Affiliate marketers left out in the Amazon

April 17, 2009
by Robert Weatherhead

Amazon announced changes to its affiliate marketing policy last week, which mean they will no longer pay commissions to affiliates sending traffic direct from PPC advertising to the Amazon websites. This is a bold move, and one which will anger many affiliates, but I applaud it. I would recommend to any company dealing in affiliate marketing to make similar moves.

Many affiliates operate in the PPC arena without a website of their own, sending traffic directly to merchant websites, pocketing large amounts of affiliate commission without breaking so much as a sweat. Passing themselves off as the merchant company these affiliates simply leaching off the brand they are advertising.

Don’t get me wrong, I am a big advocate of affiliate marketing but think measures should be introduced so that commissions paid to affiliates are earned. I would never recommend direct linking affiliates to a company looking utilise affiliate marketing. I suggest steering clear of any PPC affiliates unless they have a well built and established website they plan to send traffic through.

However, to take this stance you need a well managed PPC campaign in place. If you do then there is no need to have any PPC affiliates driving traffic direct to your website, as you can do this yourself, at a lower cost. All PPC agencies who have confidence in their abilities will run campaigns on pay for performance deals, so in effect you have one super affiliate partner who gets you leads and sales at a much lower cost than using direct PPC affiliates.

That said, well chosen affiliates with their own high quality website of specific relevance to your products and services are still a more than valuable marketing channel that generate a very substantial ROI. In essence you need to ensure that affiliates are not stealing your advertising space and your PPC is run on a performance deal with an agency.