My Amazon Associates Program application was rejected! -A long time starter member's regret

Last May 8 after 4 months of applying to Amazon Associates Program, I received an email congratulating me for being able to acquire the 3 sales within the 180 days period. Prior to that Amazon has been consistently emailing me that I need to make at least 3 sales or otherwise my application would be rejected.

I actually did not do anything but just continue publishing posts inconsistently but still managed to make it to make it.

Back to the time I joined WA affiliate as a starter member, we all know that a starter member can access only the level 1 training which is creating your own website. The rest of my knowledge were learned by just searching inside the WA training and blog posts. Sometimes the information I need is there but cannot access because it is locked to premium members only.

I just learned how to set up a website, but I assumed I can already do affiliate marketing.

Without undergoing the rest of the training level, I started to build my free siterubix websites. When you first access your Amazon associates dashboard, a notification about Onelink is in your message box. Amazon recommends to use Onelink if you want to convert all the visitors of your website into sales. In other words I applied for Amazon associates program in 5 countries! and link them into my US account.

I didn't know that I cannot access the main backdoor of my website as a starter member. As a result, I applied for 5 accounts but I can only promote my US link.

I thought that when one account is approved, all the accounts would be approved too. So when I received the good news about my US account, and no notifications from my other accounts, I presumed that everything is working just fine. I even answered a question here in WA about creating different links but you need to make sales only for one account.

But just a few days ago, I received emails from both my Canada and UK accounts that I never received any emails since after the first time I verified my accounts. Amazon says that I was not able to make the required sales for my Canada account and they are shutting it down. Yikes! My presumption is totally wrong. I felt sad but I felt more guilty since I confirmed that you need your US account only to be approved in one of the discussion here in WA.

Lessons learned from being a long time starter member.

If I upgraded to premium after I completed the level one certification, I should have had continued my training and gained access to all the privileges that a premium member only has access to. I should have had integrated Onelink to my website and generated the required sales to all my Amazon accounts or I probably would have waited for my website's traffic to grow first before I applied for different countries.

Though I was able to generate sales for the first 2 months of my website creation, if I upgraded to premium earlier and learned how make a ranking post, I should have had generated more sales. Though my website traffic has increased gradually, if I upgraded to premium earlier, and was able to ask for site comments and feed backs from this wonderful community and broadened my network, what traffic would have had for my website now. Maybe my site is now ranking very well!

When one door closes, another one opens.

Yes, my Canada account was closed. But I discovered one thing. Amazon UK is giving one year grace period its associates unlike other Amazon stores.

In level 3 certification, part of the training is to join 2 or 3 affiliate programs. So I searched the web and found 2 that are related to my niche. I joined Belkin Affiliate program which offers 4% affiliate commissions and Itunes Affiliate program which offers up to 10% commissions and 100% commission for Itunes Music(a subscription plan).

I just started the level 3 training and after applying what I have learned, I started to make sales again for my Amazon links.

My suggestion to starter members, if you are really serious about making your own online business, I recommend you upgrade to premium earlier to fully optimize your progress and your online success.