Amazon Kills Affiliate Links Via Paid Search

Amazon is no longer paying on Associate links via search traffic. This is huge. Here’s why.

A quick primer on Amazon Associate links. If you write a blog post about a book you just read, you have the option of linking to that book on Amazon through an Associates link. An Associates link is a special URL that will take the user to the proper page on Amazon.com. Also, Amazon will know that the user came in through the Associates link. If the user buys the book, then you (the blog poster) get some tiny percentage of the amount paid. So, in theory, everyone who writes about books (or any other products carried by Amazon) on the web is incentivized to provide Associate links to those products on Amazon, effectively helping to sell the products they’re writing about, and making a commission in the process.

For people who embrace this business model, it’s rich with possibility. Some entrepreneurs set up entire sites around certain products, with the whole idea being to eventually drive the user to click through the Associate link and earn commission for the site creator. This model is known as “affiliate marketing,” and, while you can find it happening in conjunction with many other companies doing the paying-out, Amazon basically invented it with the Associates program.

The most popular way for affiliate marketing to work is via paid search. The affiliate decides that he is going to sell, for example, Persuasion by Jane Austen. Note that if you click on the link in the last sentence, you will end up on Amazon’s page for Persuasion, but the URL in your browser’s address window will contain the character string “tag=breakneckpizz”, which is my Amazon Associates affiliate code. I could use that link anywhere. For example, I could (before today) decide that I can come up with the best possible ad to sell Persuasion to people who search for it on Google.

The paid ads appearing on the right side of that page are lame; why not write a better one, use my affiliate code in the click-through URL, and rake in the money?

Why does Amazon no longer allow this? Here’s one possible answer:

Amazon doesn’t want anyone to interfere with their own sales process, which they believe is superior to any scheme that an affiliate can possibly come up with.

In other words, Amazon wants to promote only “organic” affiliate marketing. If the affiliate marketer creates an online situation (say, a Jane Austen fansite) that is conducive to the user buying a copy of the book, then Amazon will allow an affiliate link to be used. In that situation, ostensibly anyway, the product is being used to sell itself.

But Google search ads (“adwords”) are, by definition, non-organic. They compete with the organic results. And Amazon knows that this kind of competition is unnecessary, perhaps even counterproductive, at least for them. If you search for Persuasion on Google, and then you end up deciding to buy yourself a copy, the chances that you are going to wind up buying it on Amazon are rather high.

Since Amazon has traditionally set the standard for affiliate marketing, it’s going to be interesting to see if other affiliate programs take similar steps. My feeling is… they won’t. Amazon is in a position where it can afford to Do The Right Thing (affiliate link pending). And, much like its affiliates, it is, due to its powerful position, also incentivized accordingly.

p.s. Here’s another possibility. Maybe Google asked Amazon to stop using affiliate links in paid search results, and they said OK. It’s not that far-fetched. Amazon’s affiliate links provided the most widespread incentive for users to game the system that there was. And Amazon, driven by the philosophy that the best way to sell is to help the user find what they actually want, would – perhaps – respect Google’s interest in maintaining the integrity of their own business according to the same view.