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Ask HN: Amazon Associates closed my account with $7k revenue without warning

17 points by Matsta 10y ago

I created a site back in March which is based on an upcoming product. Just over a week ago I applied for an Amazon Associates account. 7 days ago I was approved. This morning I woke up to a rather vague but stern email from Amazon Associates saying they closed my account. The moral of the email says: "You are not in compliance with the Associate Program Linking Requirements because your site makes inaccurate, over-broad, deceptive or otherwise misleading claims about Products, the Amazon Site, or our policies, promotions or prices." My account has been closed, and they are hinting that I will not be paid for the revenue that I have currently earned. It has been seven days since Amazon approved our site, so I find it hard to believe that they changed their mind even though we have made no changes to the content. If they had warned us that some of the content had not been compliant, we would have fixed the issue ASAP. Our site is very factual, and we don't have any "sales speak" trying to promote people to buy products. Our site focuses on one particular product, so there are no competitor products nor do we mention any other retailers or pricing. I talked to Amazon on the phone; they didn't seem to have any more information beyond the email. After talking to other people that monetize their sites with Amazon associates, they said it's almost impossible to get a detailed response from them, and they usually aren't interested in re-assessing your account. If you guys have any ideas, can you please help me out!

cft 10y ago
Is it possible to escalate over the phone to their content quality team?
- Matsta 10y ago
  I've tried, they've told me an "account specialist" will get back to me via email, but I don't think I can talk directly to them over the phone.
mstolpm 10y ago
Help me understand the numbers: "Amazon Associates" means you got a new Amazon Affiliate account seven days ago, not a merchant account, right? And you made $1k with referrals per day since that? Amazon pays its Affiliates roughly 5 percent ("up to 10 percent") of a sale, so you generated nearly $20k in sales for promoting one particular product from the first day on, constantly? And you wonder Amazon is terminating this Affiliate account? If the $7k revenue really accounts from Affiliate promotions for only one product and a time span of the first 7 days after approval, I'm pretty sure that rings a lot of bells in Amazons fraud detection systems. I'd really like to know how one could get to these numbers without at least bending the rules of the Affiliate program.
- bbcbasic 10y ago
  Paid advertising springs to mind. Which I presume is legit.
- Matsta 10y ago
  Correct, I'm putting Amazon ads on the site. And yes I'm making around that. It's all from Google/SEO traffic. You can make up to 8% of the retail price depending on how many items you sell. The site has been ranking in Google for months now, and traffic has slowly been building up. I agree that it could ring some bells being so sudden, but because Xmas is coming up people are starting to buy more and more.
Dr0Dre 10y ago
Out of curiosity what niche is this? Did you read theit T&C carefully? you are not allowed to put pricing on your website for example.
- Matsta 10y ago
  It's an electronic item. I've read their T&C's very carefully, as well as had a few other people check the site to make sure everything is 100%.
someotheridiot 10y ago
I had an account closed with about 2k in it and no amount of pestering them made a difference. Then suddenly, about a year afterwards (I think), they sent me a cheque with the balance. Also, I was able to create a new account after fixing what they didn't like and haven't had issues with it.
- Matsta 10y ago
  Yup, seems like the consensus, no matter how you try, not much will change. Nice to know they did eventually pay you out. It sucks for me that everyday traffic is increasing, but I can't monetize it.
amit312 10y ago
If you can have earned this profit, you have really doing great job. When amazon ban account them it become very hard to contact only mail is a chance. If you are really profitable for them then can call you do not miss that.

17 points by Matsta 10y ago

cft 10y ago

Is it possible to escalate over the phone to their content quality team?

Matsta 10y ago
I've tried, they've told me an "account specialist" will get back to me via email, but I don't think I can talk directly to them over the phone.

mstolpm 10y ago

Help me understand the numbers: "Amazon Associates" means you got a new Amazon Affiliate account seven days ago, not a merchant account, right? And you made $1k with referrals per day since that? Amazon pays its Affiliates roughly 5 percent ("up to 10 percent") of a sale, so you generated nearly $20k in sales for promoting one particular product from the first day on, constantly? And you wonder Amazon is terminating this Affiliate account? If the $7k revenue really accounts from Affiliate promotions for only one product and a time span of the first 7 days after approval, I'm pretty sure that rings a lot of bells in Amazons fraud detection systems. I'd really like to know how one could get to these numbers without at least bending the rules of the Affiliate program.

bbcbasic 10y ago
Paid advertising springs to mind. Which I presume is legit.
Matsta 10y ago
Correct, I'm putting Amazon ads on the site. And yes I'm making around that. It's all from Google/SEO traffic. You can make up to 8% of the retail price depending on how many items you sell. The site has been ranking in Google for months now, and traffic has slowly been building up. I agree that it could ring some bells being so sudden, but because Xmas is coming up people are starting to buy more and more.

Dr0Dre 10y ago

Out of curiosity what niche is this? Did you read theit T&C carefully? you are not allowed to put pricing on your website for example.

Matsta 10y ago
It's an electronic item. I've read their T&C's very carefully, as well as had a few other people check the site to make sure everything is 100%.

someotheridiot 10y ago

I had an account closed with about 2k in it and no amount of pestering them made a difference. Then suddenly, about a year afterwards (I think), they sent me a cheque with the balance. Also, I was able to create a new account after fixing what they didn't like and haven't had issues with it.

Matsta 10y ago
Yup, seems like the consensus, no matter how you try, not much will change. Nice to know they did eventually pay you out. It sucks for me that everyday traffic is increasing, but I can't monetize it.

amit312 10y ago

If you can have earned this profit, you have really doing great job. When amazon ban account them it become very hard to contact only mail is a chance. If you are really profitable for them then can call you do not miss that.