Never knew I'd be so happy to remove all my Amazon links

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The smile on my face got bigger and bigger with every Amazon affiliate link I just removed from my posts. It felt great. What felt even better was being able to swap most of those links with links to other merchants I'm an affiliate for. Are you wondering why I'm doing this? Read on and I'll tell you.

The dreaded 3 month warning

Three months ago I got the dreaded letter from Amazon, saying I better get my three sales or I'd be kicked of the affiliate program. It made me think long and hard about Amazon, about my niche, about my website, about my personality. I realized that the only thing I really liked about the affiliate links from Amazon, are the native ads. Those are the ones you put at the bottom of your posts and that automatically put in ads based on your text. So the products match the content of your posts. I liked those.

My dislikes about Amazon

But I never liked the ridiculously short Amazon cookie. Too many people do not buy within 24 hours, they want to think things over or buy later because they want to add more to their shopping basket in due time. I want longer cookies. Preferably cookies that last 30 or 60 days. Those make sense to me.

Then there was some ethical issues I have with Amazon. My website is all about sustainability and eco-friendly living. That's not what Amazon is famous for. They aren't paying the best of wages, they aren't paying enough attention to packaging waste, their supply chain isn't very green. To name a few. So my heart never fully belonged to Amazon.

The hesitation

And yet, it took me a while to let go completely. First of all, Amazon was easily accessible to affiliates. No questions asked, give it a 180-day try to see if you can make it work. That felt much less intimidating than the admission demands other affiliate programs seemed to have. At first, I wasn't confident they'd accept me. Turns out, they sure did. And even with my tiny website and few posts.

Final sprint with 2 sales

Still, I thought I'd take a last fast sprint to see if I could get any Amazon sales. So for the last 30 days, I (finally) put a bunch of relevant affiliate links on Twitter. And behold: the clicks rolled in and I even made 2 sales. YAY! That feels amazing by the way, because it shows that selling is something I can actually do. But 2 sales is 1 sale short. So Amazon shot me down and that's $2,95 I'm never gonna get, hahaha. Anyway...

Feeling of relief

Funny thing is, instead of being disappointed, I feel relieved. I'm not an Amazon kind of woman. My business is going to reflect who I am, therefor it's not going to be an Amazon kind of business. So today, I'm getting rid of everything Amazon on my site. And replace it with green, eco-friendly, sustainable brands that offer looooooooong cookies.

It means I have to make all new social media posts and even rewrite some old blogs to make them work without Amazon. But I already know it's going to be worth it. Because it feels good. And due to my 30 day Amazon sprint, I learned that my tone of voice was good enough for 2 sales. Did I mention I'm excited because I got my first 2 sales?!?!?!?! ;-)

In a nutshell: loosing Amazon feels like being catapulted into a better place. Here's to hoping it will work out like I think it will.

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Recent Comments

17

Poor commissions and too many rules and regulations. Amazon is way to big for its britches. Good riddance I say. Many better affiliate programs out there that pay better and aren't a royal pain in the butt.
Google "19 Best Affiliate Programs and Networks for Anyone and Everyone". Some great reviews of the best affiliates.

Mark

Hahaha, well put! And thanks, Mark, for the tip. I'd like to check out a few different affiliate networks to find some good fits. Better not bet everything on one horse :-)

Bianca, I agree with you that the very short life cookie is not the best for us, how many have gone back a few days later and purchased something that they found on our site?

Exactly: we’ll never know how many. I know I sometimes put things in online shopping carts and leave them for days, or even 2-3 weeks before I purchase. I’m sure many of my readers will do the same.

Hey Bianca, I can relate to this. I haven't received any sales through Amazon and I got kicked out but I set up shop on Ebay's affiliate program because I got tired of Amazon's, to put it bluntly, bullshit and their 6 month rule.

It infuriated me so much that such a, what I believe was, a thriving and popular website would treat their affiliates this way especially hardworking one who fight to make a sale like us.

Well congrats on your two sales for whatever that's worth and I hope you have more success with your other affiliate programs.

It's good for you to find an affiliate program that works for you and that's a good fit for your business. I'm happy you found other options.

Thanks for your wishes, Rodney! I was thrilled to get a few sales; it was very motivating to go on. Just not with Amazon, but with companies that I can relate to.

I wish you all the luck too and hope you'll succeed as well!

Thanks, and for what its worth; you did the right thing with Amazon. I sort felt my faith in them depreciate on account of their affiliate program, I bought anything off Amazon in like a year maybe more.

I read your post, Bianca, and some comments. You're talking about making higher commissions, but neither you nor Holly are talking about WA and its affiliate program. No need to worry about saving the planet, either. Oh, and long term cookie.

Chuck

Hi Chuck,

Well, promoting WA is a completely different ball game. Maybe some day down the road I might think about that (although I do have WA and Jaaxy ads in my side bar and on my resource page already).

But I don't want to write blog posts about making money with a niche website, without ever having had a money making niche website.

I'm passionate about saving the planet and love writing about that. I wouldn't love writing posts about marketing and money every day.

I prefer to make my niche work first. Promoting WA may follow when I need a change or want to scale up. But I'm glad you love to promote WA. Because I sure do love WA :-)

Thank you for your nice reply, Bianca.

And you for yours :-)

I plan to promote WA on my second site, but it doesn't fit in with my niche on my first site and wouldn't make sense to promote it in that space. Don't think it would convert well because that's not my audience. WA training is great for all sorts of niches, thankfully, not just to promote WA. I'm confused about the second part of your comment, though.

Amazon is definitely not my favorite affiliate website, either. However, it seems to be the only one I can consistently make sales with, however those commissions are like $0.75 to $1.00 most of the time. I agree with you that it feels a bit hypocritical for me to promote Amazon products because my niche relates to the "green" niche, too.

I have affiliate relationships with other retailers with longer cookie lengths, but I just can't seem to get people to purchase! Sure, I've made a few sales here any there, but not the amount I can get from Amazon. But even with fewer sales, those other affiliate programs paid out higher commissions, so I've made more money overall.

I'm desperately trying to figure out how to monetize my site in a way that provides better commissions and I'm stuck. I'm promoting physical products, and 5% is pretty typical. The few that pay more aren't even directly related to my niche. Not sure what to do!

I'm not sure if I'll be able to make sales for my other affiliate merchants yet. And being in a green niche is tricky too. Because I'm all about buying less, consuming less, wasting less. And that seems in contradiction with selling. But I want to point people who are going to buy something anyway, into the direction of green merchants.

And here comes the next hurdle: green shoppers often are critical shoppers. They will think twice wether or not they really really need it, wether or not they can make it themselves cheaper or get it second hand, or if it is sustainable enough to their liking.

In the long run, I would love to make a living with my green website (which probably is too broad anyway and needs to niche down some day). But for now, I feel good about helping people make greener choices in life, so that we all (and the planet as a whole) benefit from it. It's a journey. And I have no idea where I'm gonna end up yet. At all :-)

Maybe we can team up sometime. I would love a guest blog of yours on my website, because I love your niche but know little about it.

That would be great! Definitely up for guest posting.

You're absolutely right about green consumers, and I have so many posts on my site advocating that people don't buy unnecessary things LOL. While I need to find things to sell because I can get faster results that way, my ultimate goal is to get enough traffic that I can go to Mediavine for ads. I think ads are going to be my main monetization technique for my cloth diaper site--I don't see any other way to get better results. Ads probably won't make me rich, so I'm slowly working on building my second site. Only writing one article a week there and have only been live for 2 weeks, lol, but I'm intentionally not putting too much time into my second site because I need to be working on getting traffic to site #1 and not lose too much focus.

Lol, we green gals are kinda funny about selling ;-)

How great that you'd like to do a guest post!

It was the first thing I thought about when I first read your bio and saw your website a few months ago. "One day, when I'm further along, I'm gonna ask her to team up". And here we are :-)

Let's talk about when and how in private message.

I'll be looking into ads too, but there's no use just yet. I don't have enough traffic yet to make any money with ads. So for now, the only ads I have on my website are from the affiliate merchants I work with. It feels good to know they are a 100% match with my business values and niche.

Ha!
Yes... great feeling indeed.
Catapulting them out too...

💪

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