I am sure that we will be reading many others following suit, as they use AMAZON as the pass-through.

This along with the many changes that we have to begin to adapt to.

We need to be creative to create more forms of passive income. More work for us, but if we want to meet our personal goals, we must work a little bit more, to accomplish this.

Have a great Thursday!!!

Hey,

I looked at Walmart's affiliate program a few years ago and its always been mostly 1-4% I can't see any changes?

Everything looks the same to me, actually, most categories are 4%

All the big ones, Health - Outdoors-and Sport has stayed at 4% and they have stayed that way for years.

I feel for you, because I am in the same boat. However, I think we haven't lost everything! I think people who stick with Amazon on the long run, will still be able to make a full-time income (but it will be much harder to achieve - it will mean writing lots of more content).

I have been reading a lot about Amazon lowering the commissions and there are many different takes from experts. Some believe that it is all bad and affiliates should move away from Amazon completely. And others still believe that it is better to earn less than nothing. Some predict that the affiliate program will go away, and others say that the affiliate program will only change, but not go away.

My personal take is that Amazon's affiliate program will not go away anytime soon, because it is very well established, with around 24 years of having an affiliate program (and affiliate programs are not that easy to make, I believe). Also, we all know that Amazon does most of the sales (way way more than Walmart, Target, Sams, etc.), so there is still some possibility.

I read the other day that Amazon takes 38% of online sales in the US and Walmart only 5%, and what is left is for the rest. I am not sure about those numbers. But I can see that if you earn less through Amazon, which really hurts a lot, you can still make some money there. So moving completely away at this point, I think is not viable for me and maybe for nobody.

As for me, I will only diversify more and not rely solely on Amazon because that is too risky. On the other side, if you rely only on other affiliate programs, you might lose a lot of traffic because many people go to Amazon ultimately to buy, instead of other vendors. I am thinking, earning $1 from 10 sales in Amazon is as good as making 1 sale for $10 from the retailer directly. Maybe that is too optimistic.

But as an affiliate, I think it is only a lesson for me to put my eggs in various baskets, and yeah, Amazon surely did something that will affect me and thousands of affiliates in a really bad way, but there will still be some money to be made.

These are conclusions that I have come to in the past few days while reading and listening to many experts in the field as well as Amazon affiliates that were making 4-5 figures per month from Amazon.

You wrote about Walmart - I guess the same principle applies to Walmart. I don't see Walmart's affiliate program go away either, but shifting to something else. And I think this is bad timing for any affiliate program to make such drastic changes, but they would have likely come even without the pandemic.

I encourage you to write more content (I don't know how much you write) and continue to work hard. We can do it:-) I am sure.

Best regards,
Oscar

Maybe you can try reaching out to affiliate networks and see if a staff-member can help you find a program that might be a fit? If not, don't be discouraged, just focus hard core on getting your traffic up. There are quite a few blogs in your niche on Pinterest, maybe you can reverse engineer what they're doing and find better ways to monetize (aside from Walmart).

Good evening Lynne,

It is not a bed of roses, and especially nowadays there are a lot of problems. I hope you will find some good companies that pay a decent commission. Times are changing and they will have to adapt the same as we have to.

Stay safe and healthy,

Taetske