Make sure you know your Affiliates Rules
I'm sure this hasn't happened to anyone except me, but just in case beware. A few months ago, when I was a freeloader at WA I started building a website. As part of that website I joined a few affiliate programs, one of which was Amazon. Let me tell you, as you probably already know, Amazon is a very easy site to become affiliated with, but it is a good idea to realize what their guidelines are. More on that later. In any event I started builiding a number of pages with links to products on Amazon. Since my strategy was to use images and imbed my affiliate link in the image I opted to use the short link they offer. As you well know, the short link is coded to include your affiliate code without it actually being displayed. Anyway, I wasn't driving any traffic to the site so I wasn't making any sales. Lo and behold, I got an email from Amazon saying that since I did not make any sales in three months they were discontinuing our affiliate relationship. By then I had built upwards of 400 plus links on the website which were no longer viable as affiliate links. I begged and pleaded with Amazon to reinstate my old id so the links could be reactivated, to no avail. Long and short, I now have to go back and rebuild the links with my new id. If only I had built a couple links and had a few friends purchase something I wouldn't be in this predicament. I only needed three sales. Consider this "lesson learned".
Recent Comments
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Funny, but your blog title is exactly what I was writing about on another blog here, which is actually a blackhat affiliate sales exchange post. I stumbled upon it yesterday, and when I called out the Amazon rules for the benefit of everyone, it hasn't been taken very well by the blog writer.
I even suggested ways to keep website links hidden from Amazon to avoid account terminations but for the time being the page seems to be a prime target for Amazon - if they find it, which I hope they don't for the sake of the members who have posted their links.
Take a look here: Give and Take - Amazon First Sale Thread Getting friends to buy from your site seems a good solution for newbies but creating a sales exchange on a WA page that gets indexed by Google is plain ridiculous.
Thank you for sharing this good to know as I am new to affiliate program, I am far from being one of you guys and still learning as much as I could here.
Cheers!
Rapeepan