Amazon Associates not allowing use of online forum

[Wildcat Media]

Might be able to get around it using a third party affiliate link, but they'll take their cut on it and not sure about the cookie settings so not as good as signing up with amazon directly.

Amazon no longer allows third party affiliates. All of it has to go direct to Amazon. It's been that way for at least four years with most of the EU/UK sites, and only in the past year or so with US.

 

[Pol57]

Amazon no longer allows third party affiliates. All of it has to go direct to Amazon. It's been that way for at least four years with most of the EU/UK sites, and only in the past year or so with US.

I'm not sure if that's true as I was paid for by reward style for Amazon sales recently and they still list them on their site. I know they've stopped a vast amount of the 3rd party stuff, but some still appear to still exist right now:

 

[briansol]

I have reached out to Amazon on behalf of XenForo and forum owners everywhere to seek a rewrite of section 6P.

any word from Amazon on this?

 

[briansol]

rejected again after 30 days of running ads. so stupid

 

[Rhody]

Yea I gave up on Amazon Associates for the same reason

 

[Wildcat Media]

I'm almost thinking it might not be a good idea for @Kier to continue contacting them--they could have a change of heart and throw all of us out of the program. And our forums would pretty much have to shut down if that were the case.

 

[Mr Lucky]

There's absolutely NO WAY to talk with them on the phone for the past 3 months, and live chat is worthless

I just got this, has anyone had any luck recently contacting them?

I have reached out to Amazon on behalf of XenForo and forum owners everywhere to seek a rewrite of section 6P.

Any news?

 

[Wildcat Media]

What it boils down to is interpretation of this by Amazon's staff (where I highly suspect there's a language barrier causing this, given Amazon cheaping out on support):

(p) You will not include any Special Links in any content that you place on an Amazon Site (for example, in connection with any advertising service available through an Amazon Site or in a customer review, forum, Wish List, guide, or any other customer-generated context available on an Amazon Site).​

And from a post above which might also be a clue:

What’s next?​

If you own the forum site, kindly resubmit your application and remember to ensure your email ID matches with the domain name. You will be paid for any outstanding fees accrued prior to this notice. You’re welcome to reapply once our other program requirements are met.​

The problem here is that one owner might operate several forums under several domains. We are not allowed to have more than one Associates account per person. See where this is also a problem? If one of their staff happens to check in one day and notice one of the forums has mismatching email, then they could pull the plug for that reason also.

Again, I'm hesitant to poke Amazon over their current rule, as they may come to the conclusion that yes, they should include preventing all Internet forums in their terms and conditions, vs. their current rule regarding posting in Amazon's forums only. And that would get all of us kicked out.

 

[briansol]

I finally got approved. I added my blog site to the list and it went through. start a blog.

 

[Wildcat Media]

I finally got approved. I added my blog site to the list and it went through. start a blog.

Excellent! Funny, we do have a WordPress install as the main page for our group of sites and the forum is a subdomain of that. But we only use it more as a landing than posting much content there.

Did your email domain match your site URL? I think that is one of the issues that might have caught us when I applied to the AU associate program.

 

[Mr Lucky]

I think this email domain is an issue. I got this:

• The website you listed is an online forum and we were unable to verify the ownership which is in violation of our Programme Policies. An example can be found here: http://cafesaxophone.com

I assumed the issue was it is a forum, but after reading the above and looking again at their wording, it may be that that all import AND

"online forum and we were unable to verify the ownership"

So maybe the forum itself would have been fine if only they could verify it was my forum. And all they are going on is a different domain in my email.

Crazy, it's so easy to give you some kind of owner verification like you get with Google analytics or Google Console.

 

[briansol]

No, I used a gmail

 

[Wildcat Media]

Crazy, it's so easy to give you some kind of owner verification like you get with Google analytics or Google Console.

Exactly--it takes me nothing to insert an owner verification code on any of my sites. But Amazon might think that is technically too difficult for their associates to follow...? Who knows?

Many years ago, I learned that you could still email Bezos directly. I did that once. Never heard back from him directly but got a reply from the associates department within a couple of days with the information I needed. I read that he will forward a mail with "?" as the message body to the appropriate department if there's an issue. Not sure if that holds true today--this was several years ago.

BTW...Jumpin' Jive?

 

[Mr Lucky]

BTW...Jumpin' Jive?

Hep hep

 

[rosal]

Any news about this?
Anyone use Amazon Affiliate to put link in one xenforo forum?

 

[TCGMook]

I've been booted three times.

 

[Wildcat Media]

I think the best thing to do is start a blog, get approval for use of the links on the blog then after a period of time, start using links from the forum.

I'm not going to ask Amazon about this since it might upset things and get ALL of us booted off. They are unclear on their rules and I'm afraid if they are pressured (or sued) into clarifying their policy, they may revise it to exclude generated links from all forums. That would pretty much shut down every site I run, and I wouldn't need XenForo anymore either.

 

[rosal]

I think the best thing to do is start a blog, get approval for use of the links on the blog then after a period of time, start using links from the forum.

I'm not going to ask Amazon about this since it might upset things and get ALL of us booted off. They are unclear on their rules and I'm afraid if they are pressured (or sued) into clarifying their policy, they may revise it to exclude generated links from all forums. That would pretty much shut down every site I run, and I wouldn't need XenForo anymore either.

Needs to be a subdomain or can i use another domain and after approval use in xenforo domain?

 

[KevinL]

Keep getting booted also. Said they can't verify ownership even though using the domains email. What about linking to Bob's blog? Do you think that would work?

 

[rosal]

But anyone is using on xenforo?