Want to build a site in 2017 that pays your mortgage/rent…

When I was starting out building my portfolio I liked to think about income from my sites in terms of the freedom it would provide… what was on the monthly budget that a sites earnings would pay for!

I would think along the lines of…

• What would it mean to my family if the phone and internet bill were covered (and I live in Canada where the fees for these suck!)?
• How amazing would it be if a site would cover all the costs of my sports skiing/biking in a year?
• What if a site paid for 2 awesome vacations per year?
• What if I could build a site that could pay for a wedding?
• What if my mortgage/insurance/housing costs were essentially ZERO because a site had it all covered?

(more…)

In this post I am going to share several strategies I have been deploying on my sites over the last few months and the results these tests/case-studies/strategies have been able to achieve.

All of the strategies listed below are being discussed from experience and not theory. Each of the example sites are from my portfolio. For the four strategies below I highlight 5 sites that are in my portfolio that represent what these strategies are capable of.

I am certain there are many many other strategies that work but these are the 5 I have been having the most success with lately… (more…)

A couple weeks ago I shared my story about my Amazon Affiliate Account getting closed and costing me a painful $100k! Read the full story here – Amazon Associate Account Closed!

After that post and sharing the very detailed affiliate site compliance audit procedure one of my employees had developed we completed audits on many readers sites (ironically the audit procedure was completed the same week I got suspended!). Building Amazon Affiliate Sites was/is a big part of my business and getting back into their program and staying approved once I am in is a high priority for me.

This post and additional research has led us to create this list of the 7 most common mistakes we are all making with our Amazon Affiliate sites that could lead to our accounts getting suspended or closed!

Concerned About Your Sites and If You are Compliant with Amazon?

Option 1 – Use my teams procedure and audit your site for free – Click Here

Option 2 – Have my team complete a site audit on one of your sites – Click Here

In this post we have tried to stay on the conservative side, however, I fully realize people may choose to dial up the risk in order to generate more clicks/sales. I understand the need to try and find the right balance between risk/reward and in this post have tried to present the “ideal” scenario.

Now that we’ve had the Amazon audit process up and running for a little while, we are able to analyze the data and see the biggest problems with our sites and the sites we have reviewed. I hope this post provides you with 7 actionable items to consider regarding your sites and Amazon Associates…

See below for the 7 most frequently failed Amazon Audit questions…that could result in your associate account being suspended.

1. The first and most common issue the first question – It reads “Are there any affiliate disclaimer links that do not include this disclaimer “Amazon and the Amazon logo are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates.” ?”

Your Amazon Affiliate Account can get shut down pretty fast if they think you’re violating their Trademark and Logo policy. The tricky thing with Amazon is that they actually own the rights to other Trademarks and logos such as Kindle. They are also very vigilant about Amazon logo colors and design schemes and will shut you down if you attempt to alter them in any way.

The disclaimer link on your site is going to look something like this:

This question comes from probably the most clear requirement on the Amazon Affiliate Program Trademark Guidelines. You can find them here, or see the snapshot below.

So basically if you have anything that looks like this on your site:

*Amazon and the Amazon logo are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc, or its affiliates

Which you probably will since it’s an Amazon Affiliate site- then amazon could shut you down if you don’t add in that disclaimer.

• TIP – Most people have the earnings disclaimer on their site but people (myself included) seem to miss having the trademark disclaimer
• TIP – Although it looks ugly if you want to be on the very safe side include Amazon Associates Earnings and the logo disclaimer in the footer so it is on every page!

2. The second most common issue is the following question “Does the site offer incentive (including any money, rebate, discount, points, donation to charity or other organization) for using Affiliate Links on the site?”.

We have been finding that a lot of the sites that we have audited provide incentives, especially in the form of money rebates for using their link. Most of the offers we found were clearly only to incentivize the click and had no substance to people looking to claim the “rebate” or “save addition x%”.

The clean and simple rule around this – DON’T do it! Incentivizing people to click on a link to Amazon is a slippery slope! It’s a very easy way to get your account in trouble with Amazon. Including text like “ Click here to get 10 dollars off this product” are no good.

See images of what NOT to do (not images from any sites we have reviewed):

3. The third most common issue that people have with their sites is the following question “ Are there any links on the site that are related to limited time promotions that are now expired?” .

Here is the general rule of thumb – Just don’t include pricing on your site at all. Comparison tables are great but don’t include the price on your site because Amazon products change their price all the time. Including an old promotion price without realizing that the promotion has expired could also be seen as “inaccurate or misleading advertising” which will also get your account shut down.

Example: You still have this on your site on September 20th

The Amazon Affiliate Bootcamp guys  (go here for a really great step by step guide to having a successful Amazon Affiliate Website ) show a really good strategy where you can allude to pricing without actually putting a price down.

4. The fourth most common issue with Amazon Affiliate sites is the question “Are any links on the site using a shortening service in a manner that makes it unclear that we are linking to an Amazon Site?”.

A lot of people do this! I’ve done it. Basically, Amazon doesn’t want you to make it unclear that you are sending a user to Amazon so they have words in their TOC’s that make it questionable to use link shortening/cloaking services.

So can you use PrettyLinkPro or Geni.us Link? The truth is it is not 100% clear! Many many people do and Amazon knows that so it is likely lower risk but still not 100% compliant with Amazon. 

5. The fifth most common issue with Amazon Affiliate sites is the question “Does the site engage in any promotional, marketing such as printed material, mailing, SMS, MMS, email or attachment to email, advertising activities on behalf of Amazon or their affiliate sites?”.

This one gets a lot of people because it is very easy for Amazon to check! It is tricky because this essentially makes it impossible to do any kind of email marketing with a link in it.

Even if you are emailing just one friend be sure to not include a link in that email.

One solution if you want to make money from Amazon Associates from your email list is to funnel them through a squeeze page (for example a review post for the product on your site).

• TIP – If you send out the content of your post in an email newsletter automatically make sure links are turned off just in case you have an affiliate link in the first paragraph of the article.

6. The sixth most common issue with Amazon Affiliate sites is the question “Does the site display or otherwise use any of Amazon’s customer reviews or star ratings, in part or in whole?”.

This is something we see A LOT (and did a lot!).

We see a lot of people using reviews as testimonials, which makes a lot of sense since it gives pretty true and accurate reviews on a particular product. It also seems tempting because it can add really valuable content to your site which helps your reader.

Another thing that people really like to do is use “Star Ratings’. Using star ratings on your site that look like Amazons can be perceived by Amazon as using “their” star ratings and yet another way to get your account closed.

The key if you are using any star ratings (or reviews) is to use the API from Amazon and not just pull the star rating at one moment in time.

You shouldn’t display anything that looks like this (unless it is pulled from the API) to be safe:

7. The seventh and last most common issue is the question “Are any amazon Affiliate Links shared on other social platforms/networks such as Twitter or Facebook?”.

This is a tough one because there are some instances where you CAN share your links on social pages and some where you cannot. Personally, I recommend just to stay away from all of it.

If you really want to do it, I would go here to learn more about what is acceptable and what isn’t in terms of social sharing.

BONUS TIP

Don’t associate yourself with anyone who has had their account banned. If you associate yourself with someone who has had their account banned it can result in you becoming banned. This is what got me in trouble!

Concerned About Your Sites and If You are Compliant with Amazon?

Option 1 – Use my teams procedure and audit your site for free – Click Here

Option 2 – Have my team complete a site audit on one of your sites – Click Here

This post was written to provide you with some tips and knowledge about the most common Amazon Affiliate site compliance offenses. Have a look at your site and see if you’re in violation of any of these! If you have any questions feel free to reach out!

Sometimes I believe I write a little too much about successes and don’t provide a realistic picture of all the ups/downs associated with an online business.

Today in this painful post I will shed some light on a recent failure which will ultimately cost me up to $100k!

Plus I share the process my team built to ensure this wouldn’t happen and had finished it just days getting suspended!

Also, if you have been suspended I do still have one strategy up my sleeve I can’t reveal publicly but if you have had your Amazon associate account suspended please contact me and I would be happy to share.

My Amazon Associate Account Has Been Suspended Again Losing $100k!

The irony… I had just hired a full time employee in house whose first job was to prepare a set of procedures for us to audit all of our Amazon associate sites and confirm we were 110% compliant!

I will share all of those procedures with you in this post and everything we have learned to help ensure you avoid getting your Amazon Associate Account suspended.

NOTE – IF YOU HAVE BEEN SUSPENDED PLEASE CONTACT ME – I DO HAVE ONE TRICK UP MY SLEEVE NOT REVEALED HERE PUBLICLY!

Want More Help?
Losing my Amazon Associate account sucked! We had just finished doing a TON of work to try and make sure we were bullet proof in terms of staying compliant with all of our sites in the eyes of Google. In order to help others I decided to make my entire audit process public so others can do their own audits or if you want help provide access to my in house project manager who studies all the TOC’s from Amazon and built the audit process.

• See the top 7 reasons why your sites might be out of compliance! – Click Here
• Have Me and My Team Audit Your Sites – Click Here
  • My new project manager read every single document from Amazon and built the audit process. She has reviewed over a dozen sites and can review your site providing images showing exactly what she recommends you change to stay compliant.

The story of my associate account getting suspended goes back to when I sold 2/3^rd of my FBA business.

The purchaser also purchased another site which had been associated with a suspended account and therefore when Amazon reviewed his accounts they suspended his personal account, our partnership account and then eventually (months later) my personal account.

Amazon seems to follow a policy of “guilt by association” even if there is nothing wrong with your account or sites you can receive a message saying…

“During our research, we have determined that an account belonging to you (or a person affiliated with you) has previously been closed for violations of the Operating Agreement or one of the other Associates Programs operated by our affiliates.”

What was odd was that my personal account remained un-suspended for a much longer time!

My Strategy – Go Stealth:

With a substantial chunk of money on the table and after some unsuccessful attempts at getting any information out of Amazon I setup a plan to go very stealth in the creation of another account. My plan I thought was bullet proof! Here are the steps I took…

• New Entity
• New Address
• New Email
• New Phone Number
• New Contact Name
• 301 Redirected Website to a NEW website URL
• Logged in via a VPN I ONLY used to login to my Amazon associates account
• Used a browser, in incognito mode, I ONLY used for logging into my Amazon associated account

However, a couple months later it was shutdown with the same message… how I do not know other than they may have physically followed the URL.

To see how a very succesful Amazon Affiliate handled this problem check out Brent Hale.

Key Takeaways:

• Don’t buy a site that has been associated with a banned account
• Don’t connect someone to your account unless you absolutely have to!
• Don’t connect yourself to an account unless you absolutely have to!
• Ensure your sites are 100% compliant (easier said than done!)

Why This Pisses Me Off:

Other than the financial loss which will likely close at around $100k!

For every site I am trying very hard to be compliant with Amazon TOC’s, we are not doing anything sneaky and are simply trying to play by Amazon’s rules.

Amazon’s unwillingness to work with their associates/affiliates to resolve small issues drives us to take all kinds of strange actions!

Avoid This Pain – How to Ensure Your Amazon Associate Websites are 100% Compliant!

Like I said I hired someone full time in house to help systematize my business and had her spend a week doing the very not fun task of reading every single part of the various Terms and Conditions with Amazon associates accounts and turn it into an auditable process.

The plan was to ensure that every single one of our websites was 100% in compliant and before we could roll it out my account got suspended.

5 Steps I took to create an Amazon Audit Procedure for my Amazon Affiliate sites

1. Reading of the Amazon Associates Programs Operating Agreement
2. Creation of the “Associate Program Requirements Form”
3. Creating a Standard Operating Procedure
4. Hiring a Virtual Assistant and Giving Great Instructions
5. Execute our Audit Procedure Yourself

Reading the Amazon Associates Programs Operating Agreement

Reading the Amazon Associates Programs Operating Agreement was probably the most challenging part of this task. You probably are not familiar with this piece of “literature”, but the Agreement is broken into about four different sections that are only accessible via a clickable in text link on the first page of the Agreement. These sections consist of the “Participation Requirements”, the “Trademark Guidelines”, the “ Linking Requirements”, and the “License Agreement”.

1. To read the Associates Program Operating Agreement click here
2. To read the Associates Program Participation Requirements click here
3. To read the Associates Program Linking Requirements click here
4. To read the Associates Program Trademark Guidelines click here

As you can see, these guidelines are not easily accessible, but if you have the time to read through the ten (10)  thousand word document of legal gibberish (took me about 7 hours to fully understand what the heck they were talking about), then your account MIGHT not get shut down.

Creating the “Associate Program Requirements Form”

To make sure that all of our sites were compliant, I decided that an “Audit” process should be performed on every Amazon Affiliate site by an outsourced Virtual Assistant (VA). After I read through the Operating Agreement and felt confident enough with the legal content, I starting building an Audit questionnaire based on these Requirements. I wanted to make sure that the questions were asked in a clear and simple way so that someone with little knowledge of Amazon Affiliate sites could understand and answer these questions accurately. The questionnaire allows you to also insert some images so that you can help guide the Virtual Assistant on where they can find certain website elements.

See example here:

I used Google Forms because I like that the form produces a Google Sheet where I can view all of the Audit Responses. I standardized the questions on the questionnaire so that if the Auditor had to answer “Yes”, it would mean that the question failed the Audit. This way, If I take a quick look at the responses, I’m able to see immediately which sites needed the most work based on how many “Yes” responses I got.

Creating a Standard Operating Procedure for the company

Since we have about 70+ sites, I knew this would be a gruelling task so I decided to create a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP), which would allow me to outsource this work to a Virtual Assistant.

The SOP essentially provides a step by step guide and a clear process for all actions taken by the VA while executing the audit on our affiliate sites. The SOP also provides a clear process for how to remedy breaches of Amazon’s Terms and Conditions which, if done properly, will result in a compliant site. Check out the table below which shows the 15 steps we take to Audit and then make any necessary changes to make our sites compliant.

Hiring a Virtual Assistant ( VA) and Giving Great Instructions  

If you read my blog regularly, you might have read my post about hiring a VA. You can find it here if you want to read in depth.

What I like to do is hire a few VA’s via Upwork, give them a test (or in this case a site to audit) and see how they do. Since I want the VA to have the ability to not only find the issues on the site, but also to fix them, I’m going to look for a VA who has experience with wordpress sites.

Two things I like to look for is speed and quality. I can generally get a fast VA who outputs good quality work within a few hires. Once you find a great VA, send them lots and lots of work and great instructions!

Giving great instructions to the VA is absolutely necessary if you want them to produce the desired outcome. I have an instructions template that is specific to the Amazon process. If is broken up into 4 sections.

1. The Purpose: Here I explain WHY the job needs to get done by providing a blurb about the purpose they are serving by executing this job.
2. Responsibilities: Here I explain WHO is responsible and WHAT the responsibilities are
3. Procedure: Here I explain HOW to execute the procedure step by step. I have included this 15 step procedure above.
4. Table: Here is where I ask the VA to fill out the table if they have answered YES to any of the questions on the form

Example:

Login credentials for the wordpress site

• Login:
• Username:
• Password:

Use My Audit Process & Don’t Get Your Account Suspended!

If you want to use my audit process for your own sites, click the google doc link below and make a copy of it in Google to have your own copy with your own spreadsheet:

Associates Program Requirements From for the Public:

• Google Form – https://goo.gl/forms/Y2u7f8QJbyROmxpH2
• Google Sheet (create your own copy) – https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fRv1dbmk1_2GMz9AGJNqJdwXPxg33CLVySWHoBo1AUE/edit#gid=0 

Don’t have time? Let us Audit your site for you: Contact me if you would like my team to Audit your Amazon Affiliate site for you.