Reiki Music. Video Marketing

How to stop losing money as an affiliate on Amazon Associates.

I guess it should have been obvious to me, but it hasn’t stopped me losing money!

Not all affiliate schemes are “international”!

So what I mean by that is that Amazon needs a separate Associates ID and accounting for each territory. So you can’t have USA links/products/prices on your UK associate ID. The links work, but you simply WILL NOT GET PAID!

Now this isn’t a problem if you use Amazons own services to create your widgets and links and so on for your blog “manually”. Naturally each territories associate scheme creates links with the current logged in associates ID (you).

The problem is that 99.9% of all automated scripts out there are USA centric, to follow the 70% of USA biased web traffic. So for instance any HyperVRE templates, or YouTube clone scripts which include Amazon ads, are made for the USA market and hence need a USA associates ID.

So if you have any scripts that include Amazon elements, you need to check them for a USA territory ID.

But if you are a UK (or any non USA) affiliate, your non USA associate ID will simply not get you paid.

I’ll say that again. You will not get paid!

There is nothing to stop you signing up to each associate scheme in each territory,so you can become an Amazon “USA” associate, with no problems. They can handle international payouts for instance.

But the issue is YOU need to do that!

If like me, you are sitting patiently for months wondering why no commission cheques are coming in, then you need to use the correct territory associates ID.

This may seem very obvious to you, especially is you are American, but if you are a n English speaking British, Australian, or New Zealander, you MUST sign up to the USA Associates scheme, if your traffic is USA biased (and chances are 70% of it will be).
NB Even Canada is a different territory.

Here is a list of Amazon Associates territory and schemes:

http://www.amazon.de/partner

http://www.amazon.com/associates

http://www.amazon.co.uk/associates

http://www.amazon.fr/partenaires

http://www.amazon.co.jp/associates

http://www.amazon.ca/associates

And YES you can run multiple territory associates Amazon widgets on the same web page. Just create them manually in each territories associate tools page and paste each code snippet in a unique place.

I can see why it has happened, but I’d have hoped Amazon could have let you use the same Associates ID in each territory at least, so you would always get paid, even if your price, or destination was wrong.

News people! The Internet is International, even if affiliate schemes aren’t. The USA is only 70% of web traffic, it is not 100%.

Ebay also has unique affiliate schemes for each territory, but that is far more obvious in Commission Junction (CJ.com) who handle their affiliate scheme. But again watch any automated scripts (like Auction Cow), that you enter the correct territory scheme for your software, script, or template

If you found this news useful, I’d appreciate a comment below.
Either way, I hope unlike me, your Amazon commission is safely earnt and correctly paid.

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