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It is very hard to get an affiliate account right now. I can't seem to get accepted.

by twodayslate 10y ago

robotjosh 10y ago
Even before, you had to sell over $1,000,000 in amazon stuff to make a meaningful amount of money.
rapfaria 10y ago
Really? What changed? I remember setting up one about 6 or 7 years ago, all I had to do was sign up.
- wtracy 10y ago
  That still seemed to be the case when I signed up about a month ago.
- NathanKP 10y ago
  A lot used to be different about Amazon Affiliate program. 7 years ago I used to make ~$100 a day off of it (although I did get banned a few times for sketchy experiments I was doing with it, my own fault for exploring the edges of what the TOS allowed.) I think all that bad behavior of us early pioneers resulted in the program being severely limited and audited.
  - brilliantcode 10y ago
    cookie stuffing? I know that was the rage 7 years ago.
    - NathanKP 10y ago
      I made a service that implemented Google AdSense type title and body text examination with the Amazon Product API to automate ad selection. Place a JS widget on a webpage and it would automatically examine body elements for keywords, dispatch a request to our server and find an Amazon product that was relevant, then inject affiliate ads on the page. Then me and some associates applied the plugin to a massive network of content scraped wordpress sites which basically reposted stuff from RSS feeds. There was an art to making a site that has good SEO, would perform well in Google SERP, be just attractive enough that people wouldn't immediately hit the back button, but not completely satisfying so that they would be looking for more and click a link which would take them to the Amazon store. Once they had our affiliate attribution set we didn't care what happened, if they made a purchase within the next 30 days we made money. And electronics was very profitable at the time. A few times I got banned because my affiliate link was all over the place, like literally hundreds of sites, and Amazon wanted to control where the affiliate links were placed, not have them on sketchy semi spam websites. Another time I got banned because I was using the product API in a way they didn't intend.
      - marktangotango 10y ago
        I'm really amazed by stories like this. It's the type of thing I would never think of doing. Are you still working with affiliate marketing? What are you up to now?
        NathanKP 10y ago
        I was doing this while I was a broke college student. Luckily for me the coding experience I got building this system out and scaling it to handle the amount of traffic we were driving to it from Google Search helped me get a job for a startup, and now years later I actually work for AWS, so I've come full circle, but now much more legitimate now haha.
        trevmckendrick 10y ago
        This is a much more interesting story than you make it out to be! "College kid learns to code building sketchy Amazon Affiliate sites, gets job at AWS."
dawnerd 10y ago
And when you do you have to actually sell stuff within so many days
- derefr 10y ago
  Which is a really weird thing to have to deal with when the only reason I wanted an Amazon Affiliate account was to use that account to access their database of album art from XLD. I'm really surprised nobody offers a standalone API for automatic album art lookup; or an automatic metadata lookup (like CDDB) that includes an album art URL in the result.
  - kevingrahl 10y ago
    I've no clue what XLD or CDDB is but I think the Spotify API might be what you're looking for.. Documentation: https://developer.spotify.com/web-api/endpoint-reference/ https://developer.spotify.com/web-api/endpoint-reference/ Example Screenshot: https://d.pr/e2zG https://d.pr/e2zG
user5994461 10y ago
Nope, 15 minutes top.
- adamnemecek 10y ago
  Can you show me the site that you built in 15 minutes and that Amazon approved?
  - user5994461 10y ago
    I don't even remember them asking for a site when I filled the form a few months ago.
dewski 10y ago
I was accepted and was selling for 3-4 weeks, up to $400 in fees then randomly they shut down the account without a concrete reason. Said I violated terms but have been silent in trying to communicate so I can resolve any issues. :(
- adamnemecek 10y ago
  Same experience here. Dealing with Amazon about this issue has been the worst experience dealing with any company ever.

It is very hard to get an affiliate account right now. I can't seem to get accepted.

robotjosh 10y ago

Even before, you had to sell over $1,000,000 in amazon stuff to make a meaningful amount of money.

rapfaria 10y ago

Really? What changed? I remember setting up one about 6 or 7 years ago, all I had to do was sign up.

wtracy 10y ago
That still seemed to be the case when I signed up about a month ago.
NathanKP 10y ago
A lot used to be different about Amazon Affiliate program. 7 years ago I used to make ~$100 a day off of it (although I did get banned a few times for sketchy experiments I was doing with it, my own fault for exploring the edges of what the TOS allowed.) I think all that bad behavior of us early pioneers resulted in the program being severely limited and audited.
- brilliantcode 10y ago
  cookie stuffing? I know that was the rage 7 years ago.
  - NathanKP 10y ago
    I made a service that implemented Google AdSense type title and body text examination with the Amazon Product API to automate ad selection. Place a JS widget on a webpage and it would automatically examine body elements for keywords, dispatch a request to our server and find an Amazon product that was relevant, then inject affiliate ads on the page. Then me and some associates applied the plugin to a massive network of content scraped wordpress sites which basically reposted stuff from RSS feeds. There was an art to making a site that has good SEO, would perform well in Google SERP, be just attractive enough that people wouldn't immediately hit the back button, but not completely satisfying so that they would be looking for more and click a link which would take them to the Amazon store. Once they had our affiliate attribution set we didn't care what happened, if they made a purchase within the next 30 days we made money. And electronics was very profitable at the time. A few times I got banned because my affiliate link was all over the place, like literally hundreds of sites, and Amazon wanted to control where the affiliate links were placed, not have them on sketchy semi spam websites. Another time I got banned because I was using the product API in a way they didn't intend.
    - marktangotango 10y ago
      I'm really amazed by stories like this. It's the type of thing I would never think of doing. Are you still working with affiliate marketing? What are you up to now?
      - NathanKP 10y ago
        I was doing this while I was a broke college student. Luckily for me the coding experience I got building this system out and scaling it to handle the amount of traffic we were driving to it from Google Search helped me get a job for a startup, and now years later I actually work for AWS, so I've come full circle, but now much more legitimate now haha.
        trevmckendrick 10y ago
        This is a much more interesting story than you make it out to be! "College kid learns to code building sketchy Amazon Affiliate sites, gets job at AWS."

dawnerd 10y ago

And when you do you have to actually sell stuff within so many days

derefr 10y ago
Which is a really weird thing to have to deal with when the only reason I wanted an Amazon Affiliate account was to use that account to access their database of album art from XLD. I'm really surprised nobody offers a standalone API for automatic album art lookup; or an automatic metadata lookup (like CDDB) that includes an album art URL in the result.
- kevingrahl 10y ago
  I've no clue what XLD or CDDB is but I think the Spotify API might be what you're looking for.. Documentation: https://developer.spotify.com/web-api/endpoint-reference/ https://developer.spotify.com/web-api/endpoint-reference/ Example Screenshot: https://d.pr/e2zG https://d.pr/e2zG

user5994461 10y ago

Nope, 15 minutes top.

adamnemecek 10y ago
Can you show me the site that you built in 15 minutes and that Amazon approved?
- user5994461 10y ago
  I don't even remember them asking for a site when I filled the form a few months ago.

dewski 10y ago

I was accepted and was selling for 3-4 weeks, up to $400 in fees then randomly they shut down the account without a concrete reason. Said I violated terms but have been silent in trying to communicate so I can resolve any issues. :(

adamnemecek 10y ago
Same experience here. Dealing with Amazon about this issue has been the worst experience dealing with any company ever.