Don't crash and burn with Amazon!

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OK..So a guy I know took some advice and started his own niche website 2 weeks after I started my first one. My first one was on my own and using a different hosting plan and using forums and google to fail miserably ! That was a blessing! Because I found Wealthy Affiliate!

I talked to this guy on the phone last night and he told me this. I'm passing it along as an FYI!

My buddy decided to stay on the "do it yourself plan" and has been floundering around with his results. He has spent money having article writers do content as he also does content. His website is almost 8 months old and has yet to have over 10 visitors in a day since he began. He has 53 posts on his site and half of those he paid $50-$75 to have written by outsources.

He has affiliate links on 25% of his articles and all are Amazon Affiliate links.

Amazon shut down his account Thursday and cited 3 reasons for doing so!

  • He had surpassed the 180 threshold without a minimum of 3 sales
  • He was using images that he lifted from the advertisements on Amazon
  • He used the name Amazon in some of his buttons and hyperlinks

Here's the moral of the story, especially important for people just starting

FIRST

When you start your training and building out your website, hold off on placing any affiliate links until you start getting traffic. Having those links in there will do no good anyway unless there are people there to see it.

It's exciting to get started and putting affiliate links in your articles to monetize your website! I did it too and got very lucky! I ended up with 4 sales totaling less than $60 within 180 days. And the last sale was 3 items I wrote a blog post about just a couple of days ago! Insane timing! (1 more month and I would have been in the same situation)

https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/mikec69/blog/have-you-been-p...

SECOND

When you start to see traffic, sit down at your desk or kitchen table with a cup of coffee and read the terms of service with Amazon Associates.

It's boring and blah blah! But just for your benefit read it. You won’t have a full understanding of it. But you will have an overview and a better idea of what they expect.

AND MOST IMPORTANTLY !

My friend Todd has applied to have his domain released and will be transferring it to Wealthy Affiliate........ I sent him a link ;)

In my limited time based opinion I told Todd the same thing I will suggest here........

Follow the training !

Todd didn't have his website set up with half the features and steps we learn in the training here! He had used forums and Google searches as his go to. And you can search how to do anything on Google! But if you don't know what to search it does no good! It's true that sometimes you don't know what you don't know!

That;s my little of input for today!

I hope everyone here finds their dreams and in complete abundance! The opportunities are everywhere, but sometimes it's hard to see the forest for the trees !

Take your time and take advantage of this unique training platform!

Thanks and have a great day!

Keep on Keeping on!

Mike

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Recent Comments

154

good advice. thanks

Another validation on the values of learning the business through WA. Thanks for sharing hard lessons learned by others.
Debbie

Truly a great post! Thank you for sharing your thoughts and I look forward to seeing how your freind does with WA.

Blimey! I am really shocked!

I did not know that Amazon ad a problem with any one of those 3 reasons that they shut the guy down for.

I have always used images from the listings and also have some buttons with the words Buy at Amazon on them.

Who knew!!!

Thanks for the heads up

Thanks, that was helpfull, will make sure I follow it when I get there.

That’s very interesting Mike. I got an email from amazon saying something about me not meeting their criteria of sales and said I have 90 days to get them or they will shut my Amazon associates account down.

Thanks for sharing this. Take care

Ouch to your buddy. That's a pricey lesson.

T%hanks for sharing this story...

Thanks for this information! I'm right at the point of training where I'm signing up with affiliates, so this is important information to know.

I am not quite there, but I will be shortly and appreciate the insight as well.

Haven

Thank you for sharing this!

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4-Steps to Success Class
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Core “Business Start Up” Training