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Ask HN: After great HN feedback on my web page Amazon closed my account
Background: Two weeks ago, I submitted a Show HN which lead to a lot of valuable and positive feedback - thank you very much for that, HN!
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30137984 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30137984
A week later I received an email from Amazon that they have now closed my Amazon Associates account. The reason given was:
"Your website/app does not meet our content standards. The content of your website is insufficient. Here you can find an example: https://fahrrad-tools.de/ https://fahrrad-tools.de/"
Do you have an idea what they might be missing? Or could it be an automated website analyzer (AI) that expects a blog-like website?
Thanks for your ideas.
- datarage 5y agoIf its a small site you can deploy on google firebase pretty easily, and possibly cheaper than aws. You can also use the firebase database for smaller apps for free as well. It's been my go to for a couple years for small projects, never had to pay them a dime so far.
- tgflynn 5y agoI have no idea. Have you tried asking them. I know Google is notorious for being impossible to contact but I haven't heard the same about Amazon. EDIT: On further thought I wonder if it might have something to do with the name of your site. A person might expect fahrrad-tools.com to be a site where they could buy tools, but that doesn't seem to be the case.
- moasda 5y agoI cannot find contact details how to ask a question. I only can find a FAQ but it also is very superficial about what could be done wrong.
- tgflynn 5y agoSo they have no appeal process for this kind of decision ?
- moasda 5y agoI cannot prove it, but it looks at least like that for me. I tried googling and read all the Amazon Associates pages again to find any hint. Maybe I just wasn't smart enough to find it.
- moasda 5y agoI finally found a contact page where I will send my request to: https://partnernet.amazon.de/home/contact/ https://partnernet.amazon.de/home/contact/
- mikequinlan 5y agohttps://www.amazon.com/hz/contact-us/foresight/hubgateway https://www.amazon.com/hz/contact-us/foresight/hubgateway
- 5y ago
- h2odragon 5y agoSounds similar to another case I'm aware of, a blog with 15+ years of posts, author had amazon links for about 3mo and then got dropped. There were affiliate sales, even, but none of them were "qualified" and so the total payout was $0.39 as i recall. That author didn't clean out the links they had, just stopped putting new ones up; so amazon still "wins" a little free advertising.
- moasda 5y agoWould be interesting if somebody could resolve the issue and find out what unwritten rules Amazon has in addition.
- petee 5y agohttps://affiliate-program.amazon.com/help/operating/policies/ https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/help/operating/policies... https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/help/node/topic/G8TW5AE9XL2VX9VM https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/help/node/topic/G8TW5AE... Quite a few spots mention "original" and "creative content" - because you have essentially just a database I'm betting they do not see it as original 'creative' content. It seems the goal of their program is to have bloggers write about the products being sold. Rather than simply decode the tire, they want you to upsell. Maybe if you were to include individual/separate pages or 'blog' posts about each facet of the tires' specs, as painful as that is.
- moasda 5y agoGood point, more written text could perhaps help.
- bcrosby95 5y agoYeah, this happened to one of our sites, and we resolved it by making a blog we post to every couple of months. We get basically zero sales through the actual blog posts.
- moasda 5y agoThanks for sharing your experience. So it really looks like Amazon expects a blog-like page.
- ewuhic 5y agoDo you host both websites (or website and whatever "web" the other thing is) on the same domain, or those are completely different entities, so you can just point amazon to the blog?
- bcrosby95 5y agoSame domain - we just have a /blog path. So the main site is www.example.com, and the blog is at www.example.com/blog
- 5y ago
- MonteCarlox 5y agoIt's probably their AI just sensing an abnormal signal because of the huge spike in traffic your sent their way. It's safer and easier for them to just ban you rather than sending you an email a human has to read and evaluate your response. It's a brave new world.
- moasda 5y agoThat would mean that you are at risk if you buy some Google ads to generate traffic. Why should Amazon want to avoid traffic?
- MonteCarlox 5y agoIt's avoidance of risk that the traffic is illegitimate, not avoidance of traffic. That much traffic with no sales stands out. Why would someone spend so much cash on ads to get probably very little sales? It's a weird egde case that is more likely as per their experience to result in chargebacks from the few sales they got. Traffic from HN is not the normal traffic the AI is trained on. The sad truth is when you partner with a FAANG and their likes you need to think about what they have optimised for, not what is actually good for you or them. What is the easy money they want and how would they calibrate they systems so they get more of that and less 'noisy' or even 'expensive' money? Go for that rather than something different that raises virtual eyebrows.
- moasda 5y ago> It's a weird egde case that is more likely as per their experience to result in chargebacks from the few sales they got. Interesting thought, in that case I'll just have to keep trying.
- MonteCarlox 5y agoNo. What you built is awesome. It's actually much better then anything else that's probably out there for bike tires. Amazon was just not ready for the huge traffic spike. Either relaunch with a new ID or try the support. Whatever faces less resistance.
- dazc 5y agoI have unwittingly 'violated' their terms a couple of times and, in both cases, received an email and notice to make the necessary changes within x number of days. They don't specify what the violation is but, in my experience, they don't require 100% compliance either. Seems your case hasn't resulted from standard manual checks but some sort of automated sytem that was, maybe, triggered by a sudden spike in traffic? If amazon affilliation is crucial to you then I would suggest moving your site to another domain, take on board the comments about adding blog-style content, and try again with another account? In all honesty, all usual amazon complaints accepted, their affiliate program, in my experience, is actually run pretty fairly compared to many others. Certainly worth trying to get back on board.
- moasda 5y agoThank you for the feedback. It's not a hosting issue, my website is hosted at netcup and still up and running. I already created a new affiliate account, but if I don't change anything on the website I assume they will close it again after a while.
- Proven 5y ago
- quacked 5y agoHey, I have no idea how to solve your situation but I really like your website. My least favorite aspect of the modern web is that all corporate websites have been invaded by "designers" who care about the "feel" of their "content". But they have forgotten that computers are tools. When I use a tool, I want clear, simple, predictable, obvious design, not colors and animations. Like an airplane cockpit or a woodshop, not a trendy coffee bistro. Your site looks and feels like a tool. I think the organization could be a little better, but this is the kind of website I wish was present all over the entire internet.
- moasda 5y agoThank you so much, I really appreciate it!
- nocturnial 5y agoThis isn't a dig at the submitter, far from it. When did HN became a support page for multi-billion companies? It's not that they can't afford to pay people to provide support. Or is this a sort of hidden agreement where if you make more than a billion, you can fire all of your support staff and hope the HN community fixes things for you for free.
- ronsor 5y agoBecause the companies have no (and never had any) real support staff, all that's left is to try to contact one of the engineers working there. Luckily those engineers probably browse HN.
- MattGaiser 5y agoA lot of it is simply that many customers in many industries are not worth supporting. Cheaper to lose them. Tech just has a disproportionate number of low value customers, but you see it everywhere from flying to freelancing. Air Canada frequently neglects my queries. As my Dad has status, he never has to wait long to help. I can point to quite a few cases where as an established customer, I got excellent support from certain smaller businesses while my friends didn't even get replies.
- logicalmonster 5y ago> A lot of it is simply that many customers in many industries are not worth supporting. Cheaper to lose them. Turn a problem into an opportunity. Big Tech ought to just collectively agree to all start charging $XX-XXX for well-trained, actual human support for really important problems. There's downsides to this, but the really critical issues will actually get addressed. A low percentage of false positives is not good enough when peoples' livelihoods are at stake.
- nend 5y agoIt's a hidden agreement between tech giants and their customers in that companies are so big and make so much money it's cheaper for them to lose the occasional customer than it is to provide adequate customer service. As to when hn became a support page for this, at a minimum it was several years ago, along with the rest of social media.
- inetknght 5y agoSolution: stop using Amazon. They're a complete shit company. I will never understand why people utilize shit companies.
- steve76 5y ago
- tgsovlerkhgsel 5y agoIf you suspect that it was an automated decision, in addition to any normal appeal processes, you could go through whoever their GDPR contact is and ask whether you were subject to automated decision making and if so, to please review the case manually as is your right under GDPR: https://gdpr-info.eu/art-22-gdpr/ https://gdpr-info.eu/art-22-gdpr/ Another obvious solution would be to find a different affiliate program (or set of affiliate programs) and point to them, since Amazon apparently doesn't want customers from you. Maybe some cycling-specific online store(s), or a price comparison web site? Probably more work and less profitable, but a potential avenue if you can't make progress with Amazon or don't want to deal with them.
- moasda 5y agoThank you for the suggestions, I will check that.
- pasadenasunset 5y agoI can understand why Amazon would have strict thresholds on this content, as it seems like an easy target for abuse. If I'm reading you correctly, you were a bike enthusiast who made a helpful website for decoding tire SKUs. Does the affiliate program give you commissions on items that sell through your account webpage? Were you selling tires / an Amazon affiliate before? It just seems like an odd thing to monetize, but I admire your entrepreneurial spirit!
- moasda 5y ago> it seems like an easy target for abuse Can you elaborate on this? > Does the affiliate program give you commissions on items that sell through your account webpage? Yes, that's how affiliate links work. > Were you selling tires / an Amazon affiliate before? No, that's the first time I try this.
- night862 5y agoHi moasda, I was wondering if they did or did not pay out your affiliate earnings before closing the the door. Good luck in your endeavors. May I suggest also polishing your tool (its pretty good already. Maybe tailor it to specific use cases/back-end technologies) and offering it for sale/license it to various companies who would like to sell their tires? I'm thinking any bike shop (if they exist, that is) could slap this on a tablet for a buck a month.
- moasda 5y agoGreat idea for monetization, thank you! They mentioned to pay out the affiliate earnings (approx. 6,20 €). I'm curious to see if that happens.