Following the signing of California statute AB 155 (which I discussed a week ago here) Amazon has invited California-based affiliates — over 10,000 of which were terminated from Amazon’s Associates program in June 2011 — to re-enroll in their affiliate program. As Sarah Duxbury — who, apparently, was one of the booted affiliates as well — wrote in San Francisco Business Times yesterday afternoon, Amazon “told” her the following when she “went to re-enroll”:

The Amazon Associates Program has invited all California Associates whose accounts were closed as a result of now-repealed legislation to re-enroll in the Associates Program.

To re-enroll in the program, please agree to the terms and conditions of the program by clicking the check-box beside the link to the Operating Agreement and clicking the Re-Enroll button. All of your Associates accounts will be re-opened right away. [source]

Per the Associates Re-Enrollment FAQ page, upon the re-enrollment Californian affiliates get back their old Tracking IDs, as well as the previous Associates ID they had before the termination; so they “don’t need to make any changes to special links created … in the past”. Unfortunately “traffic referred” during the closure of the affiliate account “will not be eligible for advertising fees”.

While the latter isn’t that great of a news, the good news about the possibility to reinstate your Amazon affiliate account certainly overshadows the bad one, especially in light of the upcoming holiday shopping season.

Not too long ago I’ve learned of a Los Angeles-based company called uCubd, and got really interested in it because of two things: (i) cool technology, and (ii) the fact that their technology is already integrated with at least one affiliate program, the Amazon’s one.

So, I sat down with one of the company’s co-founders, Marat Galperin — interestingly enough, just as myself, he also happened to be Russian, and also born in Kishinev, Moldova (small world!) — and asked him a number of questions about mashups in general, uCubd in particular, and how his tool could be of help to affiliates. Here is the interview:

GP: Marat, please tell us a few words about yourself, and what you do?

MG: In 2008, I became one of the founding members of uCubd Inc.  At uCubd I get to wear many hats, but primarily focus on software development and marketing.  My goal is to help build uCubd into an influential company in the social media space.  Prior to uCubd I have worked for leading financial services, technology, and entertainment companies as an application developer and technology consultant.

GP: I’ll be honest with you, you are the first person I have heard use the word “mashup” in the online marketing context. What exactly is an Internet mashup?

MG: Mashups allow you to combine content from a variety of different sources into a new presentation.

uCubd mashup is an exciting new way for internet users to create compelling and useful web experiences.  Our users can take existing content from social network services such as YouTube, Twitter, Amazon and others and combine them into new media presentations.

In other words, grab a YouTube video and we’ll pair it with a related Twitter feed and display them side by side in our mashup.  Want to monetize that YouTube video?  Our mashup can display an Amazon widget with related products right next to the video.

Just give us a YouTube embed code or a topic of interest and we’ll instantly create a multimedia mashup that you can share on social networks or embed on your site/blog.  Those users without a site or a blog will be happy to know that we also host all of the mashups on uCubd.com as standalone SEO optimized mini-sites.

GP: Do you have any stats on how mashups perform (CTR, dwell time, conversion data, etc) when compared to video, banners, text links, widgets and other types of creatives?

MG: We track and record a variety of statistics (including CTR and “dwell time”) for each mashup and are in the process of completing a tracking dashboard which will enable our users to get a clear view of how their campaign is performing.

One of the biggest benefits of using our mashups is going to be the ability to get information for social media campaigns that is commonplace for banners, video, and links.  This will give our users an easy way to measure the effectiveness of social media campaigns.  Stay tuned!

GP: How can uCubd be benefical/work for affiliates?

MG: uCubd provides affiliates with an easy and effective way to leverage the power of social media in their affiliate campaigns.  One of our popular mashup templates features built-in support for the Amazon affiliate program.  Check out a few samples below.

One of the advantages of using multimedia mashups over traditional affiliate marketing is the potential to make money outside of your blog or website. As readers embed your mashup on other websites/blogs and social networks, your affiliate code travels along with it. The mashup that started on your blog can now generate sales on other websites and help you get more value out of your affiliate marketing.  Individuals and businesses now have a great incentive to leverage viral content by attaching their affiliate campaign to it. If your mashup goes viral that means your affiliate campaign just went viral as well.

Our newest mashup template provides affiliate marketers with a powerful way to inject their affiliate ads into online conversations.  Our Comments2Go mashup allows users to combine social media content with a customized chatroom.  The creator of the mashup can easily manage the chatroom with a single password.  Creator’s comments are highlighted to give them more focus and are also allowed to include HTML elements including affiliate images and links.  The unique advantages of the Comments2Go mashup enable users to carry on a conversation across multiple domains without having to register.  No matter where the mashup is embedded the users will see the same comment thread and can get involved in the conversation with out having to first sign up or register.  Below is an example of a Comments2Go mashup.

In addition to Amazon we also offer support for other affiliate programs.  Users can merge social media with the affiliate campaign of their choice.  Below is an example that features a YouTube video next to a related promotion.  The main advantage is the focused and relevant user experience that provides more value than a traditional banner ad.

GP: What is unique about uCubd technology?

MG: uCubd technology enables everyday internet users as well as professionals to take advantage of social media in new ways.  In short, our technology makes social media work for you.  If you are seeking effective ways to engage your audience, monetize your content, and improve your affiliate campaigns then our mashups will help you leverage social media to accomplish that.

Today, social media presence has become one of the primary ways businesses and marketers promote their brands and reach out to potential customers.   It is however difficult to measure a return on your social media investment as compared to a traditional marketing campaign.  The common CPM, CPC and other models cannot be easily applied to Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube social media campaigns.

At uCubd we wanted to solve that problem.  Our users leverage the compelling power of social media and yet have the ability to track it and measure it in the same way as a traditional marketing campaign.  We believe that our technology will open up new opportunities to bloggers, businesses, and marketers to connect with their audiences.

Finally, creating mashups in uCubd is very easy.  No specialized knowledge or training is needed.  The process takes seconds and no registration is required.  We are in the process of developing several new and exciting mashup templates, which will fundamentally change the way users interact with and create social media, so check back with us often! We also want to know what you think. If you or your readers have some feedback or an idea for a mashup template you’d like to see, we’d love to hear about it.

GP: Sounds like a tool well-worth playing with. Thank you for your time, Marat, and best of luck!

Earlier today Colorado-based affiliates participating in the Amazon Associates program (Amazon’s affiliate program) have received a notice of immediate termination. Shawn Collins posted the full text of it here. Here’s an excerpt:

Dear Colorado-based Amazon Associate:

We are writing from the Amazon Associates Program to inform you that the Colorado government recently enacted a law to impose sales tax regulations on online retailers. The regulations are burdensome and no other state has similar rules. The new regulations do not require online retailers to collect sales tax. Instead, they are clearly intended to increase the compliance burden to a point where online retailers will be induced to “voluntarily” collect Colorado sales tax — a course we won’t take.

We and many others strongly oppose this legislation, known as HB 10-1193, but it was enacted anyway. Regrettably, as a result of the new law, we have decided to stop advertising through Associates based in Colorado. We plan to continue to sell to Colorado residents, however, and will advertise through other channels, including through Associates based in other states…

Your Associates account has been closed as of March 8, 2010, and we will no longer pay advertising fees for customers you refer to Amazon.com after that date… [key points underlined by me]

The law Amazon is referring to is the Colorado Internet Sales Act signed by Governor Ritter on February 25, 2010 [more here]. What surprises me is that amazon is intending “to continue to sell to Colorado residents”, but not through Colorado-bases affiliates. Upon reading Brian Strahle’s post on the matter, Melanie Seery’s post, and this article at TheDenverChannel.com, I was under an impression that this law affects all online merchants doing business with Colorado residents. However, Amazon is making it clear that they are not  withdrawing from Colorado altogether, but are ceasing relationships with their Colorado affiliates only.

Is Amazon doing this to draw the Colorado government’s attention to the matter once again, and do this through affiliates (again)? It certainly seemslike it, as the above-referenced letter to Colorado-based affiliates also says:

…we repeatedly communicated to Colorado legislators, including those who sponsored and supported the new law, we are not opposed to collecting sales tax within a constitutionally-permissible system applied even-handedly. The US Supreme Court has defined what would be constitutional, and if Colorado would repeal the current law or follow the constitutional approach to collection, we would welcome the opportunity to reinstate Colorado-based Associates.

You may express your views of Colorado’s new law to members of the General Assembly [http://www.leg.state.co.us/Clics/CLICS2010A/csl.nsf/directory?openframeset=] and to Governor Ritter [http://www.colorado.gov/cs/Satellite/GovRitter/GOVR/1177024890452], who signed the bill.

I thought affiliates have already expressed their views loud and clear [more here], and it was because of their effort that the focus on affiliate marketers has been removed from the bill. Yes, it is true, that a law like this makes things extremely burdensome for the merchants that sell to Coloradans, but why remove the affiliates? Does a step like this resolve the issue, and make a merchant non-responsible for the compliance with the new Colorado law? Nothing in what I’m reading is pointing to this. Please correct me if I’m wrong.

Having read the Internet Retailer’s comparison of the online storefronts of these two merchants (my bullet point summary of it may be found here), the only logical next step for me was to see how Walmart.com’s affiliate program compares to Amazon.com’s associates program.

By looking at the information provided in the respective sections of each website, I see the following picture:

Amazon Associates Program

Platform: in-house

Commission (dependent on the number of items shipped):

1-6        4.0%
7-10        6.0%
31-110        6.5%
111-320        7.0%
321-630        7.5%
631-1570    8.0%
1571-3130    8.25%
3131+        8.5%

Exclusions: CE products (always 4%), Kindle and most downloadable products (10%), Endless products (15%), Game downloads (20%)

Cookie Life: 24 hours

Program Website: https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/

Walmart.com’s Affiliate Program

Platform: LinkShare

Commission (dependent on product categories):

• Electronics, video games, movies, music, books, photo – 1%
• Other categories – 4%

Cookie Life: 3 days

Program Website: http://affiliates.walmart.com/aff_home.jsp

Even though Walmart.com’s cookie life is significantly longer, my analysis shows that over 85% of sales (in programs with cookie life equal to 90 days or longer) occur on the first day. So even with their dismal 24 hours cookies Amazon.com’s affiliate/associates program looks significantly more attractive to affiliates (more SKUs, better affiliate tools, higher earning potential due to the obvious differences in commissions as well as some of the things not mentioned above, but listed in the affiliate feedback below).

Neither Amazon, nor Walmart.com offer any information on conversion rates (CR) and EPC. But upon talking to some prominent affiliate marketers who work with both programs, here’s the December 2009 data that I was able to obtain:

• Loyalty affiliate
  • Amazon.com EPC – $34.21 / Conversion ratio – 17.6%
  • Walmart.com EPC – $24.98 / Conversion ratio – 13.5%
• Affiliate using more diverse methods:
  • Amazon 2009 CR: Q1 – 5.6%, Q2 – 4.1%, Q3 – 6.09%, Q4 – 10.85%
  • Walmart 2009 CR: consistent 2.3-2.9% range throughout all quarters

Additionally, here are some of the concerns expressed by affiliates (not one has mentioned Amazon):

• “Walmart also has more zero commission products” and if you add “non commissionable sales” the above-quoted 2.3-2.9% range turns into a “4.5-9.85%” range
• Walmart doesn’t “accept blogs or bloggers in their program”. It is “crazy that they would discriminate against bloggers”
• It is almost impossible to compare the two affiliate programs, as you “can’t track people who check local stock on Walmart.com & then buy in store” while “Amazon is online only”

If you have an experience to share too, I would definitely love to hear your comments below.

Following the example of Amazon.com and Amazon.ca, Amazon UK has just notified its affiliates/associates that DTM (direct-to-merchant) linking will be prohibited starting from February 1, 2010. Unlike their North American counterparts, Amazon.co.uk is explicit that they are against direct linking of both paid search ads and organic SE results. Those that do not comply with the new regulations will have their accounts terminated. Here’s the text of the email that Amazon.co.uk’s affiliates have received earlier this morning:

After careful review of our Associates programme, we have made the decision that as of February 1, 2010, we will no longer pay referral fees to Associates who send users to Amazon.co.uk: Low Prices in Electronics, Books, Sports Equipment & more , aStore for Amazon Associates or Shoes & Handbags – Free One-Day Delivery & Return Shipping: Javari.co.uk through keyword bidding or other paid search on Google, Bing, Yahoo! or any other search engine, or their extended search networks. In connection with this change, as of February 1, 2010, we will no longer provide Associates who engage in such paid search activities with access to our Product Advertising API or datafeeds. If you are currently enrolled in the Associates Programme as a Paid Search Placement Associate and wish to continue to participate in the Programme after February 1, 2010, you must choose a new category that most accurately describes the method you will use to send users to the Amazon.co.uk or Javari.co.uk site. Of course, just choosing a new category is not sufficient – you will also need to stop sending traffic via paid search links, as you will no longer be paid for such traffic starting on February 1, regardless of what category you choose. You may change your category by writing to us using the Contact Us form available on Associates Central or by following this link:
https://affiliate-program.amazon.co….ciates/contact

If you are enrolled in the Associates Programme as a Paid Search Placement Associate and you do not contact us to modify your category on or prior to March 1 2010 your Associates account will automatically be closed.

In addition, as of February 1, 2010 we will no longer pay referral fees on purchases made by customers who are referred to Amazon.co.uk: Low Prices in Electronics, Books, Sports Equipment & more or Shoes & Handbags – Free One-Day Delivery & Return Shipping: Javari.co.uk via Free Search Results. Free Search Results are links containing an Associate’s tag displayed in a search engine’s free, natural, or organic search results in response to a search query which send customers directly to an Amazon site without the customer first being sent to an Associate’s site and the customer clicking on a link to arrive at the Amazon site.

These changes do not prohibit you from purchasing paid search advertisements or submitting links to search engines so long as the links that appear on the search engines send customers to your site. If customers arrive at the Amazon.co.uk or Javari.co.uk site by clicking on Special Links displayed on your site (ie, links on your site pointing to Amazon.co.uk or Javari.co.uk with Amazon Associates tags), you will continue to earn referral fees in accordance with the Associates Programme Operating Agreement. There are a number of tools available through Associates Central to assist you with integrating Special Links into your sites, such as aStore by Amazon, various customisable widgets, and the Product Advertising API.

While the first paragraph of their letter — the letter begins with a statement that Amazon UK “will no longer pay referral fees to Associates who send users to [Amazon.co.uk and Javari.co.uk] through keyword bidding or other paid search on Google, Bing, Yahoo! or any other search engine, or their extended search networks” — may sound like all paid search activity will be prohibited starting from February 1, paragraphs 3 and 4 make it clear that this move is prohibiting only DTM linking (see the underlined parts of the text above) — both from paid search and organic results.

Thanks to Kevin of ProperPrice.co.uk for the heads up, and to Rehan for tweeting.

Fred Wilson has tweeted:

I’ve just finished reading his “Affiliate Marketing Undervalues The Link” post. In essense, he argues that the 535 clickthroughs he sent to Amazon were worth much more than the money he received in commission (a total of $25.20, or less than $0.05 per click). Linking to a specific book title on Amazon, he generated 40 orders for that book, and 78 more orders for other items.

First of all, let’s give Amazon credit for a noteworthy click-to-sale conversion. 118 purchases on 535 affiliates clicks is a 22% conversion, which in itself is pretty amazing.

Fred writes:

comScore once did a panel-based survey of people who saw a banner ad. Very few of them actually clicked on the banner ad and transacted. But many who saw the banner ad eventually searched on the item they initially saw in the banner and transacted later. comScore has also observed that many products that are initially found and/or researched online end up being purchased offline.

Now we’re talking banner/link views, but this is a totally different subject. It gets us into the question of a perfect attribution model, which, as far as I know, simply does not exist (yet). A good read on the subject is Richard Hartigan’s “Attribution modeling: the value of a view” post.

But, I believe, that talking about impressions/views we’re deviating from the main subject, and that is the value of a click. Rewinding back to Fred’s original concern, are “bloggers and other users of affiliate services are getting under compensated for the value they are providing”? I don’t believe there is a simple answer. On the one hand, one could argue that had it not been for the Amazon’s lower-than-competitors’ commission rate and shorter cookie life, affiliates could’ve been earning much more on the clicks they refer. But on the other hand, the amazing conversion that Amazon is showing is frequently more than making up for the short cookie life and low commission.

We all remember the eBay’s recent introduction of the Quality Click Pricing model which, to put it mildly, wasn’t unanimously welcomed by affiliates [see this discussion and this post and comments under it].

While I would definitely love to see more synergistic all-encompassing payment models (where all value-adding conversion-influencing factors are taken into account), one is yet to be introduced; and when/if developed, unless it is accepted universally, it’ll be really hard to keep all parties happy. Would certainly love to hear what my readers think. Feel free to post your own thoughts in the “Comments” area below.

The holiday shopping has really picked on the Black Friday (November 27 this year), and continues to grow. The chart on the right shows an increase of affiliate-referred sales within just one affiliate program.

I have noticed a very similar picture across several affiliate programs: a considerable slowdown in sales on the day before Thanksgiving and the Thanksgiving Day itself, and a substantial rise on Black Friday and thereafter. Having spoken with several retailers that traditionally register a defined seasonality of sales, I hear that most are only expecting to see further growth: both in overall sales, and in affiliate-generated ones.

Comparing the November 1-27 period of retail e-commerce spending in 2008 to that of 2009, comScore has reported a 3% increase in sales, where Black Friday alone “saw $595 million in online sales, making it the second heaviest online spending day to date in 2009 and representing an 11-percent increase versus Black Friday 2008″:

It is being stated that consumers are expecting to see more free shipping offers this year, more bargains/coupons, and Amazon is projected to continue driving strong sales — good news both for the merchants that sell on it, and for the affiliates (or is it “associates”?) that are working with Amazon [more here]. Also, according to an NPD Group‘s study, the top 5 categories for the 2009 consumer holiday spending will be: (i) apparel (49%), (ii) toys (34%),  (iii) movies (29%), (iv) books and electronics (28%; I am not sure what these two categories have in common, but on some reason they were grouped together), and (v) peripherals, camcorders and mp3 players (24%) [more here].

The consumers’ spending intentions look as follows:

Finally, we’re witnessing what has already been christened the first “Twitter Christmas” season in history as merchants and affiliates alike are actively tweeting and posting consumer-oriented deals and promos on Twitter, Facebook, and other similar Social Media platforms [more here].

On October 27, 2009 LinkShare launched a Twitter tool for affiliates to use. Almost simultaneously with the LinkShare’s announcement, Amazitter (an iPhone app for tweeting Amazon affiliate links) came out. The wave continued, and yesterday Amazon has changed its policy from no affiliate links on Twitter to let’s “Share on Twitter” and provided a tool for it as well [more in Eric Nagel's and Tim Jones' posts].

The new FTC’s guides, which prescribe mandatory disclosure of affiliate links, come into full force in just 25 days, but it seems that regardless of the size of the company that launches a Twitter tool, an important point is being continuously missed — that of helping affiliates stay compliant with the new rules. Additionally, there is also a growing concern among merchants/advertisers that do not specifically offer any tools for promoting their brands on Twitter, but wonder how exactly they are can be policing/monitoring affiliates that promote them via social media. It is these two questions that I would like to address in my today’s blog post.

1. Helping Affiliates Stay Compliant

If I am reading and hearing the Federal Trade Commission right, the burden that’s being placed on the merchants’/advertisers’ shoulders is actually considerably greater than that which is being placed on the backs of the affiliates. On October 7, 2009 Richard Cleland, the FTC’s assistant director of advertising practices, stated that in case with “bloggers” the “approach is going to be educational”, and no one should fear a “penalty if they inadvertently make a mistake.” He also added:

We’re focusing on the advertisers: What kind of education are you providing them, are you monitoring the bloggers and whether what they’re saying is true?”

Is including a relevant clause in the affiliate program’s TOS going to be enough? Not really. There are two components that the FTC will be looking at: (i) education, and (ii) monitoring. The clause in the TOS will take care of the former, and I will address the latter below (see point #2). What I think every merchant/vendor who is putting a Twitter tool ought to also do is ensure that the disclosure is in place: be it with a use of an #ad hashtag or something similar to what cmp.ly is doing, but the disclosure of the monetary connection between the “endorser” and the “sponsor” must be in place.

2. Monitoring Affiliate Compliance

This is another thing that is expected of advertisers. How do you do this on Twitter? Coincidentally, Nathan Hangen of of Making It Social has just published a directly relevant post at TwiTip.com. In it he talks about the three tools that companies can use to monitor their brand on Twitter. These three are: TweetDeck, Hootsuite and Tweetizen. All three can be successfully used for monitoring what your affiliates tweet about your brand. Hangen writes:

TweetDeck panes: …TweetDeck is robust and easy to use. The simple way to set up monitoring in Tweetdeck is to add a few search panes for the keywords and hashtags that represent your brand. For instance, I have a search going for #twitterrockstar and Twitter Rockstar to see what people are saying about my Twitter course.

Hootsuite tabs: …a fabulous web client that has all of the features of TweetDeck without having to download an application, which is perfect places where you can’t download (like at work). You can handle multiple accounts here as well, but the best feature of Hootsuite in my opinion is being able to set up a tab for each brand. I set up tabs for Twitter Rockstar, Beyond Blogging, Nathan Hangen, and any other product or name that I want to track. Since everything is saved to my account, it’s always ready and waiting for me when I log in.

Tweetizen: …a great way to not only track your brand, but to show it off to others. Tweetizen allows you to create a “group,” which you can use to track keywords or hashtags, but the difference here is that you can embed the results in any web page. This is great for product pages or launch pages so that you can build hype for your brand without having to force it on your own.

Great lineup, and affiliate program managers can certainly use the above-quoted tools for monitoring what their affiliates say about them (and their products) on Twitter, and whether their tweets are compliant with the FTC’s rules.

The advertiser’s affiliate program description page is frequently the first place from which a prospective affiliate learns about the program. It is also the main place to which an affiliate turns to when looking for affiliate program details and conditions.

There are different ways to word the text and the lay out the page, but the structure of every affiliate program description should always cover the main elements/data that affiliates care about. I believe that we can boil these elements down to five pillars.

These are:

1. Merchant description with link to website
2. Commission structure (and clear breakdown into tiers/levels if any exist)
3. Information on cookie life
4. Availability of data feed for e-tailers, and multiple landing pages for service advertisers
5. Information on tools or any other competitive advantages (e.g.: anti-parasite policy, tracking of affiliate-referred phone orders, custom on-demand creatives and/or landing pages, easy-to-import data feed solutions, widgets, performance bonuses, etc.)
6. Any restrictions and/or special terms that affiliates should know about from the very outset (e.g.: “trademark bidding and/or usage of trademarks in domain names is prohibited”, or “coupon sales receive lower commission”, etc) [added to the list on 10/20/09 per this comment]

I also recommend staying within a 250 words limit for your main affiliate program description page. If you have more than that to say, break the information down into separate sections, and build an affiliates.merchantname.com (or similar) website that would aim at helping affiliates understand how your program works, and how exactly they can get involved. Here are just a few examples of such mini-sites:

• Amazon.com‘s
• DaySpring.com‘s
• WalMart.com‘s

It is also a good idea to have an accompanying blog where you would keep affiliates up-to-date on the news about your affiliate program.

See also my earlier “5 Common Problems in Affiliate Program Descriptions” post.

Joshua Odmark has published a post on A Disconnect Between Social Media Marketing and Amazon.com where he talked about posting an earnest product recommendation via Twitter, using an affiliate link condensed with a URL shortener, generating sales for Amazon.com, yet receiving no commissions for the customers he referred. “After realizing Amazon was not going to pay” he submitted a support ticket, but for a response he received “a simple link to their T&C”. After studying the Amazon.com’s associate program’s Operating Agreement, he saw “why it violates their T&C straight off, because they use the terminology ‘your site’” whereas he used a URL shortener for his link. Joshua elaborates further:

Well, I used Twitter. Well, technically I used the URL shortener 9MP.COM, because that is the referrer that they would see. So I thought, that would mean that “your site” would actually be 9MP.COM in this case. So I thought to myself, does that mean if I use a URL shortener I cannot be paid on any commissions? This does not just effect Twitter, this effects blogs, Facebook, or any other case where you would use a URL shortener.

I do not believe that Amazon has a problem with that URL shortener. Many affiliates are using these for link cloaking, and I do not see this technique being prohibited in Amazon.com’s T’s & C’s either. Could it be that they are against the distribution of affiliate links via Twitter, and are they forcing “people into living behind the times just because” the Amazon’s affiliate management team “can’t figure out how to get with them” [source]? Is the problem here with Amazon failing “to adjust their affiliate program for new technology”?

I think the issue may be with the fact that the affiliate did not identify himself “as an associate”, and we may be back to the question of disclosure of affiliate links when used for marketing through social media.

Having said this, I believe there’s a different way to look at this situation. Viewing it from the angle of an affiliate program manager, it is not the fact that the commissions weren’t credited that worries me. I believe the bigger problem is that of the poor communication on the part of the merchant. First of all, there is no clear way to tell how this affiliate violated the merchant’s T’s & C’s simply by studying the Operating Agreement itself (one can arrive at assumptions, but not at a clear answer). Secondly, there has been a poor support/response to the problem by the merchant’s affiliate program management team. Joshua writes:

As you can imagine, multiple requests later, I have not had a single response from their affiliate department.

…I have never witnessed such a lack of interest in helping affiliates understand their affiliate program [underlining mine]

This is where the root of the problem really is. The poor affiliate program support resulted in the above conclusions and all of the comments that you see under the post on SearchEngineJournal.com as well as the one on OutspokenMedia.com. Many of the comments/conclusions are quite destructive both to Amazon’s reputation in general, as well as to the reputation of its affiliate program in particular.

Is it a case of failure “to adjust their affiliate program for new technology”? No. It is a case of an affiliate program management failure that resulted in the above situation. Ignoring a question never makes it go away. It just worsens the situation.