Monetize Archives - Website Income

Category: Monetize

Case Study – Article to Video by Ezoic and Its Impact

Ezoic has been helping its publisher to monetize their websites with no barriers. Allowing the publisher to host videos on their website and monetize them without having to face any prerequisites for monetizing can allow many publishers to generate substantial amounts of revenue if they can create video content relevant to their website.

Just when you think this could be an excellent opportunity to increase your revenue, Ezoic comes up with something even more attractive. The latest addition of a tool called Flickify turns your articles into videos with an AI narrator in less than a minute.

You can convert any post from your website to an article just by scanning your post, selecting a narrator’s voice, choosing your theme, and adding images or videos if you want – all these without needing an expensive production crew.

Ezoic claims that the purpose of hosting video & its monetization is to improve page SEO, increase ad revenue, and an opportunity to get your videos indexed & appeared on search engines. All of these mean more traffic and ad revenue to your site.

TEST – Ezoic’s Article To Video Conversion & Its Impact On SEO + Revenue

Based on the available tools on Ezoic, we wanted to combine the “article to video conversion” tool and video hosting to see what kind of result we could get for one of our websites.

We aimed to set up a test with 24 posts that have received the most traffic during the last 2 months and group them with similar post views where each group consists of two posts. One of the two posts will have a video created on Ezoic and have video monetization enabled.

The post without video will be a reference point for us to compare what kind of impact the video insertion has bought on the other page. The key areas we wanted to look at for each URL are:

Pageview count
Pageview duration
Page RPM
Page Performance

We can analyze the “before and after” impact with these data for the set of URLs we gathered, and with that intent, we let the test run for 30 days.

As discussed, we looked at 24 articles and created a video for 12 of them, while the other 12 were the “control group,” all on the same site.

After a month, we tried to compare one on one and the average data for the URLs, and it’s pretty visible that we have a mixed output for our matrices. Here are our takeaways:

We assumed with the addition of videos; the page views might increase for pages with video in them due to videos getting indexed and displayed on search engines. Although that was not the output we have in terms of page views – we understand that video visibility on search engines might require more time than 30 days. In addition, page views decreased slightly for the non-video pages, which let us believe it’s a sitewide drop in traffic than just on pages that recently had video inserted. We noticed a -14.63% decrease in pageviews for articles with video and -15.44% for articles without videos.
With the addition of video, we also assumed that it could increase the pageview duration. In this criteria, we found a mixed result, with some non-video pages continuing to have a similar pageview duration. In contrast, some pages with video had a higher page view duration than the previous month. This is not the case for all pages with videos, so it might be too soon to conclude anything at the moment.
Ezoic claimed one of their main priorities is maximizing ad revenue with video monetization. It holds true for our test, but it appears to be a site-wise RPM increase than just on the video pages. Articles without videos showed a 13.43% increase in RPM over the test period, whereas articles with videos had an 11.15% increase. It is safe to say within the 30 days time range, the videos were not the pillar for RPM increase.

Output:

Site Traffic Change:

Articles with Video: -14.63%

Articles without Video: -15.44%

RPM Change:

Articles with Video: +11.15%

Articles without Video: +13.43%

It is always way more fun when the case study reveals AMAZING results… this is not yet the case.

So the current conclusion is that the video tool is an amazingly simple way to create decent-quality videos. However, it is not a magic bullet to drive increased SEO and earnings benefits.

We will continue testing this tool, but the current results show that the fundamental approach of… do it if it adds value to your audience and doesn’t do it if it doesn’t hold with simple video creation.

We will also update this case study in a few months since the timing of only 1 month is not long enough, as we can see, to provide us with sufficient output.

Jon October 28, 2022 0 Comments

Buy and Sell WebsitesMonetize

Where to Sell Your Website for the Most Money? Sell for The Highest Price and Pay the Lowest Commission

In this article, I am going to look at where you can sell your content website and end up with the most money in your bank account!

Here is a great article listing 17 website brokers.

When choosing where you are going to sell your site there are a lot of things to consider but often it comes down to where you believe you are going to end up with the most money.

5 Considerations Other than Money:

Success Rates – What is the chance that your website will sell? Some brokerages share their success rate. For example Empire Flippers 74% and MotionInvest 96.43% all other things considered it is better to go with a broker that has a better chance of selling your site based on their success rate of selling other similar sites.
Effort Required – Some places where you can sell your site like Flippa are very labour intensive requiring you to do all the work to list your site and communicate with potential buyers. Many other brokers offer a managed solution where the listing, escrow and transfer is handled by the broker.
Expertise with Your Business Model – Some brokers specialize in SAAS, some in ECommerce while others in Content Sites. Choosing a broker that specializes in your type of business increases the chances they have buyers on their list and the expertise to help ensure a smooth transfer. It is an added bonus when the broker is an experienced operator in your type of business.
Length of Exclusivity – Some brokers will require a 90-day exclusivity which can be very frustrating if your business is not looking like it is going to sell. I recommend working with brokers who are confident they can sell your business and demonstrate that confidence with only a 30-day exclusivity agreement.
Willing to Sell Your Sized Business – Depending on the size of your site some brokers will not be interested. For example, Quiet Light Brokerage has had an average deal size of $500k and will only work with businesses of a certain size. Picking a broker that will work with a business of your size is a requirement.

But in the end the most important consideration for most people is where can you sell your website and keep the most money!

When it comes to where you can sell your site and keep the most money the 2 things you need to consider are…

Sell for the Highest Price
Have the lowest commission Structure

Let’s now dig into both of these considerations below…

Sell for the Highest Price:

So where can you go to sell for the highest price?

Like many other brokers (real estate etc) there is a strong bias for website brokers to say whatever they need to in order to get the listing. They might promise an unrealistically high price only to negotiate it down and you can feel powerless if there is a long exclusivity period where you have no other option for up to 6 months.

My favorite method to get the HIGHEST possible price is to use a broker that uses a modified Dutch Auction with a very large audience and success rate! This is exactly the structure that MotionInvest uses listing your business at a premium multiple initially so that if there is a strategic buyer that does not want to miss out on a perfectly aligned business they are willing to pay a high premium multiple. However it achieves the 96%+ success rate by dropping the price at set intervals to ensure the site will sell for as much as possible. This creates the ideal scenario for a seller with a high selling price and a high success rate.

For example, at MotionInvest if a Content Site is likely to sell for 36x monthly profit it will be listed at a higher multiple say ~45x and at set intervals the price will decline until a buyer purchases it. This ensures that if there is a strategic buyer willing to pay a premium price that value is captured by you the seller.

Lowest Commission:

This is fairly straightforward… the more money you get to keep the better for your bank account!

There is a surprising amount of work required to run a successful website brokerage and sell quality sites. This includes building an audience of buyers, completing in-depth due diligence, and supporting buyers/sellers with completing transactions.

The range for success fees go from a high of 20% to a low of 5%.

The table below shows the commission structure for several online brokers. The cells highlighted in Green show the best value for a managed broker based on listing fees. It is important to remember this is just one consideration and the listing price is the other part of the equation.

Conclusion – Where to Sell to Make the Most Money?

Based on the info above if you are looking to sell your website for the most money look for a website broker that has…

High published success rates
Requires minimal effort
Has expertise selling your type of business
A short exclusivity period
Will sell your sized business

And most importantly…

Will sell your business for the highest price and take the lowest commission on that sale

If your goal is to have as high a probability as possible of putting as much money in your bank account from selling your content website then MotionInvest.com is the best option with their Modified Dutch Auction and favorable Commission Structure.

Jon October 3, 2022 0 Comments

AffiliateAmazonWordpress

Free Amazon Affiliate WordPress Plugins [2022 Update]

Monetizing your WordPress site is important if you are looking to make money with it. The passive streamlining of income from a WordPress site can be pushed to a very fine limit with a combination of content that provides value to the readers, SEO-related adjustments that help your pages to stand out in the search engine, and a reliable monetization method.

One good way to monetize your WordPress site is with an Amazon associate. Basically, you must have an amazon associate account that is fully approved and you will be promoting products from Amazon that are being reviewed or relatable to your niche.

To prepare this setup with a WordPress site you might need some plugins that will help your business run smoothly. This guide shares some of the free amazon affiliate WordPress plugins that you can start using right away without having to pay extra bucks as a startup investment.

These free WordPress plugins provide a variety of features designed to increase Amazon sales, such as automated product updates and personalized recommendations, link localization, etc. Additionally, you can create a certain setup for your preferred amazon ads to appear on certain areas of the website without having to do it for every page. I have also included some essential plugins that maintain amazon associate disclosure for the entire website without needing your interaction.

Overall, these free Amazon affiliate WordPress plugins help an Associate to start running a profitable Amazon affiliate website. Keep reading till the surprising bonus tool is added in the final section of this post.

Prerequisite for using these Amazon affiliate plugins

Not all the plugins in this post require a special setup before unveiling their true functionalities. Some of these plugins are really handy to configure. However, plugins like Affiliatetable do need access to Amazon’s product advertising API to be able to configure with your site.

Some other plugins may require additional on-page configuration to control their functionality based on your requirements, for example controlling Amazon affiliate disclosure on pages that has amazon products embedded.

As these plugins are free to use so you might feel the lack of features at some point however they are good enough to get kickstart your Amazon Affiliate site. Some of these plugins are freemium that come with advanced features when you consider upgrading to a premium plan.

To begin using these free Amazon WordPress affiliate plugins –

Simply install the plugins and activate them to access their controls on the WordPress dashboard.
Next, you might need to add your Amazon affiliate ID (in some plugins)
You might also need to add PA API in certain cases too.
That’s should be good to start using them on your web pages.

That being said let’s dive into these amazing free amazon WordPress affiliate plugins you should definitely try out.

9 Free Amazon Affiliate WordPress Plugins

1. Disclosure for Amazon Affiliate

Disclosure for Amazon Affiliate plugin allows your site to be compatible with Amazon trademark disclaimer and affiliate disclaimer. It’s very easy to use, just install the plugin, and no additional setup is required on your end.

This plugin places the disclosure text from amazon at the right location of post-type pages, depending on plugin configuration. The disclaimers are set to ignore by Google so that crawlers do not pick anything from the disclaimer texts while indexing your page.

The disclaimer texts are fully editable and customizable however you see them fit on your pages. As for customization, you can utilize the classic editor environment to add additional html tags and design them via custom CSS applied to your site.

Moreover, you will have global and custom control to adjust the requirement of disclosures on-page levels. It’s a simple but efficient way to control the utilization of the plugin because you might not need the disclosure on every single page.

Overall, this is a perfect plugin to have the FTC and Amazon disclosures on posts and pages! Its basic utility and simplicity make this plugin so awesome. Apart from that Disclosure for Amazon Affiliates is available for FREE on the WordPress repository.

Check the plugin here: Disclosure for Amazon Affiliate

2. Site Buddy

As you grow amazon focused websites you will realize the need of ensuring correct affiliate tags are in place, broken links need to be fixed, and products that are out of stock need to be reviewed so that you are not losing your well-deserved commissions.

Sitebuddy is a tool that can manage all of that hustles for you. The way it works is by scanning your website’s pages, finding out amazon links, the crosscheck if the product ID is available in stock. In addition, it will check if the tags are correctly placed and link status.

The best part is this is a freemium tool and the free plan lets you scan 25 pages per month. Another advantage is you don’t have to install any plugins on your site, everything can be managed via their dashboard.

Additionally, it ensures the pages that include amazon products are Amazon compliant with Amazon terms and conditions. It finds all the pages without Amazon Affiliate Disclaimer and asks you to add it so your Amazon Associate account runs safely.

Check this tool: Sitebuddy

3. Add & Replace Affiliate Links for Amazon

As an Amazon Associate you know it’s important to have your affiliate tag included in any links that you share. The add & replace affiliate links for Amazon plugin ensures your links have the right affiliate tags so that you get the credit for your hard work.

This plugin automatically changes shortened amazon links (e.g., amzn.to) that hide the Amazon associate tag and replace them with long-form amazon links that embed your affiliate tag. It saves you a lot of time from manually changing shortened amazon links and adding correct affiliate tags.

Shortened Amazon links do have the affiliate tags assigned if they are created via Amazon associate site stripe, but in case you want your links to be visible with correct affiliate tags these plugins definitely help.

The plugin can automatically find and replace all shortened links on your website with long links that include your affiliate ID tag. This way, you can be certain you are earning revenue from every sale that’s made through your website.

Check this plugin: Add & Replace Affiliate Links for Amazon

4. Ad Inserter

Ad Inserter is another free WordPress plugin that can be useful for your Amazon affiliate site. This plugin allows you to insert ads into your WordPress site. This can be useful when you want to display a certain contextual Amazon Native Shopping Ads or product box in all posts.

Managing the ad blocks is pretty handy – all you have to create your preferred blocks and then set them for either manual or automatic insertion at any location of your web page. You can even control the visibility of blocks in your preferred page type.

A plugin like Ad Inserter fully packed with various important features for free is a no-brainer. It’s a powerful plugin that you definitely need to look at if you are serious about listing amazon products on your site without investing in premium plugins.

This plugin supports all types of ads, including Google AdSense, Google Ad Manager (DFP), Amazon Native Shopping Ads, Media.net, Infolinks, and rotating banners. You can insert opt-in forms, header scripts, Javascript, CSS, HTML, and PHP anywhere on the page. In addition, the Ad inserter plugin comes with a built-in debugging, and ad-block notice tool.

Check this plugin: Ad Inserter

5. Thirsty Affiliates

If you want your links to look genuine and add a little bit more trustworthiness when sending someone over affiliate product pages, the Thirsty Affiliate plugin can help you. This is a freemium plugin that allows users to clock an outgoing link with custom slugs.

ThirstyAffiliates also has special features to help you comply with Amazon’s terms of service, especially about link clocking, which is their smark uncloaking to stay under Amazon regulation. We have been using this plugin without any issues.

With this plugin, you can insert links into your posts with ease. You can search Amazon from within your WordPress dashboard, find the product of choice and link it so that affiliate tracking is available in Thirsty Affiliate’s reports!

The best part is you can get the basic plugin for free and later upgrade to the premium version once you are able to pull the desired result on your site. With the premium subscription, you can also get links placed automatically in your content for relevant keywords and geo-target your visitors.

Check the plugin here: Thirsty Affiliate

6. Affiliatable

Affiliatable helps you to build a product table and product box to showcase amazon products as an affiliate. With better visual representation the conversion can be improved and Affiliatetable is one of those plugins that make this work super easy. It also comes as a freemium plugin so you can definitely benefit from using it.

With this plugin, you can create high-converting product comparison tables, top product boxes, pros and cons boxes for products, and single product boxes. For this plugin to work you must have access to Amazon API. Other features such as geotargeting, in-depth click reports, and templates are available on the premium version.

Affiliate Table comes with similar features to AAWP which is a premium plugin, so trying out Affiliate table’s free version definitely worth it. With the free version, you can create unlimited tables and boxes for one website.

Check this plugin: Affiliatable

7. EasyAzon

As an Amazon associate, you would want to capture maximum profit from the products you have been reviewing and adding to your content. Well, EasyAzon does that for you, which is a free plugin with no premium plan.

Although EasyAzon is described as a plugin to improve conversion and increase profit with the geo-targeting feature it still lacks some of the advanced features available on similar plugins. Although, you can still benefit from the features it offers for free.

This plugin is compatible with the current WordPress version and frequent updates make it more convenient to use on your site. EasyAzon features an automatic link localizer, advanced analytics & reports, product popup from a link, and link clocking.

With EasyAzon, you can create text affiliate links directly to any product available for sale on Amazon.com without having to go through the steps of manually creating links from within the Amazon.com website. This saves you a ton of time and makes creating affiliate links much easier!

Check this plugin: EasyAzon

8. Amazon Link Engine

Amazon Link Engine is a free plugin that is actually a part of geniuslink. Geniuslink is a powerful tool for localization, link management, and link tracking. The Amazon Link Engine is a child of Geniuslink and inherits its localization and link management properties, however, to achieve these features you must create an account on Geniouslink, which is a premium tool.

You can download the plugin on the WordPress repository. It’s frequently updated and compatible with the current WordPress version. In the plugin setup, you can connect to Geniuslink too in case you have an active account on Geniuslink.

The plugin automatically converts existing amazon links localization compatible, so you earn commission from various country’s Associate accounts. Note that, even though your links will be automatically localized to be able to earn commission you must have an active account on Geniuslink. The newly added links on your WordPress site will get converted too.

Overall, Amazon Link Engine comes as an entirely free plugin with some limitations, which can be activated via having a Geniuslink account that turns out to be cheaper than many other similar plugins. You pay a small flat fee for a certain amount of clicks you receive via your site.

Check plugin: Amazon Link Engine

9. Product Comparision Table Generator

To display a nice-looking Amazon product table or product block with automatically updated price tags and description needs Amazon API. As you might know, nowadays, Amazon requires 3 valid sales and policy compliance for you to access their advertising API.

So as an alternative to building good-looking Amazon product tables that can be inserted inside your content without needing Amazon Advertising API, lab softsolvate’s Product Comparison Table Generator is one tool you would definitely want to give a try.

It is simple but also an effective way to create eye-catching tables for the products on your website. You will have to assign Amazon product URL (affiliate URL), product name, product producer, and description. Once you add those you can select your preferred table color from the table control.

To get your table or product card into your WordPress site, add their CSS via WordPress customizer (one-time setup), and then add your table HTML wherever desired in your post.

Check this tool: Product Comparision Table Generator

Conclusion: Now you have these 9 plugins to set up your Amazon Affiliate website without investing a dime on Amazon product publishing tools. There are superior tools to go for if your budget allows you and you should definitely consider those premium tools. But that doesn’t mean the free tools available to you are not useful enough. These are for certain some of the great free tools you can use as an amazon associate.

There are many more WordPress sites. Bookmark this page so you find the rest when I update this post with more free amazon affiliate plugins for WordPress site.

You can also read:

Jon June 21, 2022 0 Comments

Buy and Sell WebsitesMonetize

Micro Website Investing Roll Up Files IPO – Onfolio IPO Thoughts

The Content is for informational purposes only, you should not construe any such information or other material as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice. Do your own research.

The business model of buying cash flow producing websites at lower multiples 2x-4x, rolling them together and then taking the larger combined entity public at a much higher multiple is a VERY appealing business model.

A few have pulled it off VerticalScope while many more of these roll-up plays have failed (some spectacularly – IncomeStore). I started to attempt this in 2017 before the founding team got sucked into the crypto rabbit hole. The Amazon FBA world has seen a surge of this type of roll up activity over the last couple of years.

So… it has been with great interest that I have followed Dom Wells and OnFolio with interest as they work to take their portfolio public. I have known Dom since 2014 and it has been fun to follow along with his various online projects including this incredibly ambitious one.

Recently OnFolio has filed with the SEC to have an IPO and has therefore revealed a lot of information related to its operations for us to dig into and learn about website investing.

This post looks at the performance of OnFolio to date and what we can take away from it as we build our own strategies in this space.

TLDR:

Running a portfolio of sites can be VERY financially rewarding! The estimated performance for OnFolio website investing is…
- ROCE = 72%
- ROI = 116% over ~2 years
Doing it at scale and turning it into an investable vehicle is REALLY HARD!
- Net Loss of $1.9M on revenue of $1.8M due to very high SG&A expenses.
Roll-Up Financial Alchemy Could be a Massive Wealth Generating Event
- Total funding estimated at ~$3.1M (shown as accumulated deficit) spent over 2 years results in an implied pre-money valuation of $59M for the IPO (20x return if they pull it off… likely even better since a lot of that $3.1M was debt)

Source of Information:

SEC Website – https://www.sec.gov/edgar/browse/?CIK=0001825452
Specifically the S1 – https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001825452/000165495422005381/onfolio_s1.htm

This article will look at…

What is OnFolio
The Simple Math of a Roll-Up Business Model
OnFolio Performance
Implied Valuation of OnFolio
Conclusion

What is OnFolio:

OnFolio buys and/or manages online businesses (content websites, ecommerce businesses and productized services).

From their filing “We acquire controlling interests in and actively manage websites that we believe (i) operate in sectors with long-term growth opportunities, (ii) have positive and stable cash flows, (iii) face minimal threats of technological or competitive obsolescence and (iv) can be managed by our existing team or have strong management teams largely in place. Through the acquisition and growth of a diversified group of websites with these characteristics, we believe we offer investors in our shares an opportunity to diversify their own portfolio risk.”

The Simple Math of a Roll-Up Business Model

The math is incredibly compelling…

Buy online businesses, using debt ideally to not get diluted, at 2x-4x the earnings and then go public and get a 20x+ valuation on the “rolled up” assets.

Simple enough in theory but does it work in the real world?

OnFolio Performance:

This is the new information that was fun to dig into.

Overall Numbers:

2021

Revenue = $1,808,543
Cost of Revenue = $1,073,509
Gross Profit = $735,034
Expenses = $2,687,345
Income (Loss) from Operations = ($1,952,311)

So on $1.8M in revenue, $0.7M in gross profit was generated but expenses crushed that resulting in a $1.9M loss.

I believe these massive expenses are a reflection of the effort needed to go public… look at the length of the filings! Those would be some scary legal/accounting bills!

The Seller and General Administration expenses are huge and potentially a large portion of this are one-off costs associated with going public. In the filing, it shows $553,651 in costs estimated in the efforts to go public representing a significant chunk of the expenses.

A more interesting and potentially fair way of looking at OnFolio is how has it done with the sites it has.

Portfolio:

5 – wholly-owned content/ecom sites
1 – wholly-owned productized service
10 – websites with a management agreement (OnFolio gets paid to manage the site)
2 – productized services being managed (OnFolio gets paid to manage the business)

Looking at the 100% owned websites and the provided purchase agreements we can then estimate their performance based on the organic traffic from ahrefs…

NOTE – The MASSIVE drop of 90% for PrettyNeatCreative occurred in the first month and has climbed back so although it looks terrible this drop may have been calculated into the purchase price based on the APA and relatively low purchase price?

So traffic across the 100% owned portfolio is up 9.06% for the sites we have all the required information for.

This shows the strength of the portfolio model where several sites can drop but the overall portfolio performs better.

Return on Capital Employed

One of the best measures for a roll-up is how profitably can it deploy capital in acquisitions.

Basically has Onfolio created value through its acquisitions and website operations?

Looking at the revenue breakdown…

Website Management $940,779
Advertising and Content Revenue = $204,910
Product Sales = $661,154
Other = $1,700
Total Revenue = $1,808,543
Gross Profit = $735,034

Then considering the net cash used in investing activities in 2020 and 2021 of $1,020,496 we have a ROCE = 735,034 / 1,020,496 = 72% which is huge!

Or another way is the ROI if the assets purchased were liquidated at a 3x multiple

Portfolio value with a 3x multiple = $735,034 x 3 = $2,205,102
Investment = $1,020,496
ROI = 116% over ~2 years

So the portfolio performance despite some sites dropping appears to be very positive. A couple of things to note would be how much of the cost of revenue is not fully captured in the cost of revenue declared such as…

Management time building/running productized services from scratch (not a repeatable activity at scale)
Strategy/sales for the website management agreements potentially not being fully baked into the cost of revenue.

Implied Valuation of OnFolio:

I am no financial advisor/investment expert etc so I hope I am calculating this correctly.

Amount of Cash Being Raised:

“We estimate that the net proceeds from this offering will be approximately $13,246,349 , or approximately $15,316,849 if the underwriters exercise their over-allotment option in full, after deducting the underwriting discounts and commissions and estimated offering expenses payable by us.”

Cost Per Share:“14,127,125 shares (or 14,564,018 shares if the underwriters exercise their over-allotment option in full), at an assumed price of $5.14 per share.”
So the final value of OnFolio would be 14,564,018 x $5.14 = $74,859,052 which would include the assets of ~$15M cash raised plus the existing portfolio of assets.

This is the financial alchemy that makes rollup business models incredibly attractive…

Deploy ~$1M in capital
Buy assets for 2-3x
Have those assets perform reasonably well
Go public at an 84x multiple on Gross Profit? (74M – 15M cash = 59M non cash value of the business / 0.7M Gross Profit = 84 X)
- Even though the overall business is losing money and will continue to lose money.

Overall this seems like a shocking valuation to command especially given some of the very scary wording in the filing… “Our independent registered public accounting firm has expressed substantial doubt about our ability to continue as a going concern;” I don’t read enough of these filings to know if this is boilerplate risk communication or a red flag… certainly sounds like a red flag!

Summary:

Running a portfolio of sites can be VERY financially rewarding! The estimated performance for OnFolio is…
- ROCE = 72%
- ROI = 116% over ~2 years
Doing it at scale and turning it into an investable vehicle is REALLY HARD!
- Net Loss of $1.9M on revenue of $1.8M due to very high SG&A expenses needed to go public.
Roll-Up Financial Alchemy Could be a Massive Wealth Generating Event
- Total funding estimated at ~$3.1M (shown as accumulated deficit) spent over 2 years results in an implied pre-money valuation of $59M for the IPO
- Dom with 5,550,000 shares at $5.14 would have a very good day!

I am impressed with the ambition of this strategy and wish Dom and all involved the best!

Jon May 12, 2022 0 Comments

Amazon

Amazon Affiliate Requirements – Disclosure and other Rules

A few years ago I shared my story about my Amazon Affiliate Account getting closed and costing me a painful $100k in affiliate advertising program earnings!

Today I'm sharing a detailed analysis of the Amazon Affiliate Requirements and what you need to do to stay compliant so that your Associates Program account doesn’t get closed.

Most importantly, I'm sharing a completely free new WordPress Plugin that helps you get your site compliant with Amazon in seconds!

Specifically, I'm going to go over the updated disclosure recommendations for 2020, how the free plugin makes it easier then ever to be compliant, and a detailed audit process that we can execute as affiliate marketers.

If you have had your Amazon Associate account closed we will get into how to appeal to get it re-opened, and if all else fails, the critical steps to open a brand new one.

Think about this post as covering 2 parts…

First: Prevention (what to do to not get your account closed)
Second: Recovery (how to get your account re-opened or create a new one)

Prevention Sections:

7 Most Common Reasons for Getting Banned by Amazon Associates
Amazon Affiliate Disclosure Template
Complete Amazon Affiliate Requirements (including checklist) updated for 2020

Recovery Section:

Appeal and Reopen Your Closed Amazon Affiliate Account
How to Start a “New” Amazon Associate Account

To read the Amazon Associates Program details (highly recommended - but tough read), here are the 2 links:

My $100k Loss Backstory & Why I Care So Much About This Topic

Very shortly after I left my day job and had planned (in part) on my Amazon Associate earnings as being one of my main sources of income to support my family, I received the dreaded email saying I was no longer welcome to participate in the Amazon Associate program. Yikes!!! I had just made the entrepreneurial jump and then immediately took a HUGE hit. No longer being able to run my Amazon Affiliate websites was going to be an issue for my business. I needed to figure out a way to fix this.

The reason... myself and a partner had just purchased an Amazon Affiliate niche site and one of his other partners was doing some sketchy things with Amazon.

This impact was PAINFUL and wiped out well over six figures in value very shortly after I left my day job. The silver lining is I'm now able to help other Amazon Affiliate store owners by sharing details about the process on this blog post.

This is what Amazon said in both their emails ...

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.

Based on the analysis I was able to identify that the bad actor was a partner of one of my partners resulting in 3 accounts I was associated with (and all connected) getting suspended.

From that, the process and tools shared in this post were born.

This post, as well as additional research, has led us to create this list of the 7 most common mistakes that people are making with their Amazon Affiliate sites that could lead to their accounts getting suspended or closed!

But what I am most proud of is the best, fastest and completely free wordpress plugin dedicated to helping ensure you stay compliant with Amazon - check it out!

7 Most Common Reasons an Amazon Associate Account is Closed

In this post I 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 since this is affiliate marketing. I understand the need to try and find the right balance between risk and reward, and in this post have tried to present the “ideal” low risk plan.

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 Amazon Affiliate website and the Amazon associates program.

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

ONE - Use of Logo at all or Trademark without Disclosure Statement

Update - Thanks to Matt Allen AMALinksPro for providing feedback and based on his research and interpretation of the Operating Agreement this section has been updated.

Everyone knows to include an earnings disclosure but what about a trademark ownership disclaimer?

Amazon Logo and Trademark Disclosure Template:

The correct disclosure to use on every page of your site that has Amazon or an Amazon.com logo is “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 Amazon thinks 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.

This question comes from probably the most clear requirement on the Amazon Affiliate Program Rules and 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 then Amazon could shut you down:

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

TIP – Most people have the earnings disclaimer on their site but people (myself included) usually miss having the trademark disclaimer on the required pages.
TIP – Although it looks ugly, if you want to be on the very safe side don't include images and do include the Amazon trademark disclaimer on every page and not just the disclaimer page! This free affiliate plugin gets you setup properly in seconds!

So to answer the question ...

Can I use Amazon logo on my affiliate website?

No, although the operating agreement contradicts itself and there is an argument for being able to use it. I would recommend to NOT use any image for Amazon OTHER than the ones provided and only if you are using an Affiliate link. So what are the images provided by Amazon? Just these beautiful ones from 1994 when Amazon got founded 🙂 ...

To read a much deeper analysis of this and an interesting chat transcript with an Amazon customer support checkout this great post...

https://amalinkspro.com/can-i-use-the-amazon-logo-or-the-amazon-prime-logo-on-my-website/

TWO - Incentives

The second most common issue is the following question:

“Does the site offer affiliate advertising incentives (including any money, rebate, discount, points, donation to charity or other organization) for using Affiliate Links on the site?”

Many of the niche website affiliate marketing tricks need to be dialled back when it comes to staying compliant with the Amazon Affiliate Program Rules.

We have been finding that some 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 an additional x%”.

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

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

THREE - Incorrect Use of Pricing or Product Images

The third most common issue that people have with their sites is incorrectly using product images and/or prices.

Here is the general rule of thumb – don’t include images from Amazon or pricing UNLESS you are pulling them with the Amazon API.

Comparison tables are great but don’t include the price on your site because Amazon products change their prices 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.

Tools such as AMALinks Pro and AAWP will use the Amazon Associates API to automatically pull the price and images.

Below are a couple examples of what not to do ...

Example: You still have this on your site after the promotion ends

Remember: ONLY pull the price or product image using the Amazon API.

FOUR - Link Cloaking

You will not cloak, hide, spoof, or otherwise obscure the URL of your Site containing Special Links (including by use of Redirecting Links) or the user agent of the application in which Content is displayed or used such that we cannot reasonably determine the site or application from which a customer clicks through such Special Link to the Amazon Site.

– Program Participation Requirements, Section 6. (v) “Content on your Site"

The fourth most common issue with Amazon Affiliate sites is the question “Are any links on the site using a link shortener in a manner that makes it unclear that we are linking to an Amazon Site?”. This is listed as 4th but is certainly the most debated issue when it comes to Amazon.

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 Bitly, PrettyLinkPro or Geni.us Link? The truth is it is not 100% clear! Many many people do and Amazon knows they do so it is likely a lower risk (if you take some additional steps), but still not 100% compliant with Amazon.

If you do use one of these URL shorteners you need to take an extra step to ensure that it is clear the link will direct people to Amazon. Here & here is how Geni.us links discusses the use of its tool to stay compliant with Amazon Associates.

The short version is DO NOT use link shorteners like Bitly and PrettyLinksPro. If you are going to use tools like Geni.us links, then use your judgement based on how they recommend you use it.

FIVE - Off Page Promotion (social, email, print, etc)

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, Facebook Ads, Youtube videos, MMS, email or attachment to email, advertising activities on behalf of Amazon or their affiliate sites?”.

This one gets a lot of people flagged 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 an affiliate 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.

“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.

Many bloggers and influencers get this one wrong trying to generate passive income from their audience.

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.

SIX - Use Star Rating and Reviews

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 many people using reviews as testimonials, which makes a lot of sense since it gives honest 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 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.

SEVEN - Associate Yourself With Someone Whose Account was Banned

Another tough one to avoid and one we see a lot of sites doing. People will be added as a user to an account and then when that account gets banned, so does theirs.

Here is what the email from Amazon will say:

An account belonging to you (or a person or entity connected or affiliated with you) has previously been closed for violations of the Operating Agreement or one of the other Amazon marketing programs.

The best way to avoid this is simple: 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.

Amazon Affiliate Disclosure Template and How to Install

The simplest and fastest way to get the correct disclosure in the proper spot on your website is this free Amazon plugin I had created.

The most commonly discussed topic in terms of staying compliant with the Amazon Associates Agreement is the need for showing you are part of the Amazon Associates program.

It is a critical part of staying compliant and therefore I would not be doing you justice if I did not include the current thoughts on how to maintain compliance.

For an in depth analysis on what Amazon Associate Disclaimer to use, check out Doug form NicheSiteProjects' post here or what Dom Wells wrote at Onfolio here.

There is a surprising amount of debate on how best to handle the Amazon Disclosure requirements.

The Amazon Agreement States:

You must clearly state the following, or any substantially similar statement previously allowed under this Agreement, on your Site or any other location where Amazon may authorize your display or other use of Program Content: “As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.” (Section 5).

Most people therefore include some version of this in the footer or a disclaimer page and think they are good.

Then… Amazon shared an email in 2019 stating:

This is a reminder of your disclosure obligations under the Operating Agreement. Any time you share an affiliate link, it’s important to disclose that to your audience. They will trust you more if you are transparent about where you are directing them and why. To meet the Associate Program's requirements, you must (1) include a legally compliant disclosure with your links and (2) identify yourself on your Site as an Amazon Associate with the language required by the Operating Agreement.

To comply with Federal Trade Commission FTC regulations, your link-level disclosure must be:

Clear. A clear disclosure could be as simple as “(paid link)”, “#ad” or “#CommissionsEarned”.
Conspicuous. It should be placed near any affiliate link or product review in a location that customers will notice easily. They shouldn’t have to hunt for it.

In addition, the Operating Agreement requires that the following statement clearly and conspicuously appears on your Site: “As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.” For social media user-generated content, this statement must be associated with your account.

(Amazon email Oct 2019)

Associates should also consider the relevant social media platform’s guidelines. For example, Associates may use Facebook's Branded Content tool.

So what are you to do now? Where do you place the FTC and Amazon required affiliate earnings disclosure?

The options on where to include the disclosure are shown below along with our recommendation.

Footer Only - Not enough since it won't be above the first affiliate link
Top of Sidebar - Not enough since it won't be above your first affiliate link on mobile
Hello Bar - One solution, but likely overkill as again, it may not show on all mobile and impact user experience.
Identify Each Link - This seems to be what they are after but I would think this HAS to be overkill. Anytime you link to Amazon you include “Commissions Earned”... seems excessive!
Top of Each Page - Safest, but be careful to not end up with your search result showing the disclaimer text instead of your first paragraph or meta description.

How to include your affiliate disclosure but not have Google index it?

Over the last few months I have seen several search results with the top part of the page indexed with the affiliate disclosure. This hurts SEO and provides a poor user experience. The solution to this is to use Google On/Off flags

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

To learn more about google on/off flags, check out this Google Search Help article.

Make sure to not end up with this as your search result:

Below is the tool I had created to install the affiliate disclaimer as well as the trademark disclaimer.

Option 1 - Install Disclosure for Amazon Affiliate Plugin

Under 30 seconds to be compliant (free plugin)

This plugin was developed to help us ensure all of our Amazon Affiliate sites are 100% compliant with the FTC disclosure and Amazon earnings disclosure requirements.

The Amazon Associate Disclosure plugin is the fastest and easiest way to get your Amazon Affiliate site fully compliant with both the:

FTC and Amazon required Affiliate Disclosure
Amazon Trademark disclaimer

It places the pre-loaded disclosure text from Amazon in the right locations on your website with the bonus of tagging it so search engines will ignore the disclaimer and rank your content.

Benefits of the Amazon Associate Disclosure Plugin

ONE - Simple Fast and No Setting Changes Required

It is rare that you can use a tool that achieves everything you need it to with so little effort on your end.

With this wordpress plugin in seconds you can have a compliant disclosure properly setup on your site. Simply...

Install
Activate
Done - You are compliant

TWO - Proper Google On Off Tags

Many people have recently and correctly moved their affiliate disclosure to the top of their articles. This affiliate disclosure text is incorrectly now being picked up by Google as the page description. This is a large problem for both search rankings and click through rate.

The solution is that using this plugin the Google Off / On tags are properly placed so that the disclosure text will be ignored by Google and your great content will be why they rank your page.

THREE - Fully Editable Text and Customizable Appearance

Although it is not needed and comes installed following your sites design with the text provided by Amazon you can both…

Change the text to add additional disclosures or modify the words however you see fit
Fully customize the section however you see fit

FOUR - Control Globally or on the Page/Post Level

Not every one of your posts/pages likely need the disclosure and you may not want them on every website.

You can easily and efficiently control which of the posts & pages see the disclosure text blocks.

Both global and local level controls are available.

Install Free Plugin

Option 2 - How To Easily Install Affiliate Disclosure on Your WordPress Site with Ad Inserter

Another popular option to ensure each page has the right disclaimer, which takes a little more work but gives you more flexibility, is shown below. This process uses one of the most popular WordPress plugins Ad Inserter. Like the method above it should work with any existing plugins like Yoast SEO, RankMath or Woocomerce plugins.

Ad Inserter plugin is originally developed to inject ads to any pages/posts on WordPress sites. It can also be used to automatically add affiliate disclosures to every post. That's what I am going to walk you through belwo.

Step 1: Log in to your WordPress dashboard and go to Plugins > Add New and search for "Ad Inserter" then click the "Install Now" button.

Step 2: Click the "Activate" button.

You will be directly taken to your Installed Plugins page

Step 3: Click "Settings"

The Ad Inserter settings page will be opened

Step 4: Copy the following HTML code and paste it in the block editor

TIP: a lot of sites are currently having their Amazon Associate disclosure appear in the description within search results. The Google Off/Google On tag solves this problem.

<!--googleoff: all-->
<p>As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.</p>
<!--googleon: all-->

NOTES:

The two Google off and Google on tags are to prevent Google from indexing the text or the code in between.
Optional: If you would like to change the space around the disclaimer text or to change the font size. So it looks different from the post content. You can select "Custom CSS" from the "Alignment" dropdown box, then click the "Show" button and scroll down until you see the CSS box. Then paste the following CSS code:

margin: -10px 0px 20px 0px; font-size: 80%;

Step 5: Click "Save Settings"

That's it!

Adding text in the site footer

We can also use the Ad Inserter plugin to add this text to be compliant with Amazon trademark terms.

Step 1: In the Ad Inserter plugin settings page, click on a new Tab. In our case here, Tab #2

Step 2: Paste the following code in the block editor:

<!--googleoff: all-->
<p>Amazon and the Amazon logo are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc, or its affiliates</p>
<!--googleon: all-->

Step 3: Select all checkboxes here to display the text in ALL site pages. Then select "Footer" and in alignment dropdown list select "Center"

Step 4: Click "Save Settings"

Complete 35 Question Amazon Affiliate Requirements List (Updated 2021)

Now that you have some context on what Amazon is looking for in terms of compliance, here is a step-by-step procedure you can use to ensure you are staying compliant with Amazon.

If you want to go deeper than the most common issues and be as fully compliant as possible, here is our attempt at turning the Amazon Associates agreements into an actionable list.

To make this process even easier I have had my team turn this into a 100% free to use Google Sheet that you can make a copy of and edit.

After reading every word several times and having my team update the procedure we have been using for the last few years to ensure our sites are staying compliant with the amazon associate program, we were able to come up with some actionable steps.

Here is the complete list of 35 questions to turn the Amazon Associates Operating agreement into an actionable questions list.

There is a service that can complete this task for you here - brandbuilders.io/amazon-associate-audit/

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"?
Has the site displayed or used any trademark or logo of any third party seller on the Amazon Site in connection with any of our Affiliate Links without permission from the seller?
Have any privacy links/affiliates’ trademarks or logos that are included in a Special Link been removed, obscured, altered, or made invisible, illegible, or indecipherable to visitors of the site?
As the user of this site, will you be linked or redirected to any other forms of monetization that include Amazon Affiliate Links other than the Amazon site?
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?
Does this site display content that requires us (the website owners) to sublicense or otherwise give any rights in or to any content to any other person or entity?
Do any pages on the site get redirected to a different URL that are not an Amazon Associate IDs or Tags?
Are any Amazon Affiliate Links shared on other social platforms/networks such as Twitter or Facebook?
Within the site’s content, are there any names used within that content, in a manner that implies a person’s or company’s endorsement or sponsorship of, or commercial tie-in with, any product, service?
Have any keywords, search terms, or other identifiers that include the word “Amazon,” or “Kindle,” or any other trademark of Amazon or its affiliates been purchased or registered or used in domain or subdomain, Associate ID’s or Tags?
Does the site offer incentives to increase the conversion rate (including any money, rebate, discount, points, donation to charity or other organization) for using Affiliate Links on the site?
Is the operation of any buttons, links, or other features of the Amazon Site modified, redirected, suppressed, or substituted?
Are there any Affiliate Links used to link to the Amazon Site from references to items on the site that are not products?
Does the site take any action that could reasonably cause any customer confusion as to our relationship with Amazon or as to the site on which any transactions (e.g., search, browse, or order) are occurring?
Are any Affiliate Links or content used in connection with any spyware, malware, virus, worm, Trojan horse, or other malicious or harmful code, or any software application not expressly and knowingly authorized by users?
Does the site frame the Amazon Site, or any part of it, including by display within an integrated web browser (e.g., WebView) within a Mobile Application?
Does the site post any Affiliate Links or other content promoting the Amazon Site within any pop-up or pop-under windows, transitional page ads, or layer ads around or with the display of any site that does not belong to us?
Does the site include any Affiliate Links in any content that you place on the Amazon Site?
Does the site contain functions that might artificially increase advertising fees?
Does the site request, collect, obtain, store, cache, or otherwise use any account information used by customers in connection with any Amazon Site (including any usernames or passwords of Amazon Site customers)?
Does the site have functions that will attempt to intercept or redirect traffic from or on, or divert advertising fees from, any site that participates in the Program.
Does the site artificially generate clicks or impressions or create sessions on the Amazon Site, whether by way of a robot or software program or otherwise?
Does the site display or otherwise use any of Amazon's customer reviews or star ratings, in part or in whole?
Does your site hide, cloak, spoof or otherwise obscure the URL of your site containing Affiliate Links (including by use of a redirecting page)?
Does your site knowingly collect, use, or disclose personal information from children under 13 years of age.
Is the link used on the site missing an Associate ID or “tag”?
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?
Are there any links on the site that are related to limited time promotions that are now expired?
Is there any content that could be perceived as overly promotional or inaccurate advertising?
Do you clearly state the following, or any substantially similar statement previously allowed under this Agreement, on your Site or any other location where Amazon may authorize your display or other use of Program Content: “As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.”?
Does the site have any content relating to products offered on any site other than the Amazon Site, in accordance with the Associates Program Policies?
Within the site’s content, are there any names used in a manner that implies a persona’s or company’s endorsement or sponsorship of, or commercial tie-in with, any product or service?
Does the site state any testimonials from Amazon or third-parties?
Does the site contain functions that cause any page of the Amazon site to open in a customer’s browser other than as a result of the customer clicking on an affiliate link on the site?
Does the site disclose accurately and adequately, either through a privacy policy or otherwise, how they collect, use, store, and disclose data collected from visitors, including, where applicable, that third parties (including Amazon and other advertisers) may serve content and advertisements, collect information directly from visitors, and place or recognize cookies on visitors’ browsers, and providing information on the visitor’s choices with respect to opting-out from online advertising where required by applicable law?

How to Recover Your Account

Sometimes despite your best efforts, there is a misunderstanding with Amazon. In those cases, here is an approach to re-open your Amazon affiliate account.

Below is a story shared with me by a reader (and with permission sharing). It is the most in-depth process I have seen.

Make sure to check out his site with more details shared on the steps he took here.

Great post Matjaz and congrats on getting your account re-opened

13.2.2020: email from Amazon that my account was terminated. Reason: -The sources of your traffic are obscured in such a way that we cannot reasonably determine on what Site(s) your Special Links are displayed.
13.2.2020: my first email to associates@amazon.com with the list of my affiliate ids and websites where I’m using them plus my findings of noreferrer attribute.13.2.2020: my second email to associates@amazon.com with two screen recordings showing my two biggest websites and data of clicks/traffic from Google Analytics plus how I’ve fixed noreferrer attribute.
13.2.2020: combined these two emails in an appeal through Associates Customer Service Support page
17.2.2020: got an email from Amazon: We received your appeal regarding the termination of your Associates account. A specialist has reviewed your account, and the decision to terminate your account was found to be correct. As stated previously, under the terms of the Operating Agreement (https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/help/operating/agreement), we may terminate your account at any time, with or without cause. This termination is final and not subject to appeal.
17.2.2020: been on the phone with Amazon Customer Support regarding my problem. No help at all. We don’t have details, and the team that does works only through email. Write to them or appeal again.
17.2.2020: tried to send an appeal through Associates Customer Service Support page only to find out that the Subject option of “Associates account terminated option” now returns not valid or something similar when you want to submit the form
17.2.2020: wrote my combined two emails to the boss himself 🙂 jeff@amazon.com … with the subject “Not an appeal, but additional information, please read”
18.2.2020: reapplied to Amazon associates with the same email and data as before, fixed links to new affiliate ids on my biggest website only to find my account closed with no email a few hours later
18.2.2020: wrote my combined two emails to the boss again 🙂
19.2.2020: got a reply with the subject “Your E-mail to Jeff Bezos BC – Re: Not an appeal, but additional information, please read” and message: Thank you for reaching out regarding your concern. We’re currently looking into this issue to make sure the matter is taken care of properly. Please expect a response within two business days.
19.2.2020: got an email from Amazon Associates 1 hour later: This message is to advise you that your Associate account and your previous Advertising Fees have been reinstated. Please accept our apologies for the closure error. We appreciate your patience and understanding in this matter.
To see each step broken down in more detail checkout his post

How to Start a New Amazon Associate Account

So you tried your best not to get banned, you got the nasty letter from Amazon, and even after attempting to plead your innocence, you still are not able to get back into the advertising program.

So time for the last resort … start a new account!

This is not what you need to do if you are opening an Amazon Affiliate account for the first time. It's only something you want to consider if you are starting a new one after your account got closed.

Here are the recommended steps when all else fails:

1. New Computer

Tracking the Mac address of a computer that logs in to Amazon Associates is possible. Having a dedicated Chromebook ONLY for logging into Amazon is a reasonable risk mitigation step.

2. New Internet Connection & VPN using the Incognito/Privacy Browser Tab

A dedicated internet connection for checking your affiliate account is a great option. Instead of needing to “buy” another internet connection, use a coffee shop wifi that is not one of your usual work locations.

3. New Entity, Email, Address, Name, Bank Details

Having all new details when you sign up is obviously critical. Having a new entity, email, address, name, phone number and bank details along with any other information is critical.

4. New Websites and Cross Domain Rel=Canonical Link (don’t 301 redirect)

Sometimes people choose to dial up the risk and 301 redirect a website that has been burned to a new website. Obviously, the 301 redirect can be followed, but isn’t ideal. To be safer and still get the traffic benefit of the old site I recommend a safer approach of using rel=canonical cross domain linking. This process tells the search engine the page that should be ranked is on the new domains BUT if (I think unlikely) someone from Amazon were to visit the burned/banned website it would still appear as normal since it was still live. Here's a great tutorial on cross domain rel=canonical link by Moz here.

This is a last resort ... the recommended path is to be compliant, appeal if you have an issue, and then as a very last resort create a new account for a new entity with new URLs.

Summary

This post was written to provide you with some tips and knowledge about the most common Amazon Affiliate site compliance offences. 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!

Other resources:

AMALinksPro & a breakdown of what 7 successful affiliate sites are doing wrong. Special thanks to Matt Allen from AMALinksPro for reviewing this guide and providing some recommended changes to stay safer. He has definitely thought A LOT about the Amazon Associates Operating Agreement! His level of knowledge definitely gives me more confidence using AMALinksPro!
Free Amazon Affiliate Disclosure Plugin

If you have any thoughts or comments on the plugin we would love to hear your thoughts.

Jon September 9, 2021 9 Comments