Catch-22 Is Alive and Well at Amazon

Catch-22 Is Alive and Well at Amazon

Almost everyone is familiar with the phrase "Catch-22" and understands what it means.

But have you read the book Catch-22, by Joseph Hellier and published in 1961?

There are many examples of Catch-22 in the book, applied to many different circumstances, but the term is introduced by the character Doc Daneeka, an army psychiatrist who invokes "Catch-22" to explain why any pilot requesting mental evaluation for insanity—hoping to be found not sane enough to fly and thereby escape dangerous missions—demonstrates his own sanity in creating the request and thus cannot be declared insane.

The phrase therefore means a dilemma or difficult circumstance from which there is no escape because of mutually conflicting or dependent conditions.

How Does Amazon Figure in This?

As some of you may be aware from my previous posts, Amazon is discontinuing the SiteStripe facility of Image and Text+Image code for Amazon affiliates.

The options will disappear from December 1 and from December 31, any links in your websites using this code will stop working.

You are supposed to switch to the much more complex calls to Amazon Associates PA-API function before it all happens.

PA-API Credentials

So I set up my PA-API credentials, intending to create a training video on WA to help my fellow WA members to implement this new approach.

But they didn't work!

Everything was set up correctly, the credentials were live but any attempt to call the PA-API function returned a seemingly irrelevant error condition.

Amazon support had no idea and my last message exchange with them requested an escalation to someone who might have an idea.

There's been no response to that. Not really a surprise!

Independent Research

However, independent research has turned up a possible cause.

To use the PA-API function, you need to have qualified with the 3+ sales in our first 180 days.

Which I did years ago, which is why I was able to create my credentials.

BUT...

Some people have suggested that you need a quota in order to submit a request to PA-API (to get an image, for example) and that quota will be zero unless you've made affiliate sales in the past 30 days.

For some reason, that has the ring of truth, but wouldn't you think Amazon Support would be aware of it?????

Here's the Catch

If this is true, Amazon are saying:

"You can't use PA-API to promote Amazon Products because you haven't made sales recently."

"But you can't make new sales because you're not allowed to use PA-API."

It's a classic Catch-22.

The Lasso WP Plugin

One of the places that has been helpful with suggestions and possible solutions has been the Lasso WP Plugin, with fast and relevant support, even though I'm not a customer.

I'm considering installing it on one of my websites just to see if it overcomes this problem.

Unfortunately, it's not free and could be out of reach for many WA members wanting to promote Amazon products.

But I'll keep you informed.