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 General -  Amazon is going to Change of Terms!!! 
 
From: Harold Underdown  10/9/2006 3:16 pm 
To: ds  (11 of 40) 
 16587.11 in reply to 16587.9 

Please excuse my skepticism, but you've never posted here before, as far as I know. I don't know you or your website(s).

How do you know that this affects ALL top-tier publishers, and not just a particularly vocal subset?

What, exactly, are the new terms? What does Amazon mean by "referral fees only on items that we send to you"?

Very strange.

 
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From: DealPeople  10/9/2006 3:20 pm 
To: ALL  (12 of 40) 
 16587.12 in reply to 16587.11 

We need to get the media involved on this, and get the word out on what Amazon is doing to many of its top tier affiliates.  Every affiliate so far that has posted about receiving one of these, has been in the 8+% range.  It raises a LOT of questions about Amazon's financial stability, pulling something like this in the first week of Q4.

Are there any affiliates in the 8+% earning range who did NOT get this email?

 
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From: Bill Greer  10/9/2006 3:25 pm 
To: DealPeople  (13 of 40) 
 16587.13 in reply to 16587.12 
I didn't.
 
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From: Associates Program  Staff 10/9/2006 3:35 pm 
To: ALL  (14 of 40) 
 16587.14 in reply to 16587.9 

The changes referenced in the posts above will only affect Associates within the Deal & Coupon category, which can be defined as a category of Web site dedicated to finding the best deals or price discounts across the Internet (and brick-n-mortar stores as well) and/or websites that provide coupons to different retail stores, online or offline. If your business is not related to the Deal & Coupon category, or you only occasionally promote deals, coupons, or discounts in the context of the topic of your Web site, you will not be affected by these changes.

-The Associates Team

 
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From: Scott  10/9/2006 4:03 pm 
To: Associates Program  (15 of 40) 
 16587.15 in reply to 16587.14 
Just because this only affects coupon and deal sites doesn't mean it's fair. You also didn't explain why this is happening.
 
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From: HardyBoys.us  10/9/2006 4:32 pm 
To: Scott  (16 of 40) 
 16587.16 in reply to 16587.10 

I mainly sell books, so switching over to B&N for about 95% of my links is merely a matter of using my word processor to search & replace.

More difficult would be those books I sell that have no ISBN and so have an Amazon ASIN number. Ditto for computer games I sell. OTOH, they account for such a small % of my sales I could just eliminate them completely.

But if Amazon does decide to screw around with my payment structure, it IS nice to have a fallback position.

 
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From: Daniel Ford  10/9/2006 5:00 pm 
To: Associates Program  (17 of 40) 
 16587.17 in reply to 16587.8 

Are you seriously telling us that somebody at Amazon wrote that illiterate message?

If so, would somebody at Amazon kindly explain what it means? It's gibberish.

 
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From: ds  10/9/2006 5:06 pm 
To: Daniel Ford unread  (18 of 40) 
 16587.18 in reply to 16587.17 
Can anyone help this guy who doesn't know how to read?
Edited 10/9/2006 5:07 pm ET by ds
 
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From: DJ30  10/9/2006 8:17 pm 
To: Associates Program  (19 of 40) 
 16587.19 in reply to 16587.14 

>>The changes referenced in the posts above will only affect Associates within the Deal & Coupon category...

This makes sense now with the clarification. It was unclear at first, but this policy is sound.

Basically, this is for coupon sites. Other affiliate programs are adopting the same policies, another example is Art.com. For coupon sellers, they now only pay 5%, whereas everyone else gets 25-30%.

If you think about it, coupon sellers are gouging and abusing the system. If they send people to get something at say, 10% off of what everyone else pays, why should they get the unfair selling advantage of 5%+ commission on top of that? Every item has a cost, and Amazon probably ends up with a loss on these items every time they are sold this way. (The discount takes away from revenues that could normally cover commissions)

I don't have a problem with this policy at all. It makes business sense for Amazon, and also frees up $ to pay to affiliates that aren't abusing coupons like some people are.

 
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From: SpoofeeDotCom  10/9/2006 8:31 pm 
To: ALL  (20 of 40) 
 16587.20 in reply to 16587.19 

This is happening to my site (Spoofee.com) and it's devastating =(

Top Tier partners are punished for performing well?

 
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