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Originally Posted by koland
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).
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Through the same affiliate web site? If so, is it a different web site than their own?
Quote:
Originally Posted by koland
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).
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Still makes me wonder how many affiliates this is actually going to affect.
Quote:
Originally Posted by koland
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).
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If 80%+ of their referrals are for free books, I can see why Amazon isn't too enthusiastic about continuing the association.
Quote:
Originally Posted by koland
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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While Amazon is going to get rightly handed their ass over this as it stands right now, I would suggest that perhaps if your readers are going to Amazon and getting 4 (nor 3 or 4, but 4) free books for every book they buy, Amazon's idiotic new policy isn't your biggest problem. Your biggest problem is a business model that depends on the charity of others, who have financial incentive to not be charitable.