AffiliateBrand.com by Gene Kavner

Amazon Philosophy on Personal Purchases via Associates Program

Hi Gene, Can you buy your own products through your affiliate links or is that a breach of terms? I'm a regular Amazon shopper as it is and was wondering...

I hear this question quite frequently and would like to first explain Amazon's policy on this issue and then offer you some additional rationale and practical advice. First of all, let me quote directly from Amazon Associates Operating Agreement: You may not purchase products during sessions initiated through the links on your site for your own use, for resale or commercial use of any kind. This includes orders for customers or on behalf of customers or orders for products to be used by you or your friends, relatives, or associates in any manner. Such purchases may result (in our sole discretion) in the withholding of referral fees and/or the termination of this Agreement. Products that are eligible to earn referral fees under the rules set forth above are referred to as "Qualifying Products." The section above clearly states that you may not click on the link that contains your Amazon Associates ID and make a purchase from Amazon. However, it is not that simple. Several questions come immediately to mind. As you know from my previous post titled Does Amazon store cookies on people who bought through your affiliate program?, Amazon keeps the cookie for 24 hours after the customer clicks on an Amazon affiliate link. So, what happens if you have been clicking on your own links to test them then inadvertently went to Amazon later in the day and made a purchase? Obviously, you would be tagged with your own Associates ID. Clearly, this is is not an intended violation of the agreement. What happens is Amazon reserves the right to withhold paying fees on products you purchase for your own use. If you clearly abuse this section and build a site via which you exclusively purchase all your Amazon products and offer your friends, relatives or associates to purchase Amazon products, Amazon reserves the right to terminate the agreement entirely (in other words, terminate your Associates account and not pay you any fees you've earned so far). So how does Amazon know when to withhold fees and when to terminate agreement? Because it is not easy to tell if your purchase is inadvertent or intentional I am only aware of Amazon withholding fees for personal purchases and not terminating the entire agreement for this reason. The next question that comes to mind is why restrict such sales? Retailers that have an affiliate program generate only a portion of their sales via affiliate sales. Majority of all sales occur when customers come to a retailer directly and the retailer does not have to pay any affiliate fees on such purchases. Because retailers regard affiliate programs as a marketing channel, they hope affiliates introduce customers to their products and service, especially those customers who have not shopped with the retailer previously. Once a customer has a positive shopping experience, retailers hope the customer will return directly to them, bypassing affiliates and thus saving the retailer from incurring affiliate fees on follow-on sales. When the affiliate purchases products directly from the retailer with his own affiliate ID, the goal of the affiliate program is broken. That is why Amazon and many other merchants do not pay fees on purchases made by affiliates for personal use. Then why restrict sales by affiliates to their friends and family? This a poor decision in my opinion. Obviously, if I encourage all of my friends and family to shop at Amazon, Amazon will get sales that they otherwise may not have received and will benefit from such sales. I believe that this rule was put in place because Amazon argued that as an Amazon affiliate, I would tell all of my friends and family to shop at Amazon even if I don't receive affiliate fees. I do not agree with such an argument. A merchant should give all of their affiliates 100% incentive to drive any and all sales to the merchant, including sales to friends and family. Thus, affiliates should be compensated for such sales. Furthermore, while I do see the merchant's perspective for restricting personal purchases, because of the difficulty to enforce such activity (affiliates could always open two accounts, one for personal sales and one for referred sales), I also believe that all such purchases should be allowed. Unfortunately, today Amazon does not permit such sales. Gene Kavner, Former World-Wide Director, Amazon Associates, 2005-2006

Amazon Associates Report is Significantly Delayed Today

Today, for an unexplained reason, Amazon Associates have significantly delayed posting of their daily report which allows their affiliates to see information about how their campaigns performed during the previous day. 

Announcement of the delay came at about 11:30am Pacific time, almost 3 hours after the reports are typically due and almost 9 hours later than the reports have been typically posted over the last few weeks.  The message on the Amazon Associates announcement board simply read:

"At the current time, we do not have an estimated time for when they will be published. When we know more, we will post an update.

We're sorry for the inconvenience and are working to resolve this problem as quickly as possible."

Because so many affiliates of Amazon are dependent on analysis and review of their earnings, this delay has caused discussions on various Internet bulletin boards.  I do not have any additional information on what has caused this delay, which rivals some of the longest report delays during the busy Q4 shopping season.  As soon as I have any information I will post an update.

In the meantime, I recently released a tool which will instantly notify you the moment Amazon posts its Associates report.  Since it is likely that you are already checking email, this alert will allow you to carry on with your routine without needing to keep checking Amazon Associate Central every few minutes for an update.

To sign up for this notification, simply create an account on my Affiliate and Amazon Associates Tools Site and opt-in to the notification.  If you sign up right now, you will get the alert once the report that was due this morning is posted.

Gene Kavner, Former World-Wide Director, Amazon Associates Affiliate Program, 2005-2006.
Join Amazon Associates Today -- it's Easy and FREE!

New Service: Get Instant Notification When Amazon Posts Associates Reports

Amazon Associates reports reflect each individual affiliate's earnings. These reports are posted daily for any affiliate referrals and earnings through the previous day. Because the reports are posted daily, they are not live. You cannot obtain any data for the current day until the following day when Amazon posts its daily report. Amazon Associates reports for a particular day are typically due by 9am on the following day. Frequently, these reports are posted even earlier. Sometimes, these reports come in very late, especially on days of heavy traffic to Amazon.com. The reason why reports are posted at unpredictable times is that Amazon must run a batch process that parses its web logs for any session that is tagged with an affiliate transaction. This process is dependent on computer load, traffic volume, and sometimes glitches in parsing code. Because Amazon Associates is the oldest, the largest, and the most successful affiliate program on the Internet, over 1 Million affiliates are dependent on Amazon for their earnings. Waiting for reports may not be the best use of time for any affiliate, and many of you have expressed frustration on Amazon bulletin boards and in your blogs. To alleviate the need for frequent visits to Amazon Associates Central, AffiliateBrand has introduced an email notification service that will notify you by email the moment Amazon Associates report is posted.
	Subscribe to Amazon Associates Report Notifications
Amazon Associates Report Posting Times Over Last 30 Days Activity Date Report Posted Timing     January 12, 2007        January 13, 2007 - 3:25 AM        On Time        January 11, 2007        January 12, 2007 - 3:30 AM        On Time        January 10, 2007        January 11, 2007 - 3:25 AM        On Time        January 9, 2007        January 10, 2007 - 4:35 AM        On Time        January 8, 2007        January 9, 2007 - 4:23 AM        On Time        January 7, 2007        January 8, 2007 - 3:30 AM        On Time        January 6, 2007        January 7, 2007 - 3:25 AM        On Time        January 5, 2007        January 6, 2007 - 3:45 AM        On Time        January 4, 2007        January 5, 2007 - 3:43 AM        On Time        January 3, 2007        January 4, 2007 - 3:23 AM        On Time        January 2, 2007        January 3, 2007 - 6:32 AM        On Time        January 1, 2007        January 2, 2007 - 2:38 AM        On Time        December 31, 2006        January 1, 2007 - 5:58 AM        On Time        December 30, 2006        December 31, 2006 - 4:42 AM        On Time        December 29, 2006        December 30, 2006 - 4:32 AM        On Time        December 28, 2006        December 29, 2006 - 4:52 AM        On Time        December 27, 2006        December 28, 2006 - 5:36 AM        On Time        December 26, 2006        December 27, 2006 - 5:12 AM        On Time        December 25, 2006        December 26, 2006 - 4:00 AM        On Time        December 24, 2006        December 25, 2006 - 3:58 AM        On Time        December 23, 2006        December 24, 2006 - 4:45 PM        Late        December 22, 2006        December 23, 2006 - 3:50 AM        On Time        December 21, 2006        December 22, 2006 - 5:18 AM        On Time        December 20, 2006        December 21, 2006 - 6:50 AM        On Time        December 19, 2006        December 20, 2006 - 6:03 AM        On Time        December 18, 2006        December 19, 2006 - 2:07 PM        Late        December 16, 2006        December 17, 2006 - 12:06 PM        Late        December 15, 2006        December 17, 2006 - 1:17 AM        Late        December 14, 2006        December 16, 2006 - 11:28 AM        Late        December 13, 2006        December 14, 2006 - 11:46 AM        Late
* All times Pacific Time

Do Amazon Associates New Monthly Tiers Make it Tougher for Associates to Make Money?

Effective today, Amazon Associates program is shedding its archaic quarterly payment system and opting in for the new, more competitive monthly payment system.  One big concern that many associates have is exemplified by a recent post LiewCF made on his Blog titled Amazon Associates Pays Monthly.  In his post LiewCF writes:

However, as part of this change, referral fee tiers will be adjusted to reflect monthly item quantities. Meaning, you need to make more sales in a month to earn higher referral rate. .... I would rather wait for late but bigger check. How about you?

Actually, Amazon did address this concern.  In its effort to shift to a monthly payment schedule, Amazon has lowered its payment tiers as well.  Compare the old quarterly payment tiers with the new monthly payment tiers:

Quarterly Payment Tiers

Monthly Payment Tiers

As you can see, Amazon has cut quantity of items you need to make it into the next tier by roughly a third in order to align with its accelerated payment frequency.  For example, while you had to sell 21 items per quarter in the past in order to jump from 4% to 6% in commissions, you now need to sell 7 items per month in order to make the same jump. 

So you should definitely not be losing commissions in the new Amazon monthly payment model. 

Gene Kavner, Former World-Wide Director, Amazon Associates Affiliate Program, 2005-2006.
Join Amazon Associates Today -- it's Easy and FREE!

How to Track Multiple Amazon Associates Campaigns

I have noticed an entry on a blog http://www.45n5.com which discusses a particular reason why you may want to create multiple Amazon Associates IDs for your site:

Why do you want more than one Amazon Associates ID? The main reason to get multiple Amazon Associate ID's is for tracking.  Consider each one like a google adsense channel.

Actually, this is not a great reason to create multiple Amazon Associates IDs.   When you create multiple Associates IDs you are not able to combine them together and add all the products you've referred to Amazon in order to get into the next performance tier.

So, how do you then track multiple Amazon Associates campaigns you may be running?  By using Amazon Tracking IDs.  Unfortunately, Amazon doesn't describe how to get these tracking id's prominently on Amazon Associates Central.

The way to get these tracking id's is to email Amazon Associates Customer Service at associates@amazon.com.  Tell them the following:

1.  Your main Associates ID.
2.  "I would like to receive XXX Associates tracking id's to track multiple campaigns I am planning to run." 

That's it.  XXX can be any number up to 1,500.  You will receive an email within 24 hours with your tracking id's. 

Tracking id's will look very much like your Associates ID but a bit different.  If your Associates ID is "MyWebSite-20", then your tracking id's look something like "MyWeb1-20" through "MyWeb1500-20".

You will then be able to use your tracking id's in the same place as you would use your Associates ID.  You will get the same benefit of being able to track you campaigns separately while at the same time being able to combine all your sales together to propel yourself into the higher compensation tiers.

Update:

Per Shameek's comment below (thanks Shameek for the heads up!), if you would like to create a few tracking id's, you can do it yourself without emailing Amazon by simply logging into Amazon Associates Central web site and then clicking on:
    Your account -> Manage your Tracking IDs -> Add Tracking ID

This method may be too tedious if you would like to add hundreds of tracking id's, in which case you should just email Amazon, as I suggested.  However, you do have an option to name your tracking id's anything you like (with a -20 extension).

Gene Kavner, Former World-Wide Director, Amazon Associates Affiliate Program, 2005-2006.
Join Amazon Associates Today -- it's Easy and FREE!

Amazon Announces Monthly Payments for its Associates Affiliate Program

Earlier today Amazon announced that it is planning on starting monthly payments to its affiliates effective January 1, 2007. 

With almost all affiliate and advertising programs paying at least on a monthly schedule, with some programs paying even on a bi-weekly basis, Amazon has remained one of the only programs that continued to pay quarterly.  This payment frequency (or infrequency, I should say) was reflective of its roots, being the first major affiliate program in 1996 when little competition was grabbing attention of potential affiliates.  Today, Internet has dramatically shifted to become the affiliate's market with merchants trying to outbid each other in the hopes of securing the precious real-estate of the in-demand web sites.  Amazon's monthly payment was not only making affiliates look the other way, it also affected those affiliates that remained in the Amazon court but had severe cash-flow probems, such as those bidding Amazon's products on various PPC sites such as Google. 

With its introduction of monthly payments, Amazon quickly catapulted to respectability in the affiliate space, matching Google and almost all major affiliate programs.  The following table reflects the new tiered structure given monthly payments, making the old quarterly tiers obsolete:

Monthly products sold	Cumulative fee % on non-electronics products
1-6	4%
7-30	6%
31-110	6.5%
111-320	7%
321-630	7.5%
631-1570	8%
1571-3130	8.25%
3131+	8.5%

As before, all Electronics products are commissioned at 4%, regardless of how many you sell during the month.  Electronics products, however, do count towards the product count, so selling electronics does contribute to your jumping to the next commission tier, even if the higher tier will only apply to non-electronics items.

In order to allow for returns, Amazon will pay commission fees 2 months after the end of the calendar month, so you will see payment for any items you sell in January on around April 1.

If you are not already an Amazon affiliate, you may join Amazon's Associates affiliate program here for free.

Gene Kavner, Former World-Wide Director, Amazon Associates Affiliate Program, 2005-2006.

Amazon Customers Vote - A Great Lesson in Interactive Marketing

Over the last couple of weeks I have been following a great example of Interactive Marketing, an Amazon.com promotion called "Amazon Customers Vote". What makes this initiative interesting is that it introduces an interactive component to traditional online marketing promotions.

An Amazon Gift Certificate makes the perfect holiday gift!

Typically, online marketing involves merchants setting up either advertising campaigns or affiliate marketing campaigns. Advertising campaigns are those where merchants purchase advertising on third-party sites or via sponsored link brokers such as Google. Affiliate campaigns involve merchants setting up programs that enable almost any web site (also known as the affiliate site) to promote merchant's products or services and receive a referral fee for a product sold to a customer coming from the affiliate site.

The problem with these typical online marketing initiatives is that they lack any interactivity between the consumer and the merchant. Remember when you were back in school and you had a professor who simply lectured to you vs. a professor that engaged you in a discussion during the class? Certainly we all learned much more from the more engaging professor. Amazon has brought this interactivity to online marketing.

The "Amazon Customers Vote" promotion picks 4 tremendous deals each week and allows customers to vote on their favorite one. These deals are not your typical sale but a deeply discounted promotion, far below the going price for a similar product on the market. The deal that receives the most votes during the week is offered for sale on the following Thursday morning. What is the catch? Extremely limited inventory which may be purchased for the offered price.

Here are the current deals to vote on (votes counted until Thursday, November 30, 2006):

Here are the results from the week 1 vote (ending November 23, 2006):

Week 1 (Nov. 16-23)
Xbox 360 Core System Amazon Price: $299.99 Winning Price: $100	Prime Membership + $100 Toys Promotional Certificate Amazon Price: $179.00 Runner-up Price: $120 Mongoose Domain Dual-Suspension Mountain Bike Amazon Price: $139.00 Runner-up Price: $60 Barbie in the 12 Dancing Princesses Interactive Genevieve Doll Amazon Price: $49.84 Runner-up Price: $25

As you can see, all deals are excellent and they would quickly sell out of any such offers, so why does Amazon need you to vote on them? Because it creates a way for you to interact with the site, offer your vote (and who doesn't want to be heard these days?) and it gets you to come back again and again. While you are waiting for the deal, you may as well purchase something else at Amazon.

If you dig a bit deeper, you can see that this is a marketing trick (a good one at that). There is no real reason why you need to vote on the deals. The amount of inventory that Amazon makes available is so small that items sell out within seconds (if not fraction of a second) if you follow online discussions. The real reason is to get you to the Amazon web site and it works. So many people have tried to buy at the advertised prices that the Amazon web site came to a standstill at the time when these products became available for purchase.

So, the lesson of this campaign is... Try to include some interactivity in your marketing campaign. This is something I will be thinking a bit about and hope to have an example of something interactive here on AffiliateBrand.com.

Do you offer a way for your readers to interact with your site? Please leave a comment here and I will try to highlight your site in my later post.

Gene Kavner, Former World-Wide Director, Amazon Associates Affiliate Program, 2005-2006.
Join Amazon Associates Today -- it's Easy and FREE!

First Of A Kind Payment Of Fees On Sales of Gift Certificates

Can't decide what to get someone for the Holidays? If so, you are not alone. Getting that perfect gift is not easy.

Earlier today, Amazon launched a new promotion that allows Amazon affiliates to receive referral fees of 6% on sales of Amazon.com gift certificates -- the first time such promotion was ever offered to Amazon.com Associates. In a well-timed move for the biggest shopping season of the year, Amazon now allows you to offer your visitors an escape from the dilemma of what to buy for their friends and family.

This is an experiment for Amazon. At this time this promotion is due to expire at the end of 2006 but I wouldn't be surprised if Amazon were to continue it permanently.

Gift certificates have quite a number of great characteristics for merchants such as Amazon:

1. Gift certificate purchases are not redeemed immediately. This translates into positive cash flow for the merchant. When a gift certificate is purchased and not redeemed for a period of two weeks (as an example), the merchant collects interest on the value of the gift certificate for the two week period.

2. Some gift certificates are never redeemed. Some people just misplace or simply forget about a gift certificate they have received. For a merchant with small margins, this is the best outcome: they make a 100% profit on an unredeemed gift certificate.

3. Even a redeemed gift certificate is frequently not redeemed for the exact value of the certificate. Most often, the recipient of the gift certificate will spend over the amount of the certificate in order to not leave any portion of it unspent. Any product purchased that is higher than the value of the certificate automatically carries a benefit to the merchant -- they only need to pay a referral fee on the value of the gift certificate sale, not on the value of the products purchased with the gift certificate.

The reason why Amazon is experimenting is given the significant benefit for Amazon, it is almost a no-brainer to see whether this promotion works. The risks that Amazon faces are on two fronts:

1. Because it is the first time a gift certificate sale carries a referral fee, Amazon does not have historical analytics on how well affiliates will be able to monetize their sites by promoting gift certificates. If gift certificates do not convert well, associates could quickly switch to a better-converting promotion from another merchant.

2. If a gift certificate is sold via an Amazon Associate and then used to purchase an Amazon product from a different (or even the same) Associate, Amazon will have to pay a referral fee twice, once on the sale of the GC, and again, on the sale of the product. Amazon hopes to learn whether this is a frequent occurrence and possibly change rules if this double-payment of fees becomes frequent.

The good news is that almost any site out there can promote an Amazon gift certificate. There is not limitation on the genre of the site, it's content or demographic of their visitors. Anyone can purchase a gift certificate redeemable at Amazon.com with its multi-million product catalog.

So, how do you promote an Amazon.com gift certificate?

First, you must register as an Amazon.com associate. Very simple to do, just follow this link to Amazon.com and fill out their registration form.

Second, visit the "Build Links" section of Associate Central (the Associates dashboard site that appears after you log in).

Third, click on "Banner Links" section. You will see a link to "Gift Certificates" promotional links where you can choose a number of different creatives:

There are quite a few other creatives; above is just to give you the flavor.

Let me know what you think of the Amazon.com gift certificate offer!

Gene Kavner, Former World-Wide Director, Amazon Associates Affiliate Program, 2005-2006.
Join Amazon Associates Today -- it's Easy and FREE!

Beware of Phishing Attack on Amazon Associates

We all know of phishing attacks from crooks spoofing various popular Internet eCommerce destinations. Most notable of those attacks spoofed sites such as PayPal and eBay.  I have personally received quite a large number of such bogus emails.  Those behind these emails hope that customers of eCommerce sites they claim to represent will click on the link and provide personal login information to the impostors while thinking that they are interacting with the legitimate merchant from who the email supposedly originated.

Obviously, the originators of the email do not typically know who is and who isn't a customer of PayPal, for example. What they rely upon is the fact that so many of us are PayPal customers that odds are high that if the email is valid, the recipient is the user of PayPal.

Thanks to Don Demsak of Don Xml's Grok This, I have learned that Amazon Associates have become the victim of the most recent phishing attack.  What makes this attack interesting is that certainly a very small portion of the typical user base is members of the Amazon Associates affiliate program.  If the attack was completely random, the perpetrators would be quite unlikely to find anyone who would be able to provide any kind of login information to them.

So, Don brings up a very valid question:  Whether the originators of the attack were able to somehow parse web sites, find Amazon Affiliate tag information, locate email addresses on the site and then send them an email spoof of Amazon Associates. If so, this would be a very sophisticated attack.

Take a look at the email that is currently going around:

Regardless of methods used for this phishing attack, it is fairly easy to avoid becoming a victim. The following 5 steps will be your good guide:

1.  Do not provide your email address in clear text on your site.  Note that my email address on the left sidebar is provided as an image that you will need to type into your browser in order to email me.
2.  If you do receive an email, make sure that when you mouse-over any links in the email, the URL that corresponds to it matches the URL in the text. In the above email, mousing over the link to http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/sign-in.html yielded the actual destination in the http://p10.hostingprod.com domain.
3.  If you were to actually click on the link, make sure that the site is the genuine desitnation site, not based on how it looks but on the URL in the address bar.  Suspect any site which hides the address bar or otherwise does not exactly match the expected destination.  Watch out for misspelled domain names such as http://www.amzoan.com.
4.  Watch out for spelling mistakes in the email message itself.  Because of the stringent US laws, many of the perpetrators are located offshore where English perhaps is not their native language.  In the email above, you'll see "wich is securely incrypted with SLL." on the bottom line.  More properly, this should have read "which is securely encrypted with SSL".
5.  Lastly, I'm not aware of any legitimate organization requesting you to log in because your account needs to be verified.

Gene Kavner, Former World-Wide Director, Amazon Associates Affiliate Program, 2005-2006.
Join Amazon Associates Today -- it's Easy and FREE!

Amazon Associates Team Releases New and Improved aStore

Yesterday, Amazon Associates announced the official release of its already successful aStore product which allows any web site or blog to easily create a custom store with suggested products for its viewers.  In addition, Amazon has also announced a significant jump in commission for those associates who take advantage of aStore to generate product sales between November 14, 2006 and the end of the year:  additional 4% in commissions (up to $500 per Associate ID), which represents 100% commission bonus for those associates in the lowest compensation tier.   This bonus was also announced for those associates using Amazon Omakase links which will be subject of my future post.

aStore, which has been in beta since August 2006 has proven very popular, with thousands of associates adopting it within just a couple of weeks of its beta release.  The following is the snippet of coverage in various blogs that aStore has received:

Amazon Releases an Early Update to aStore by Gene Kavner (my previous post about aStore)
What is Amazon aStore? by Dave Taylor
Amazon's aStore Creates Affiliate Storefronts by Shawn Collins
Amazon’s Everywhere Strategy by Mitch Ratcliffe / ZDNet
Criticker Shop - With Amazon aStore! by Random Good Stuff

New Features
Amazon has not only officially released its aStore out of beta but it has also followed through on a number of promised updates to aStore.

After releasing several updates in October 2006, this release carries the following new changes:

1. Creation of multiple stores per each associates id.

This was one of the most-requested features by the Amazon affiliates.  The beta version of aStore only allowed a single store, which prevented creation of multiple stores if an affiliate had multiple web sites or wanted to put multiple store with different set of featured products on various pages of the same site.  One could get around the problem by requesting multiple Associates accounts by that strategy would not allow you to combine your sold products to jump in the next commission tier.

The way multiple stores is accomplished is via Amazon Associates tracking ID’s.  You can create new tracking id while creating a new aStore or request a larger number of tracking id’s at a time by simply emailing Amazon Associates at associates@amazon.com.  You will then be able to see how well your stores are doing on Amazon Associates Central by simply selecting the various tracking id’s you’ve created. 

A maximum of 100 aStore tracking id’s are supported for each associates account, so each associate may create up to 100 aStores for each of their Associate ID’s.

One feature that would be nice to have is an ability to make a duplicate copy of any store under a separate tracking id.  This would easily allow you to track purchases from the store based on various campaigns you may be running.  Affiliates who would bid on different PPC inventory could bring customers to their aStore directly and then measure ROI generated by each advertising campaign separately.  Right now this is not possible without a very complicated process of recreating the same aStore for each tracking id multiple times.

2. Display up to 54 products in each category

During the aStore beta, you could only have 9 featured products.  It was a limitation to anyone wishing to offer more products in their aStore.  Overall, it’s a good change but I’m somewhat on the fence about it.  Your customers will still see only 9 products displayed on the front page and will need to click a small “Next” arrow on the bottom.  I wish Amazon would also give its affiliates a way to specify total number of items to show on the front page, so if someone wanted to show 24 products right there in the front, they could.  Hope Amazon takes it as a suggestion for the next release of aStore.

3. Create multiple custom categories containing products from multiple Amazon categories

This is a great addition!  Amazon gives you full flexibility to create as many new categories AND sub-categories as you wish, and add products to the category based 3 options:

a) Add individual products one at a time from any Amazon product line,
b) Add products by Amazon product line filtered by any keywords you specify, or
c) Products from any Listmania list.

This is a great improvement over a limited facility in beta. 

There are several other feature giving you additional flexibility with how products are displayed within various category and subcategory pages.

4% Commission Bonus

In addition, Amazon has also all but doubled the amount of commission most of you can earn from your aStore.  You will receive an additional 4% on the fees you receive (up to $500 per associate) for using aStore.  This means that if you are in the 4% commission tier, your fees double.  Even if you are in the highest tier at 8.5%, you will still receive close to 50% in additional fees up to the $500 bonus limit.  Nice bonus for the biggest shopping quarter of the year. 

To try aStore, you must be an Amazon Associate.  It is very easy to join, simply go to Amazon Associates Central and follow a very simple process.  Then build your own aStore in as little as 5 minutes.

Gene Kavner, Former World-Wide Director, Amazon Associates Affiliate Program, 2005-2006.
Join Amazon Associates Today -- it's Easy and FREE!

What does Amazon Consider as the Order?

Gene, In the past there have been questions concerning what Amazon considers an order. Would you please explain this procedure? Does payment need to be made first? I ask because some orders never ship and others are refunded.    myhart

Thanks for your question, myhart.

Amazon considers an order when someone makes a purchase of any one item from the Amazon catalog.  If the same person purchases two products at the same time, this is considered as two different orders.  It is therefore possible for someone to purchase 10 different products on the same purchase and for you to be credited for 10 orders towards your next payment tier (see my post on the Amazon Associates Payment Tiers).

If you referred a customer who purchases an item, you will receive credit for the item as long as it is sold or placed in the cart within the 24-hour period of the original click (for more details see my post on how Amazon tracks affiliate orders). If the customer places an order and then returns immediately to make another purchase directly to Amazon, you will not receive credit for the second purchase, unless the customer returns through one of your links.

On your Amazon Associates Central report, you will see a separate Orders Summary and Earnings Summary. The reason for this separation is because while you see the order placed right away (usually within 24 hours of the order), you do not receive any earnings on the order until the order actually ships.  This can be the next day or it could be a week later, depending on the shipping preference made by the customer at check-out.  Because Amazon makes it easy for the customer to cancel the order before it ships out, Amazon waits to make sure the order ships before you are credited with the sale.

If the customer cancels an order or returns an order after he/she receives it, the Amazon system is smart enough to track it and reduce your fees by the amount you originally earned on the product purchased and then returned.

Hope that answered your question!

Gene Kavner

Does Amazon store cookies on people who bought through your affiliate program?

I've been reading the varoius forums on Amazon Associates and found the following interesting question.    

Does Amazon store cookies on people who bought through your affiliate program? Here is the senario: User comes in the 1st time through your link, and doesn't buy. One week later, user types in the amazon main website url, and buys from there. My question is: Do you get credits for that?

This question is the most fundamental to any affiliate program.  Ultimately any affiliate program is not going to survive if it is not able to establish a trusting relationship between a merchant running the affiliate program and the publisher driving traffic to the merchant. The affiliate needs to feel 100% comfortable that they will get compensated based on the terms of the agreement.      

Having taken another look, I see that the Amazon Associates Operating Agreement dated August 17 2006 does not fully address this question.  Thus, let me address this critical question here.

When you build any link to Amazon.com from Associates Central, Amazon tags the link with your Amazon Associates ID.  When you click on the link you may end up on a page with a very long URL.  Typically, you will see one of the parameters on the URL called "tag".  This is the tag that specifies your Associates ID:

If you click on any link on this page, you will redirect to a different Amazon.com page but your tag will be replaced with the Session ID that looks like 102-8430161-8248922:

It does not mean that your tag is no longer associated with this transaction.  Amazon still "remembers" your tag and it is now associated with the entire session that this customer has established on Amazon.com.  Because your Associates ID gets attached with the Session ID and the Session ID gets passed from page to page in the URL, the customer does not even need to have his cookies enabled for your Associates ID to be linked with this session -- until the customer closes his browser.  If the customer comes back to Amazon within 24 hours of the initial click, even if he types "http://www.amazon.com" in his browser, Amazon will attempt to re-esatblish the original session from the customer's cookie.  If cookies are enabled, the session tagged to your Associate ID will get re-established.  If the cookies are not enabled, a new session not tagged with your Associates ID will be established.  I find that about 85% of the users run their browsers with cookies enabled.

From the moment a customer clicks on a link on your site and ends up on the Amazon site, his session will last for 24 hours.  Any purchases during this period will be credited to you as an affiliate as long as:

1.  A purchase is made in the same browser as the original click within the 24 hours of the first click, OR 2.  Customer clicks to Amazon, exists the browser and comes back to Amazon directly within 24 hours while his cookies are enabled.

Lastly, there is one more way you can get credited with the purchase even if the purchase is not made within the first 24 hours of the click.  If the customer adds an item to his cart within the first 24 hour period, those items may be purchased within the next 90 days and you will still receive affiliate credit for those items. 

So, the answer to your original question is:  If the user doesn't buy on the first visit and then comes back one week later to buy, you will not get credited if the user hadn't added the purchased item to the shopping cart within 24 hours of the original visit.  If the user had placed the item into his shopping cart, then you will receive the affiliate credit.

Gene Kavner

P.S. Go Tigers!

Details About Amazon Text Links

In my prevous posts about the Amazon Associates link types, I have provided a general overview of the types of links Amazon offers affiliates and about the Amazon Associates Product Links. In this post I will address the Amazon Associates Text Links. You may reach the Text Link section by logging into Amazon Associates Central, clicking on the "Build Links" menu item and then clicking on the icon next inside the "Text Links" section:




Text Links are Page Content Links (see Link Type Overview) that give you an opportunity to link to a specific page on the Amazon site. As you can see from the options provided to you, you can:

1. Link to Favorite Destinations.
2. Link to Search Results.
3. Link to Any Page at Amazon.com.


Link to Favorite Destinations

In this section you can build a link that will lead your visitors to any of the major product lines that Amazon distributes and a subcategory within those categories. The following is an exhaustive list of categories / subcategory pages that you can link to:

Apparel & Accessories Accessories General Bestsellers Kids & Baby Men Shoes Women	Automotive Car Care Exterior Accessories General Bestsellers Interior Accessories Oils & Fluids Paint, Body & Trim Performance Parts & Accessories Replacement Parts Tires & Wheels Tools & Equipment	Baby Apparel Bathing & Skin Care Bedding Car Seats Diapering Feeding For Moms Furniture Gear General Bestsellers Gifts Health & Baby Care Nursery Décor Potty Training Safety Strollers	Beauty Bath & Shower Fragrance General Bestsellers Gift Sets Hair Care Makeup Men's Grooming Shaving & Hair Removal Skin Care Tools & Accessories
Books Arts & Photography Biographies & Memoirs Business & Investing Children's Books Comics & Graphic Novels Computers & Internet Cooking, Food & Wine Entertainment Gay & Lesbian General Bestsellers Health, Mind & Body History Home & Garden Law Literature & Fiction Medicine Mystery & Thrillers Nonfiction Outdoors & Nature Parenting & Families Professional & Technical Reference Religion & Spirituality Romance Science Science Fiction & Fantasy Sports Teens Travel	Camera & Photo Accessories Camcorders Digital Cameras Film Cameras General Bestsellers Optics Printers & Scanners	Cell Phones & Service All Bluetooth Camera E-mail Flip General Bestsellers Kid's MP3 PDA Prepaid Unlocked Video Wi-Fi	Classical Music Ballads Canons Concertos Etudes Fantasies Fugues General Bestsellers Inventions Lullabies & Berceuse Oratorio Preludes Requiems, Elegies & Tombeau Rondos Serenades & Divertimentos Short Forms Sonatas Suites Symphonies Theatrical, Incidental & Program Music Toccatas Variations
Computers Computer Add-Ons Desktops General Bestsellers Handhelds & PDAs Notebooks	Computer & Video Games Game Boy Advance GameCube General Bestsellers Mac Games More Systems Nintendo DS Nintendo Wii PC Games PlayStation 2 PlayStation 3 Sony PSP Xbox Xbox 360	DVD Action & Adventure African American Cinema Animation Anime & Manga Art House & International Classics Comedy Cult Movies Documentary Drama Educational Fitness & Yoga Gay & Lesbian General Bestsellers Horror Kids & Family Military & War Music Video & Concerts Musicals & Performing Arts Mystery & Suspense Science Fiction & Fantasy Special Interests Sports Television Westerns	Electronics Accessories & Supplies Audio & Video Camera & Photo Car Electronics Computers & Add-Ons GPS & Navigation General Bestsellers Home Automation & Security Office Electronics
Gourmet Food Appetizers & Hors d'oeuvres Baking Supplies Beverages Bread Candy Chocolate Coffee & Tea Cookies Dairy Foods & Eggs Desserts Fruits & Vegetables General Bestsellers Gourmet Cheese Jams, Jellies & Preserves Meat, Game & Pâtés Oils, Vinegars & Salad Dressings Pasta, Beans, Grains & Rice Prepared Meals Restaurant Gift Certificates Salsas & Condiments Seafood & Caviar Seasonings, Herbs & Spices Snack Food Soups & Stocks	Grocery Baking Supplies Beverages Boxed Meals & Side Dishes Breads & Pastries Breakfast Foods Canned & Packaged Goods Condiments, Sauces & Spreads General Bestsellers Health & Family Herbs, Spices & Seasonings Household Supplies Pasta & Grains Pet Supplies Snacks, Cookies & Candy	Home & Garden Backyard Birding Bar Tools & Glasses Bed & Bath Coffee, Tea & Espresso Cook's Tools & Gadgets Cookware & Baking Cutlery Fresh Flowers & Indoor Plants Furniture & Décor Gardening Tools General Bestsellers Grills, Smokers & Outdoor Cooking Heating & Lighting Housewares Kitchen & Table Linens Kitchen Plumbing Fixtures & Sinks Large Appliances Leisure & Fitness Outdoor Décor Patio Furniture Pest Control Pet Supplies Plants, Seeds & Flowers Small Appliances Tableware Weather Instruments Wine Accessories	Health & Personal Care