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Old 02-23-2013, 09:03 PM   #16
taustin
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While I agree that this is a pretty stupid response to what may or may not actually be a problem, I gotta wonder: how many web site actually have 20 thousand free books downloaded through them per month? How many affiliates is this actually going to affect?
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Old 02-24-2013, 01:36 AM   #17
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It makes perfect sense to me, but maybe I'm missing something. Amazon wants to stop paying a cut on unrelated sales to entities who don't bring in any money. I don't blame them.
My understanding of it was that even if people bought books or other merchandise from your links and then went on to pick up a bunch of free books that you might not have linked, it would still count against you. That does not make perfect sense to me.
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Old 02-24-2013, 04:37 AM   #18
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Given the fact that the overwhelming majority of affiliates are less than open with you about the fact that they will get paid a percentage of EVERYTHING you buy at Amazon within 24h of clicking their link - if, indeed, they even disclose the fact that you ARE clicking an affiliate link, which few of them tell you - I find it difficult to feel any sympathy about this.
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Old 02-24-2013, 04:49 AM   #19
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I don't allow such cookies so I'm not bothered with delete any cookie.
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Old 02-24-2013, 04:53 AM   #20
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I don't allow such cookies so I'm not bothered with delete any cookie.
Why don't you allow cookies, as a matter of interest? They are extremely useful. I certainly wouldn't want to have to re-enter my login information every time I visit a site like this one.
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Old 02-24-2013, 06:12 AM   #21
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Would someone please clarify this. If I download some freebies through eReaderIQ then 2 hours later I buy a USB stick, the people at eReaderIQ get a percentage of my purchase even though I am logged in to my account?
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Old 02-24-2013, 06:14 AM   #22
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Would someone please clarify this. If I download some freebies through eReaderIQ then 2 hours later I buy a USB stick, the people at eReaderIQ get a percentage of my purchase even though I am logged in to my account?
Yes, that's correct; they'll get a percentage of everything you buy within 24h of clicking their affiliate link. That's what I meant when I said that most affiliates are less than forthcoming with you about the way that the system actually works.
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Old 02-24-2013, 06:41 AM   #23
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Yes, that's correct; they'll get a percentage of everything you buy within 24h of clicking their affiliate link. That's what I meant when I said that most affiliates are less than forthcoming with you about the way that the system actually works.
Thanks Harry. I can see why Amazon want to shut that down. Hardly fair is it?
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Old 02-24-2013, 06:44 AM   #24
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Thanks Harry. I can see why Amazon want to shut that down. Hardly fair is it?
They aren't planning to change the basic way the system works. They're just saying "we won't pay you if people download too much free stuff after clicking your link".

But why they don't simply make the affiliate pay for the specific item clicked on, and nothing else, I really don't understand. That would seem to be the most sensible system for all concerned.
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Old 02-24-2013, 07:32 AM   #25
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Does anyone one know which cookie/s is used to identify the affiliate? I have had a look and can't see anything specific.
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Old 02-24-2013, 10:49 AM   #26
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I have little sympathy for the 0.1% of affiliates who will be affected by this.

If you want to give away free ebooks, by all means go for it.

If you want to give away 25,000 free ebooks a month on someone else's bandwidth and expect to get paid for it, that's another story.

I'd also guess that if the current affiliate program was working as a loss leader, Amazon wouldn't consider rolling it back. Keep in mind that no matter what you think of Amazon, they are experts at data analysis. They're more than capable of targeting a handful of unproductive sites.
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Old 02-24-2013, 03:46 PM   #27
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Clear which cookies specifically, Karen? Cookies are extremely useful - I'm certainly not going to wipe out all the useful information that's stored about the sites I visit!
In Chrome, you can choose to just delete the last couple of days (firefox only gives me one day).

Specifically, it's the Amazon cookies you want to remove. Doing that by hand is a major pain.

What I usually do is go thru now and then and mark cookies that should be kept, even when clearing - then I can just clear "all time" and not lose too many.

Keep in mind - if you've picked up a single cookie in the last 24 hours for Amazon, that affiliate gets 'credited' with the free books you purchase, even though you are using affiliate-free links here at MR.

You can use a separate browser just for Amazon, for those concerned about clearing cookies and who also want to not penalize (or profit) affiliates.


I'm making some changes in my blog, so stay tuned. Hopefully it will allow posting of the free books (if not quite as conveniently for anyone) without killing all earnings. I've been running some tests on tracking id the last couple of days - earnings from those clicking on freebies is generally low and I would not mind sacrificing them (which is what will have to be done, as free book purchases can quickly overwhelm the "80% threshhold" and numbers that Amazon has set, even for a blog of my size - the others mentioned above must hit that limit in a single day).

There are things Amazon could do to eliminate the issue. Such as, for example, just expiring someones tracking cookie/session if they buy a free book. I think all the book bloggers would be satisfied with that. We'd lose a little income, but not the entire amount (and Amazon would see more clearly that free sales referrals are not making up the bulk of our earnings; I'm not sure, though, that that is the case for the mega-freebie-feed/email sites).

There are places now using/selling "post-generation" scripts, that can automate thousands of posts a day, to fill up feeds or emails, pointing at the free books (plus the sites many of use are familiar with). They were no doubt behind some of the pinterest spamming that went on until P started stripping all affiliate tags for amazon links. These guys were no doubt a major part of the issue with "bad" traffic to Amazon (ie, people that bought free books and never anything else).
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Old 02-24-2013, 03:53 PM   #28
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While I agree that this is a pretty stupid response to what may or may not actually be a problem, I gotta wonder: how many web site actually have 20 thousand free books downloaded through them per month? How many affiliates is this actually going to affect?
This sounds like a lot, I'm sure.

But some authors are reporting over 10K free books from a KDP promotion (it takes about that many to affect their rankings).

For any blogger with a large following, they hit this easily. For a smaller blogger, it works out to more than 667 books/day (in a 30-day month). So, if they mention a half-dozen free books and more than 100 of their followers buy those books, they'll go over for the month. If they mention 20 books, it takes fewer who click on them all (and some people do, but most are more particular).

Even for a fairly low-level book blogger, this can happen every month. Unless they then sell >4,000 books (20% of the 20K total), they sacrifice all income for the month (including books directly recommended and sold).

The biggest issue affiliates have is this: Let's say that I have 5,000 readers and I only recommend books that are not free (or other things - movies, televisions, food, whatever). If I refer over 200 people a day (not a bad rate, for some categories) and those people, on their own, decide to go buy 3 or 4 free kindle books that day - then that affiliate is in danger of exceeding the threshold. Amazon has stated that they will not look at actual referral traffic (despite the wording of the change in the OA that they've published) in making their death sentence decision for that month - if your totals are over, then they back out your payments for the month.
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Old 02-24-2013, 03:54 PM   #29
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My understanding of it was that even if people bought books or other merchandise from your links and then went on to pick up a bunch of free books that you might not have linked, it would still count against you. That does not make perfect sense to me.
Me neither.

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But why they don't simply make the affiliate pay for the specific item clicked on, and nothing else, I really don't understand. That would seem to be the most sensible system for all concerned.
I agree.
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Old 02-24-2013, 03:56 PM   #30
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Given the fact that the overwhelming majority of affiliates are less than open with you about the fact that they will get paid a percentage of EVERYTHING you buy at Amazon within 24h of clicking their link - if, indeed, they even disclose the fact that you ARE clicking an affiliate link, which few of them tell you - I find it difficult to feel any sympathy about this.
Harry - Every affiliate MUST disclose their relationship with Amazon. There is required wording from Amazon for every site, plus the disclosures that are required by the FTC. Many put it on every page, some on an "about" page (to avoid violating Adsense rules, which don't allow adsense ads on the page that tells you that Adsense is used).

Personally, in addition to the above, I try to include at least one post that discloses this each year (even then, I'm sure it sounds like begging to some, but it is required disclosure).
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