahoo and one simple change in their policies can wipe us out.
Further Reading:
Another reason to follow the Castello Bros model of getting direct advertisers on developed sites.
Everything else is “fragile”.
Yeah I agree with Rob.
I myself have moved away from parking and now have over 100 mini sites active.
Something I wish I had done some time ago!
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WHY? RT @domainnamewire: Amazon Disses Paid Search Affiliates: Will forbid affiliates linking from paid search ads http://tinyurl.com/dzawtb
Logically, it must have been costing them money rather than making them money. I just don’t see how. Were they paying for all referalls, conversion or not? Where was I on that one.
Really the only reason for them to do this is so they can bid less for terms to send traffic to their site. But this gives an opening to their competitors…
It was probably an incredibly difficult thing to manage, with all of the affiliates going for the same terms, all of the fraudsters out there, the complaints from affiliates etc.
In one fell swoop they probably cut out a GIANT headache, and opened the door to make a lot of money.
and they aren’t doing something terribly unusual – most companies don’t let you bid using their name and direct links.
Gordon, it doesn’t have to do with using Amazon’s name. They won’t let you bid on a *product* name and link to their site.
It has to do with the Amazon url. They won’t let you link directly to the product and show the url in your ad as amazon.com
Most companies don’t let you do this when you bid.