Do I need 3 sales from each of the 7 countries? And India woes!
Hey All,
The Context
I recently wet my toes in the affiliate space, and I found myself super confused with Amazon OneLink's ways of being!
After speaking to the Customer Care at Amazon I realized that even at WA not everyone seems to have the complete picture!
I didn't know if there was a better way to share what I learnt from my conversation with the agent than writing a short blog on it!
The Find!
I found out two important things:
1. If you activate OneLink, you don't have to separately register for each of the countries that are a part of OneLink (i.e., Canada, United Kingdom, Spain, Germany, France, and Italy - this rule doesn't apply to any other country except these 6 mentioned here, as of March 18th, 2023),
AND you don't have to get 3 sales from each country, provided you don't have a separate registered account with them.
The agent said that for some reason this has been a widespread misconception!
2. It seems, OneLink doesn't support India for now - so if you're like me, and have a big chunk of traffic from India, OneLink's no good as of now.
It doesn't matter whether you register in amazon.in, and then add it as a linked account to your amazon.com account. The OneLink won't take users from India to .in, they will be taken instead to .com.
My Plan
For me, I'm just going to add two links (Amazon.com) (Amazon.in) in my articles - the .com will be the OneLink & so will work for more countries than just US, and then the large traffic from India can click on the .in link.
From The Horse's Mouth
It seems it's easier to chat with an Amazon customer care person than I would think!
I communicated over email first - that's when I didn't know there was an instant chat feature available!
Both the communication mediums seem great - the email is responded to within 24 business hours (in my experience).
The chat feature is replied to almost immediately (in under 5 minutes), again, in my experience, Monday - Friday from 5 a.m. to 7 p.m. Pacific time & Saturday - Sunday from 5 a.m. to 7 p.m. Pacific time.
And since this information is coming from the company, I'd say it'd be more accurate than from anywhere else! Horse's mouth and all, eh?
Look at the clarity in the agent's communication here (this is what the email reads):
"I do believe there is some confusion with the Onelink requirements. You only need three qualifying sales for Amazon.com and of course Amazon.in as they are separate Associate programs.
The other Onelink countries that are automatically connected under Amazon.com are based off the sales for US because as they were not individual country signup under the other programs. That requirement for 3 sales only applies if you joined the international programs individually and have a separate store ID for them."
Where's The Chat?
In your Affiliate Dashboard, go to Help -> Contact Us.
You'll find both - a form you can fill (that will lead to an email conversation)
And
The "Chat with Amazon.com Associate Support" Block.
I hope this is helpful to someone like me who's a beginner in the whole space of blogging, SEOs, affiliate marketing, & all that jazz!
Let me know if you think any information out here is incorrect - I'll get a hold of the agents I've befriended!😜
Recent Comments
7
Hi, I know we spoke about this recently, so thanks for clarifying the situation.
It was interesting to learn about the three sales rules, but I don't think it tells the whole story.
I checked the actual policies on their site, and yes, they have definitely changed since I wrote my OneLink post.
But it does say the following: "We have simplified the process for you to earn across the Canada, United Kingdom, Spain, Germany, France, and Italy Associates programs, by making it possible using a single store ID. However, for the rest of the countries, you will need an Amazon Associates account in each country for which you want to monetize the traffic."
So, for those countries, you don't need to join them or have to make three qualifying sales.
But for the other countries that are supported through OneLink, you do have to specifically join each one individually and make the three sales: Japan, Singapore, the Netherlands, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Poland, Sweden, and Australia.
And, as you have now discovered, India is not on the list.
See more comments
Keep persevering. I think you will get this worked out!
Jeff
Yes, indeed! 🤞🤞🤞