Late Night Internet Marketing with Mark Mason -- Affiliate Marketing Tips, Online Business Advice, Email Marketing and SEO
Amazon Affiliate Commission Changes: How Will They Impact Your Business? [LNIM130]
Really big Amazon affiliate commission changes a few weeks ago may have a dramatic impact on your paychecks coming from the big online retailer. Learn all about what changed, why I think Amazon is making the change, and what you can to if you are impacted.
Show Notes
Do I still recommend as a place to start if you are an affiliate marketer?
Yes, I absolutely do. It’s still a great way to start and to learn affiliate marketing. I would probably just recommend that you stay away from things that have incredibly low commissions – but we have always discussed that you should promote things that give you a decent commission. It means that some niches that you may have considered before may no longer be economically or commercially viable niche.
Why did Amazon do this and anger affiliates?
There are more than 3100 products affected in this tier and in my understanding, Amazon phone all those affected directly. The answer is always because this will make Amazon more money. Amazon is in the business of making money and not in the business of creating great affiliate programs. For televisions, for example, the competition is fierce and the margins are already super low and they cannot afford to lose more money. For those which they raised the commissions, they have the room to do so, so they are trying to compensate with that, or they are trying to drive behavior to sell as many high-margined products as much as possible.
If you are affected, what do you do?
Look and see if there are other affiliate programs that you can use in place of Amazon if you have been hit particularly hard to see if you can get back to your original commission level. There are also other places like Commission Junction where you might share a sale. You might find a retailer there who happens to sell TVs, for example, who are offering higher commissions than 2%.
Lesson: Change is always constant in this business. Use Pretty Link because if something happens to your affiliate relationship with some supplier, then you can change suppliers without having to edit 40k pages in your website. It makes it easy to maintain your website.
In the episode, I mention the new Associates commission structure. You can find this information on the Amazon site
here, but I have reproduced the relevant graphic below. As you can see, by Amazon standards, furniture and home goods pay pretty well at 10%.
Links Mentioned In This Episode
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100K Factory program
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Copywriting Academy Videos
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Amazon Associates Fee Structure
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The Alamo
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What is Affiliate Marketing
* How to calculate your
affiliate earning potential
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