Why My Amazon Affiliate Account Got Shut Down And How I Recovered From It
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NOTE: My Amazon Associate account has been in good standing since 2017 but I am not going to rely solely on Amazon anymore. Join DRM email newsletter to find out what I am doing next >>
I still remember the day clearly…. On Saturday February 6th, 2015, I got an email from Amazon notifying me that my account was closed and no payment would be made for the advertising fee that I had earned up to that point.
Interestingly, I actually went through the typical 5 phases when someone gets a bad news.
Phase 1 : Denial – Why they closed my Amazon Associates account?
Initially, just like everyone would do, I thought this was a mistake. I read through the email again and again….. and again
I logged into my Amazon Associates account and sure enough, there it was, a large “Account Closed” sign.
I went back to the email clicked on the URL they gave and read their Linking Requirements.
It clearly states that using a cloaking software to mask their affiliate links is not a good idea.
Sure enough, I did do something wrong and I was well aware of it.
Phase 2: Anger – Why oh why did I cloak Amazon affiliate links!
A week earlier, a member on my team forwarded couple of websites that talk about why cloaking the affiliate links is a good idea.
These sites talk about the benefits of user experience; instead of the ugly affiliate link, we can show a nice URL such as www.yourdomain.com/affiliate.
They also talk about SEO benefits such as by aggregating those cloaked links in a sub-folder structure www.yourdomain.com/go/affiliate, you can block search engines from access that folder by using Robots.txt.
Then there are other benefits such as click tracking, affiliate link management etc.
I thought that was a good idea, so I looked into how this could be implemented. I eventually chose a WordPress Plugin – Pretty Link Pro to do the job.
The Pro version has an auto-cloaking function that it can mask every single links on the site. I had been using the free version so I was pretty confident that it wouldn’t take too much time for me to figure it out.
I set it up and let it do the job.
However, to my horror, the plugin did not have the ability to restrict which URL should be cloaked and which should not. Not only that, every time it cloaks a link, it would actually click on it.
The site I used the cloaking plugin on had hundreds of Amazon affiliate links and while setting the plugin, I actually paused the process couple of times to check a few things. As a result, thousands of clicks appeared in my Amazon Associates account within a few days which was clearly unnatural.
Phase 3: Bargaining – Please forgive me. Please!
After processing all the information in my head, I immediately wrote back to the Amazon Associates team explaining why I did it and apologised.
Since I did do something wrong, at this point all I could do was just apologise and hope for the best. I also mentioned why I did it by referring to the Yoast post.
After 4 days, someone from the Amazon Associates team wrote back to me telling me that I was still not in compliance.
Apparently, some of the content on the site are making “inaccurate, overbroad, deceptive or otherwise misleading claims”.
This time I was confused. I did not intentionally do any of these things but apparently I did it.
To find out what I really did wrong, I asked them to explain why my site was not in compliance.
A few days later, they provided a more detailed response.
So my team and I audited the site and there were a few things that might have applied to this.
We have had produced a lot of questionable content on that specific website.
Some posts had about only 300 words content with large pricing table containing 10-30 products. Some posts just had a list of products with brief description without much content.
Pricing table – we created these tables using the product price on Amazon. Obviously the pricing changes very often and we did not update them. Even if we did update them to show the current price it would take a substantial resource. So we removed all such tables.
Review rating – we collected these data from Amazon as well. Obviously this can change rapidly so again we removed all those.
After taking care of all these, I wrote back and asked if they could reopen my account.
Phase 4: Depression – Should I forget about Amazon affiliate program?
Few days went by and I got no response. I did some research online and found some people talking about how they got kicked out of Amazon affiliate program.
Some complained about Amazon closed their account without much reasons.
Some talked about opening a new account but since Amazon can easily find out whose account it is (IP address, bank account, mailing address etc) they might just shut it down again, so this method doesn’t really solve the issue.
I was desperate, so I started looking for phone numbers to call and sure enough, there was a number I could call (I wonder why didn’t I think of this earlier?)
A lady answered and I explained what had happened up until that point.
She looked into the case and told me that someone on their team was looking into the issue and there was nothing she could do. She did suggest to open another account and if everything is in compliance, I should be able to resume as an affiliate.
As far as reopening the closed account and getting paid, that was not possible.
Phase 5: Acceptance – Lesson learned. Let’s move on.
I created a new Amazon Associates account and waited a few weeks to ensure it would not get shut down again.
Weeks went by, nothing happened so I started adding the new Amazon affiliate code to my site.
Since I already had the links in place, all I had to do was to replace the tracking code. To avoid making the same mistakes again, we did eventually improved the way we present the affiliate links. I will share what we did with you in a separate post some other time.
Overall, this was a really good lesson. There is no fast and easy way to make money. Creating quality content with best practice SEO is the way.
Also, I was treating being an affiliate as a hobby rather than a business. I took way too much risks doing something questionable and got what I deserved.
Please share your experience
Have you ever got your Amazon Associates account closed down or came close to it? Please share your experience. I would love to hear what you have to say.
In case you are interested
Here is a post on the research I did about what not to do as an Amazon associate. Hope this will help make you aware some of the things that we should not do in case you did now know.
Also, here is a continuous update on one of my websites to show how I continue to grow it with only white hat SEO. My Amazon associate account has been in good standing since I recovered and now I am working hard to improve my sites.
UPDATE February 2017
Out of nowhere, Amazon sent me the following email and shut down my account again.
I have contacted them and could not get a straight answer what exactly the violation was since I am using all naked Amazon affiliate link (not shortening, nor cloaking of course) and have never shared any affiliate links on other websites including social media sites.
The violation that they used to shut down my account made absolutely no sense to me.
Needless to say they withheld my last 2 months of earnings and closed my account without any warning.
If you have a similar experience, please post in the discussion.
Why they decided to shut down my account again? – My theory
The reason they shut down my account might have got something to do with drop in earning. I noticed that my website traffic dropped substantially in January and as a result earnings from my sites dropped to about 30% of December level. In case you noticed, they shut down my previous account in February 2015 (the same month) as well.
Main reason for the traffic drop was due to seasonality since a lot of people shopped online during the holiday season (November and December). The timing of my account shut down was also interesting since my December earning would have been paid in February and it was the highest earning month of the year. Are they shutting down accounts just so they could avoid paying higher commissions?
My guess is that Amazon took a notice of the traffic drop and started investigating my sites and tried to find any kind of excuses to shut down my account. As you might know Amazon in February 2017 restructured the associate commission and removed commission based model so my guess is that they are now actively looking for sites that are not profitable for them.
UPDATE May 2017
After sending multiple emails trying to get a straight answer exactly what I did wrong, Amazon just sticked to their initial stance of “You did something wrong, we are shutting down your account. GoodBye.” and never gave me a straight answer.
I considered filing a complaint through the State attorney office but decided against it, since I most likely waived some kind of rights when I signed up with the affiliate program anyways, so the likelihood of winning my argument was very slim.
Instead, since I have multiple websites, I applied to the Amazon associate program again and this time without the website that caused Amazon to shut down my account in the first place. In fact, I am guessing this one particular website was the reason that got my account shut down twice up till this point.
This was back in February and I am happy to say I got my first pay deposit from the new account at the end of April.
Let’s hope Amazon won’t come up with some non-sense reasons again now that I have removed the site that was flagged with prior violation.
Hey Tony,
Thank you for an amazing post! I recently had the same problem, that really hurts a lot! Amazon closed my account. It will help me so much if you could share what you did exactly on your website to fix the issues?
Also, did you remove the cloaked links and left plain links pointing directly to Amazon?
And what email address did you use to write the appeal?
Thanks in advance!
Hi Vitaly,
I had a lot of posts that didn’t have much content and a lot of Amazon affiliate links. I trashed many of those posts (didn’t even try to revive them) and only left the ones that look natural (like normal blog posts).
I also removed the tables (price comparison tables) that had rating and pricing straight from Amazon. Or remove the pricing and rating columns then left the rest (product name, description)
As for cloaking, I don’t do it anymore. Yes, plain and ugly affiliate links.
I just used the email associated with the closed down account. I wanted them to know I was referring to the old account and not a new one.
Hope this helps. Good luck!
if your account closed. they will still pay you the previous earnings?
Nope. unless it had already been scheduled at the time your account was shut down, any earnings left in the account do not get paid.
😂😂😂
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Hi Tony
I have the same experience as you.
Same email was received.
I haven’t tried to reopen an account I guess I try to reopen a new account just like what you did.
My question now is, did you use the same websites that got banned/closed for your new amazon account?
Or you created a new website for your new amazon associate account?
How about your banking information (I’m guessing you opted for a wire transfer.)
Finally, did you make money with your new account and got paid already?
Thanks and I hope to hear from you soon.
Hi Peter,
I actually used the same websites. I basically modified the one website that they pointed out with issues and I kept improving it according to their guideline and kept asking if the issues they found have been resolved.
For the new account I used the same information (including Bank account) and the only thing different was user / pass.
My new account has been doing well since and I have been getting paid ever since.
Hi Tony, It is unlucky for me. If I read your replying sooner, I should have made a lot profit from Amazon. My old Amazon account was closed by Amazon because I have put usernames, rates, prices… into my posts. Bad result was that my account has been closed.
Some affiliates have advised me to create new information to join Amazon affiliate again. I have done as their advice… It has been taken me a long time to build a new one. Up to now, I have got any profit from new site. Although my old Amazon account has been closed but my old website has a lot of traffic, keywords ranged to top a lot… If I know your post soon, I just edit my website… It would be ok. Poor me! :(
Hi, I am using Thirsty Affiliate Plugin for URL Shortening. Is it safe to use to or should I stop using it immediately? Your reply will be really helpful to me. Thanks
I am not familiar with the plugin you mentioned.
The less modification you can do to the URL, the better.
Besides, I found it easier to just keep the original long URL in case I need to change the tracking code down the road.
Hey Tony,
By the way, did you add ALL your websites that were present on previous account to the Amazon “Under Age 13” list?
Hi Vitaly,
I am not quite sure what you are referring to.
None of my sites target under age 13 and Amazon clearly states those kind of sites will not get admitted to the affiliate program in the first place.
Yeah, what I meant was, did you add all those sites to the website list that states that your sites “do not target under age 13”?
Is there a place within Amazon Associates that I can do that? If so I am not aware of it. Or are you talking about a website where we can declare our sites do not target underage 13?
If so please share that information. I am sure everyone will appreciate that :)
Yeah, that’s just unfortunate and lesson learned but they update their terms and conditions pretty regularly stating all of this. I’m guilty of not fully reading the whole thing too but now we all should we doing it. For instance, the under 13 year old thing, they added that a year or two ago and you have to agree none of your sites target anyone under 13.
Also, just a heads up in case you were not aware, you are NOT allowed to include Amazon affiliate links in emails either. And yes, that includes blog posts that get sent out via RSS Feeds to your email subscribers.
Jay
Thank you for that input Jay.
Really like your last point. I use RSS feeds to email subscribers too so we put product links later in the article to avoid such problem.
If I recall it correctly, I think there are plugins that will strip out links in the RSS feed. Don’t quote me on this since I did that research a while back.
Hi Tony – everyone
First, I have to say thank you for the article and people’s comments!
I and my friend’s account recently was closed and we lost total nearly $2000.
My friend’s planning is reopen a new Amazon account with his wife’s information, open a new bank account for her, buying a new laptop for amazon affiliate program, change the internet provider, built a new niche site,…
But after read your post, I saw we just open a new account and do the right things!
Tony, please let’s me know, are we need to do the hard things above or just reopen a new account with the same information. Your advice is very importance because my friend he just quit his job.
Any updates about your account? still good?
Thanks and best regards,
Huu
Hi Huu, sorry to hear that.
In my case, I opened a new account with a new email address but kept all other information the same.
I figured, since the websites would be the same, Amazon would be able to find out who I am in any case.
It really depends on what mistakes you made on the site. Are they easy to fix?
It would still be a good idea to contact Amazon Associate though. Tell them what you plan to do and make sure it is OK with them.
Unlucky for me because I don’t read/know this post sooner :( If I knew this sooner, anything would not come badly as now!!!
How have you contacted amazon, replied directly to the rep from where the closed account notice was sent out from? My site got closed because it apparently targets under 13y/o but it is targeted to their parents and teachers so, nothing bad there but still got closed down and would like to explain but don’t know how to contact them. Please advise.
Hi Cynthia,
Sorry to hear that happened to you.
I just replied to the rep’s email and started the conversation from there.
Hi Tony
Thanks this a great article and very reassuring I’ve never lost an account but had a few close calls – I know how stressful it is especially when they owe you lots :)
I have a new problem as of today I’ve been told that my profitability was too low for the last quarter??? (I focus on advertising their deals – which I now realize were loss leaders!!) And they want to renegotiate a much lower commission (I’ve been given that or shutting the account down as my only options) – I’m thinking of closing my account and starting from scratch with new url etc and opening another affiliate account being careful to balance deals with stuff that makes them money – Think that will work or will they just want to apply the lower rates to any account i open in the future?
Hi Stan,
Thank you for reading the article.
That is an interesting problem as I have never come across to it.
I have heard that Amazon would just close down accounts that are not performing (zero sales) but never heard of them lowering the commission.
Since their commision is based on number of sales, and 4% being the lowest, how low do they want to lower it to?
Are you sure you are talking to someone from Amazon? or I suppose this is not Amazon in US?
Since the commision is spelled out clearly on the Amazon Associates site, this is a very strange proposition from them.
Hi Tony its a UK account , the sales are large, I have an account manager who I spoke to today, basically said theres nothing he can do as the account is loosing amazon money??I cant believe thats true over the whole year but could well be true of the last Quarter as I run a forum where members post the best deals they have found and it was a big year for the Sales, got a conference call this week to be informed of new rates for my account – but looks like will be around the 1% mark with the option of increasing once its back in profit. I think it would be easier to close account and open another one in the future – I’m in other programs that may tide me over. Just not sure if I will get away with opening a new account at a later date? – I’ve not broken their rules in any way just advertised too many of the deals that they make a loss on :( :(
Is there anything in tos that says if you close your account that you can not return in the future? Amazon can terminate your account for any reason, and affiliates can close their account for any reason; I do not recall reading anything that if you closed your account that you could not return in the future. If you are as big as you say you are, then amazon would be losing money if you left the program, and if you think you can do better elsewhere, then I certainly would do so; Amazon practices are border line unethical, and unpractical, and i guess that is what happens when you become a giant…..
“I know how stressful it is especially when they owe you lots” Are you promoting the deals using an Associates account or Seller Central account? There is no reason for Amazon to close your Associates account because of inactivity or poor sales.Small sales add to Amazon’s profitability and zero sales wouldnt affect them in any way. However,if you are using a Seller Central account, it’s possible that you accumulated a negative credit of some sort which is making a loss for Amazon.
Tony,
You said you were using cloaked links, however, there is a difference between a link that is cloaked, and redirect links ie: pretty links, in fact, in their tos i think it says you can use redirect as long as amazon can determine from where the visitors are coming from. This somewhat has me concerned because I redirect some of my links ie: mysite.com/go/amazon, however, they are simple redirects, they are not hidden by cloaking technology. It is great that amazon is now working for you, however, I think it would have been better if amazon works with their affiliates rather then banning their account, then you have to setup a new account, and wonder if you are going to get banned from one day to the next. My amazon account was banned last year for not responding to some type of tos notice, however, they clearly did state that I could signup for another account; for some reason I just do not trust amazon, as it can take a good investment to setup a site, and cost even more to get it going.
It clearly states that using a cloaking software to mask their affiliate links is not a good idea.
https://digitalreadymarketing.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/dont-use-URL-shortening-cloaking-software.png
That is not exactly what amazon says in their TOS. There is a difference between a “cloaked” link compared to a simple “redirect” link. If you cloak links, then you are hiding data from visitors, and amazon. If you are using a “redirect” then the link will take the visitor directly to amazon without masking or hiding any data. Amazon does not say you can not use a link redirect service, it says do not use a link redirect service in a manner that amazon can not make a determination that where visitors are actually coming from. Google does not care for cloaked links, and for the most part, most reputable affiliate programs do not care for link cloaking either.
and I did contact amazon for clarification, and of course their response was completely unrelated, and told me that I could not use keyword bidding, and If i did that amazon would not pay me, what a complete off-topic response to the question I asked concerning redirecting links; no wonder people have issues with amazon….
I agree. There are a lot of conflicting information out that make people confused.
This is why I just stay away from link shortener all together to be on the safeside.
Hi Tony,
Thanks for taking time to write your experience about “account closed”. A lot information here. So, the point is:
1. do not cloaking the amazon link
2. do not put a price
3. do not put a “star” review indicator
4. if your account closed, do some investigation and open a new account.
Great! Thanks!
Well summarized Jimmy.
Hi, is your account still standing? Got mine banned a few days ago with over 15k$ standing on it. I still don’t know what to do at this point. 301 redirect to new domains, opening an account in the name of my family members, friends…. Amazon really should be more clear about these situations.
And I have enough traffic for about $5k per month on my sites, but they are all made for Amazon. I doubt I’d get 1k customizing them to other affiliate platforms.
Oh man. That really sucks Matt.
Yes, my account has been in good standing. Based on my experience, you probably won’t get paid for whatever is left in the account.
I would recommend write and call Amazon Associates to find out what you did wrong in the first place. Fix those issues on the site (if they are fixable) then apply for a new account.
I had a popup window appearing with Amazon link. I went through Amazon TOS about 100 times. I even contacted their support at least 20 times to clarify some things from the TOS that I wasn’t certain about. I’m not an English speaker, but I don’t know how could I miss the area where TOS forbids popup windows, because it’s clearly there. There’s a chance that it was added in the latests updates, but who knows.
Anyway, I’ll follow your advice, fix everything, and hopefully start with a new account. But before I do that, I’ll have to get a guarantee that if I comply with the TOS, I won’t get my new account banned just because I had a banned account in the past. Thanks!
Amazon have not allowed iframes and popups for several years as I remember it was one of the first things I noticed when reading through the TOS.
I’m shocked that Amazon didn’t shut down Tony’s new account. They did exactly that to me, when I did almost the exact same thing. I was shut down for “broad, misleading product claims” (basically that an item was a bestseller, which it was, and that amazon’s price was the “lowest”). So I removed those claims, opened a new account. It went for a month. Then, I got the shutdown email again. You can and will be shut down if your account is affiliated with any account that has been shut down! It’s also in the TOS.
Hi Tony,
Great write up man and I know the feeling…just had my account banned for using customer reviews etc. The annoying thing g is that I was actually in the process of cleaning it all up and making it fully compliant with all of their tos.
I really wanted to ask if your new account you opened after is still good and If you have had any issues with it?
Also, would you think it is a good idea to send them email first to tell them that you are opening A new account, or just go ahead and do it?
Hi Harry, thanks for your input.
The new account is still active and I am making money and getting paid from it.
As far as telling Amazon about the new account, I did ask the rep about opening a new account while I called to ask about the violation I did.
What the rep said was “If they approve you for a new account, then you are OK.”
I got a sense that the group that approves new accounts is a separate group from the group that handles shutting websites down.
So what I did was open an account, waited for a few weeks and started migration the tracking codes.
I have seen wirecutter still using clocked links. Infact they have their own redirection website. Other things I notices they are not using “review” word anywhere in their website.
I took a look at their Amazon links. The button next to the product does say “from Amazon” but you are right. they do have cloaked links that isn’t clear for users to know they are getting redirected to Amazon.
Mine was also being shut down recently and I was really depressed and wondered why too as there is no direct answer where I have gone wrong. Anyway I am moving on to create a new account with new gmail email address and hopefully to be able to resume …
Tony, did you create a new AWS API AccessKey ID and its Secret Key for use in your revamped Amz sites when you recreate a new account?
Or you use back the same AWS API AccessKey ID and its Secret Key that were used in your Amz sites before your account was shut down.
Mine was also being shut down recently and I was really depressed and wondered why too as there is no direct answer where I have gone wrong. Anyway I am moving on to create a new account with new gmail email address and hopefully to be able to resume …
Tony, did you create a new AWS API AccessKey ID and its Secret Key for use in your revamped Amz sites when you recreate a new account?
Or you use back the same AWS API AccessKey ID and its Secret Key that were used in your Amz sites before your account was shut down.
Thanks and hope to hear your advice!
Hi Veronica,
I created a completely new account with a different email address. I used the same personal details (name, address, bank info etc).
I did have to replace all the tracking ID on the site if that’s what you are asking?
Hi Tony, how are you? Is your new account still up?
My Amazon account was banned for same reasons as yours and I followed your advice by opening a new one. And after just 3 days, they banned it as well saying that it is “connected” or from the previous one they closed. I even used a different email and name.
Hi James,
Sorry to hear that. Did you contact Amazon to find out what you did wrong?
In my case, I did contact them and fixed all the issues before opening a new account. So I guess they knew my new account was from the same person but because I took the necessary actions to fix them, they were OK with that.
Hello Tony,
Thanks so much for your insightful article. I have been working for a certain website as a news editor and reviewing of tech products. Now I wanted to start my own website to be an amazon affiliate just like my boss but he now claims that because we use the same ISP and my name appears on his website, it will lead to its closure due to non-compliance to Amazon terms. I have read and reread those terms but I cannot see anything of that sort. Is there need for him to remove my name from his site? and does it mean that amazon does not want their affiliates to be related in any way? Kindly advice whether this is possible because I need to build myself.
Thank you in advance
Hi Arc,
I am not quite sure what your boss is referring to…. I am guessing he has his own Amazon account and you are just working as an editor right? Maybe he meant it’s not good to having two Amazon associate accounts under the same person?
As far as I know, the arrangement you and your boss has should not prevent you from starting your own sites and be an Amazon associate.
Hey, thanks for this article. It’s very reassuring. How’s your account? Still good?
I want to ask. Is there really no way for a terminated Amazon Affiliate Account be reopened again? They gave me a chance to appeal but wasn’t successful. Are there any services or help that I can get to get a terminated account working again despite failing that one chance to reinstate it?
Hey Daniel,
Yes, my account is doing good. What is the reason you want the old account to be reopened? Are you trying to get the remaining balance in the account paid? If so, it is probably unlikely. I asked, and they told me they would not pay out those balance.
I have been working for a ceratain website as a news editor and reviewing of tech products. Now I wanted to start my own website to be an amazon affiliate just like my boss. He now claims that because we use the same ISP and my name appears on his website, it will lead to its closure due to non-compliance to Amazon terms. I have read and reread those terms but I cannot see anything of that sort. Does Amazon prohibit communication between their affiliates? I have not been successful in reaching out to the amazon staff for clarification. I kindly need your help on the same if you have ever handled such a situation. Thank you in advance as I look forward to hearing from you.
Kind Regards
Archmedes
Hi Arc,
I responded to your earlier comment. I was not getting auto-notice about new comments for some reason. Sorry for the late response.
My old site has profit from Amazon, sudently Amazon closed my count. I have asked to know why Amazon closed my count, he just gave out violate rules generally only.
Juan,
Yea, that seems to be the standard procedure. You need to ask for more details, otherwise they would just say your site is not in compliance.
I just received a notice myself today that my account had been closed because someone purchasing via my links had been using the items for resale or commercial purposes. I’m waiting for a response back about this because how am I responsible for what someone else does with the item they ordered?
James,
I am hearing that reason for the first time. Hope someone who visits this post has similar experience and can provide some feedback.
I just got that the other day. It shows someone ordered like 106 not particularly low dollar items which would have resulted in about $700 worth of commissions. The broad general statement also seemed to try to imply that I (or someone associated with me) had done this. I actually have a few sites out there and there was NO indication even WHICH site caused the problem. Just got a couple email responses indicating the above and it was not open to reconsideration. AS a side note, I had just recently installed a caching plugin – one of the ONLY times I even touched the site in the last couple years – which may have somehow had something to do with that. Wanted to speed up the site display but God ONLY knows how it may have reacted to various spiders… Now in the process of trying to put my site back together. Finally decided after a few years of leaving it out there – and finally achieving some NICE front page rankings for a number of items that I wanted to get serious about it. And then got my account closed. SMH.
Based on the fact that they just revamped the commision structure http://www.onemansbrand.com/amazon-associates-commission-changes/ it is likely that Amazon is cleaning house and finding any reasons to just close down accounts that are not profitable to them.
WOW… That’s really bad.
So let me get this straight, you can reapply again with the same name?
it’s because I have the same issue. So I should just close down my old account and start a new one with a different email address, username and password? Correct?
Hi Maguel,
yes, but you need to resolve the violations first. Communicate with Amazon and find out what you did wrong, fix the issues, then tell them you fixed the issues. Otherwise they will likely just close your new account too.
Hi Tony do you have any clue why they banned our account? The reason was:
“You are not in compliance with Section 2 of the Operating Agreement because the information in your Program application and otherwise associated with your account (including your email address and other contact information and identification of your site) is not accurate or up-to-date. You are referring traffic from various sites that are not your site. ”
Our contact information was correct and I don’t understand how it could be wrong? Do they check our domain registration and compare information? should our domain match with the address and name we put in the application for Amazon associates?
We contacted them but so far they have not given us any exact reason.
Thank you for any information regarding this.
Nicklas
It sounds like you posted affiliate links on sites that are not yours. Amazon requires associates to list their sites – https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/home/account/profile/sitelist
Posting affiliate links on other people’s sites, in emails, forums etc are not permitted.
However, social media sites are permitted but there are restrictions – https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/help/topic/t50
Thank you Tony. The only website we have used is already listed unfortunately. I am starting to think that someone else has been using my affiliates links without our knowing.
Heres some more information I managed to get from them: (Would be so much easier if they just told us the website that is refereeing traffic)
“You are not in compliance with Section 2 of the Operating Agreement because the information in your Program application, such as your email address, mailing address, and/or the identification of your site, is not accurate or up-to-date. There is traffic coming from various sources not identified on your Associate account information.
Additionally, you are not in compliance with Participation Requirement Number 6 because you are promoting your Special Links in an offline manner, such as printed material, mailing, email, or oral solicitation.”
I have been sending emails to our users linking to our website but have never sent any emails linking directly to amazon. However, I used images and titles of our products and linked to our website, is this not allowed either? I though only linking directly to amazon was not permitted.
Thanks again,
Nicklas
As far as I know, sending emails with links to your own site is a common practice and that should not be a problem.
Have you ever published any e-books? Putting Amazon affiliate links in e-books is not allowed.
No, we have never done that either. I am now starting to think it could be one of our competitors that linked and sent emails with our links. It would be very evil but certainly an effective way of slowing down our website (Since they are also communities in same niche). I hope and think its not like that but I have no clue what happened. Is there any way to protect us from this kind of stuff? Can Amazon validate this somehow? They do not want to provide us the website link that was referring traffic or the mails that had the links. Anyway will try to apply again and see if we getting banned once again.
Thanks.
For those of us with banned Amazon Associates accounts, other than reapplying, is there any other work around we can try? For example can we sign up with a third party service that runs amazon associates and takes a small cut of our earning. Services like commission junction do this for other affiliate programs, and I that that viglink has some relationship like this with Amazon Associates. Anyone got any ideas for a work around?
Hi Paul,
I actually thought about that too when my account got shut down. If I recall it correctly, those sites would take a cut of the earning so the actual earning would be much less than being an Amazon associate.
Also, (again if I recall it correctly) you would not be able to choose the exact products you want to promote from Amazon.
I got the same red warning sign “Account Closed” when I logged into my account.They were also asking for US Tax withholding information.I thought the warning would go away if I submitted the Tax Information but it was still there minus the Tax info request.Anyway I have not been using Amazon for years now and I only had $6 in my account.I just want to try my luck with the program again.I have a question though, can you use your Amazon affiliate link on domains other than the one you registered on your application? Also can they close your account for inactivity? Regards
I am beginning to feel that Amazon is getting tougher with affiliates just like Google Adsense.
UPDATE:
I got on chat with an Amazon Assistant who was very nice. It turns out my account was closed for not completing the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) declaration .But they told me to open a new account:
Assistant: Let me look into this.
Assistant: I’ve confirmed that the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) declaration wasn’t completed, which is mandatory for participation in the Amazon Associates Program. Unfortunately, we are unable to reinstate your Associates account. You’ll need to re-apply for a new account in order to participate in the Associates Program. You can re-apply at the following link:https://affiliate-program.amazon.com
Assistant: I’m going to send you an email on how to reapply
Me: okay
……………………………………………………………………………………………………
My conclusion – Amazon will give you a reason for closing for your account if you ask them. Also if you are permanently banned, it means you have done something serious, like violating their promotional rules.
Hi WK,
Thank you for bringing that up. For sure Amazon associate from different countries have different requirements and the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) is one of them.
I don’t think there is a specific page to comply with COPPA for a US Amazon associate account.
This is somewhat off topic but, if you run an site in Europe (including UK even though they are in the process of leaving EU), there is a EU cookie law to comply. You might want to use a WordPress plugin like this one – https://wordpress.org/plugins/eu-cookie-law/
Hi. I had my amazon account closed for some reason (without any explanation). Then I one year later I created a new account. added new websites to this account. when I started to get money from amazon my account was closed again. When I asked why they told me because my account was closed before. So.. this solution can work before you start to get some money from amazon.
Same experience as like hole71, my 2nd associate account has been closed after 2.5 months of generating money. I’ve received 1 payment and 2 months of payment were pending. They only mentioned “an account belonging to you (or a person affiliated with you) has previously been closed for violations of the Operating Agreement”
Thank you both for sharing your experience.
Did you try to resolve the issues by finding out what the violation was and amend the site to remove/fix the violation?
Hi Holly,
I’m suffering from the same situation as yours. Here are some thing I’d be doing before creating the next account.
New ISP
New Bank Account
New Billing Address
Would redirect the domain to a newer domain
Would re-install os to remove cookies, flash objects and browser fingerprinting
I would also change the MAC Address of my Network card.
Hey Guys,
can you please tell what safety measures you took before creating the new account. Like changing the ISP or bank account etc?
I was told that too. I fixed all the issues. before reapplying it. But no luck.
I asked them do disclose the reasons why this account is being closed? They replied as below:
“We have confirmed that the decision to close your Associates Program account and withhold fees is final, and you are no longer eligible to participate in the Associates Program. We ask that you immediately remove all Amazon Content from your site(s). We reserve all other rights and claims we may have. Any other accounts you have or may open in the future may be closed and advertising fees withheld without further notice.
Please understand that this decision is final, and any further requests to review your account or unpaid fees for reinstatement will not receive a response.”
Just adding in my own 2 cents here. I had a very large website (million plus products), and was pushing 2-3K unique visitors daily to amazon. Awesome conversion rate. Earnings were really great because of amazons prices. I got term’ed due to violation of a price history function. They withheld future earnings after the notification date. I appealed, they doubled down and confirmed termination. I was even told I could reapply later.
I removed the violating piece of code, and reapplied in the same account. It was approved initially, then was terminated within a week. Same domain, Same account, Just new Aff ID’s used. The website used PAAPI and those credentials had stayed the same.
I intend to setup a corporation, new mailing address, new ISP, New PA API creds and then apply for a new account. I am killing the domain, forever. Getting a new domain with private reg. New server. New EVERYTHING. I will rebrand and republish the code on a new site. Its a complex website so this is like a week of hard work but It is worth it.
Question: Anything else I might not be thinking of for my new venture that could link me to the old venture? Do you think they have a cache copy of the old sites frontend HTML code? Its a lightweight scratch developed template so I may just go and rename all the JS functions at the same time obfuscate all existing names. That splits the timeline out for dev much longer, would you be that thorough here?
Hi Holly,
I’m suffering from the same situation as yours. Here are some thing I’d be doing before creating the next account.
New ISP
New Bank Account
New Billing Address
Would redirect the domain to a newer domain
Would re-install os to remove cookies, flash objects and browser fingerprinting
I would also change the MAC Address of my Network card.
Hey, I’m just wondering, how did you manage to send 2-3K clicks to Amazon per day? where did your traffic came from? for me the conversion with amazon wasn’t so great, even though their prices are good. Also, what is a price history violation? I read all their terms and don’t remember such a violation.
Based on my understanding, unless you are using Amazon’s API to display product price in real time, displaying product price is not a good idea.
That was one of the things that they pointed out when they shut down my account.
Can you please clarify something for me? What is the difference between cloaking and auto-redirecting? I’m having a hard time interpreting the operation agreement. Are we allowed to advertise using a link to our own website that does an auto-redirect to Amazon using our affiliate code?
Hi Christy,
Cloaking software convers up the destination URL by changing it to something else. So instead of showing “www.amazon.com/affiliate-code” it shows “www.digitalreadymarketing.com/123”.
Amazon doesn’t like this because it makes it unclear where users are directed to.
In the case of auto-redirecting that you explained, even though the link appears to link to your site, since users are getting redirected to Amazon (in fact users would jump directly to Amazon), you are essentially putting Amazon’s affiliate URL with your tracking code to someone else’s website, which is not allowed.
Interesting article. My affiliate membership was also deleted by Amazon, but it happened about three years ago. And I am still looking for ways to sign up again until reading this article.
To sign up again, do I also need to contact the Amazon first, or just try to register again? I myself do not know exactly what the mistakes I made, and also some blogs have been deleted.
My plan will create a new site for the Amazon, do I also have to wait until the site has adequate visitor then register at Amazon?
Sorry with my English, if it is confusing. Thanks
Hi Akuh,
If it has been 3 years, probably nobody at Amazon would remember what you did wrong in any case.
You should use a new email address (not the one you used 3 years ago) to sign up with Amazon because Amazon does keep the old account active for record purpose (my old account is still active).
Growing the site a bit before signing up with Amazon Associate is a good idea because if your account doesn’t generate sales within certain amount of time, your account will get shut down.
We finally got our new account approved again. But Im so afraid to break any rules again now since we dident change anything since last time. this is the mail we got:
“As stated in our previous communication, upon a review of your Associates account we have determined that you are not in compliance with the Operating Agreement that governs your participation in the Associates Program. We have closed your Associates account and you will not receive further payment of advertising fees.
Additionally, you are not in compliance with Section 2 of the Operating Agreement because the information in your Program application, such as your email address, mailing address, and/or the identification of your site, is not accurate or up-to-date. Your account had a drastic increase in traffic over a several day window, and this traffic was not coming from the site you had provided on your account information. Your traffic was coming from various social media sites that were not included in your lists of sites in which your links would be displayed.
You are not in compliance with Participation Requirement Number 6 because you are promoting your Special Links in an offline manner, such as printed material, mailing, email, or oral solicitation. Any links, including through a picture link or otherwise that come from email or any offline manner are not considered qualifying purchases.
Having looked at your account we believe there is an opportunity to do a good faith second chance. If you would be interested we would be willing to allow you to re-apply for our program. If you do re-apply, we will create an annotation on your account to not reject the new application simply due to the recent closure of this current account. Of course your application must go through the same approval process as other applications, but this shouldn’t be an issue.
If you decide to re-apply, please respond at https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/contact and let us know you have re-applied, including your new store ID assigned, so we can make sure it is properly identified. Once your account is set up and approved you will be able to begin accruing earnings as per the standard payment schedule.
You can find the complete terms of the Operating Agreement, including the Participation Requirements and Linking Requirements, via this link:
https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/agreement.”
Tony, do you have any idea how we can make sure to not break any of these points mentioned? Are we supposed to list social media websites like Facebook on our account? Also if our users link our products to each other, would this be offline manner? And if so, I can’t figure out any way to stop that. We have only linked to amazon from our website but can’t control our users. I think they might banned us because the attention our website got in various news sites that increased our traffic crazy much over some days and they got suspicious we did something strange.
Any idea? Thanks.
Thanks for the help.
Hi Nilsson,
Thank you for sharing your experience. It’s good to see Amazon is taking steps to let you re-apply.
It is very strange that your users are distributing your Amazon affiliate links. Are you selling your own products that are listed on Amazon (are you doing Amazon FBA) and placing the link on your site? Is that why your users are distributing the links?
Amazon must have seen many clicks coming from other sites.
I would consult Amazon for this one and explain what you think might have happened.
It could be your competitors who want to put you out of business, even though I have not come across to such case yet.
Sorry can’t help much here, but asking Amazon directly would be one way to find out how to solve this issue.
Thank for your the reply. This is truely a mystery. We have not been doing any FBA or selling our own products. It could be our competitors actually, thats not impossible. In the mail they are mentioning “various social media sites” which made me think someone shared it on sites as Facebook. Unfortunatly I have multiple times tried to get more specific information out from amazon but this is the best response I managed to get. Really hope we can keep our account open this time. Also, would they ban us if someone bookmarked our products (the amazon link) to come back later and buy it? We found out that its a common user behaviour to go from our website to amazon then bookmark and buy a couple of days-weeks later.
Thanks.
Bookmarking is a good question.
Based on this page, it doesn’t seem to be allowed – https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/help/topic/t64/a2
But since you cannot control what someone else do, that would be a good question for Amazon.
If you do find out from Amazon, please do share it with us.
Hi Tony
Thanks so much for this post, its so helpful to hear your experiences, and fantastic that you were able to resolve the issue by signing up with a different affiliate account.
My site recently got shut down, and for the life of me I don’t know why. Below is the text from the Amazon email. Has anyone got this same message, and know how we’ve breached their guidelines?
“Hello,
After careful review of your Associates application, we’ve decided not to approve your application to become an Amazon Associate. Accordingly, we’ve closed the account under which you had been temporarily approved.
We have taken this step because we have previously closed an account that we have determined belongs to you or a person affiliated with you or acting in concert with you for violations of the Associates Program Operating Agreement, the Product Advertising API License Agreement, or one of the other Associates Programs operated by our affiliates.
You can find the complete terms of the Operating Agreement and its Schedules via this link: https://affiliate-program.amazon.com…ates/agreement.
Thank you for your understanding.”
Fair enough. Seems bizarre to me. Such a vague response. The thing is, there is no possible way that I am affiliated with or acting in concert with anyone on my site. It’s just me and the only other amazon affiliate site I run is not affected. In fact I’m kind of scared they will link me to this new site and ban my other one. I’m glad I started a new account so that my original site didn’t get banned too.
The thing is, I want to try to reapply but they have made it pretty clear that they won’t accept my application.
Has anyone had any success with calling Amazon and finding out the reason for their rejection? For your information, this is their response when I asked for my information:
”
Hello, Ben.
As previously stated, weve determined that we’re not able to approve your application to become an Amazon Associate. Future applications will most likely be rejected as well.
You can find the complete terms of the Operating Agreement, including the Linking Requirements and Participation Requirements, via this link: https://affiliate-program.amazon.com…ates/agreement.
Because this decision is final, further requests to review your application will not receive a response.
Thank you for your understanding.
Best regards,
Thank you.
Amazon.com
”
It would be nice to find an alternative affiliate but the commission for my niche is famously low elsewhere (electronics).
I know a lot of you will say “Read the email, that is the reason why they shut down your account”. But it makes no sense to me. I mean if it was a linking problem or disclaimer problem at least I would know, but it seems like they are saying they shut my site down because they believe I am someone who is affiliated with another site they shut down.
This makes me think there is indeed nothing wrong with my site and it’s a mistake which is incredibly frustrating. I WAS running skimlinks on my site during the process, could this have potentially been what did it?
Apologies to start another one of these threads but I just wanted some opinions before I continue (or give something like CJ/newegg a try).
Hi Ben,
sorry to hear what happened.
Did you try to understand what you did wrong and try to work with Amazon?
The first step I took was to apologize and recognize what I did was wrong and tried to work with Amazon and show that I was taking steps to resolve the violations.
Did you put disclaimer on any page now ? and you not wrong with this ?
“we have determined that an account belonging to you (or a person affiliated with you) has previously been closed for violations of the Operating Agreement or one of the other Associates Programs operated by our affiliates.”
Is it good idea to use landing page to drive traffic from ppc or social ?
Having a disclosure page such as this one is definitely a good idea. https://digitalreadymarketing.com/affiliate-disclosure/
Here is an article that talks about how PPC helped driving more sales for an Amazon affiliate site
http://www.onemansbrand.com/authority-site-project-month-9/
Hi Tony.
Today Amazon terminate my account because I used their trademark on my website. My question is
1. I have more than 200 blog post on my website. I used amazon referral link on every post. If I reopen a new account “How can I replace my all link at once (In 1 click)”. ?
2. Is there any chance (1%) that amazon reactivate my account or should I go for new account.?
Thanks
Sukhi
Hi Sukhi,
sorry to hear that.
1) If you have a WordPress, you can use a plugin such as https://wordpress.org/plugins/better-search-replace/ to easily update the Amazon affiliate code. If not, you will need to manipulate the database directly using MySQL. There are queries that you can use to find and replace the tracking code.
2) As far as reactivating the closed account, it is unlikely. You have a better chance opening a new account. Based on what I have experienced and saw from other people’s experience.
Hi Tony,
Hope everything is good. I am sure I read before somewhere in Amazons operation agreement that every time we make a button that will link a user to Amazon it has to state that its a link to Amazon? An example would be that a button with the text “Buy this book on Amazon” is OK but an button with the text “Buy this book” would not be since it does not state that it will redirect to amazon.
Is this correct or I got it wrong? I can’t find it in the operational agreement now. However, I know that we are not allowed to use link shorteners but this is a bit different.
Thanks,
Nicklas
Yes, mentioning you are taking users to Amazon.com on the button is a good practice. Better be safe than sorry.
If Amazon Bans and Shuts down your Amazon Associate account, will your FBA Amazon Seller account also get banned and shut down?
I have never got into FBA so have no idea.
My guess is “no” it won’t get affected, based on the experience that I did have sites that got banned from earning Amazon CPM but they are still approved for Associate earning.
You might want to reach out to Spencer at http://www.nichepursuits.com/ to find out more about FBA.
Hi Tony,
When Amazon said “using star rating”, had you been using screenshot of Amazon star rating or just a text?
The title of this post is very misleading. If you did not actually *recover* from it, why are you mentioning in the title that “How I Recovered From It”? Simply creating a new account is not a “recovery”. For example, if you fix a broken laptop, THAT’S recovery. If you buy a whole new laptop instead of fixing it, it’s not recovery. In your case, you just created a new account and did not recover your account.
Anyways, I’m glad that you got back on track. Cheers!
Thanks!
Hi John,
As for Amazon’s star rating, I basically copied the rating (3.8 start, 2.5 start etc) and displayed it on my site. So it was a text.
I suppose “recover” could be interpreted that way. What I meant is how “I” recovered from this whole mess and not how I recovered the account per se, which as you pointed out the shut down account could not be recovered in the end.
It happened to me too. Amazon is great at the consumer end but on the business end they’re crooks.
Hi Tony
I was new to Amazon as an affiliate. My account has been closed because I’ve written the price on some reviews.
Amazon sent me a mail saying that my website does not contains appropriate content, and when I’ll fix it I’ll be able to re-apply to the affiliate program.
I have deleted all the prices on my website and of course, re-applied to the affiliate program, and it has been accepted, but the problem is that it doesn’t seem that my account has not been activated.
Is it possible to be accepted again?
Thank you!.
Hi Daniella,
That email seems to be a standard template they use for new applicants when they find something wrong with the new applicant’s site.
It’s totally up to them to accept or not but it is definitely worth giving it a try again.
I’m in the midst of this right now. Got so tired of the extremely vague information given from support (and then to have it requested that I prove where my traffic is coming from, with no clarification of what timeframe, what information, etc) that I lobbed a Hail Mary to Mr Bezos. Initially it looked positive….got a response from Executive Customer Care, and told they would be looking into and getting back to me in 2-3 business days. It’s been a week now, and just emailed back about my disappointment in a company that rightfully prides itself on customer service can routinely do this to associates with little explanation and even less of a sense of due process, all while holding onto funds…
Hey Scott,
what a timing. Mine actually got flagged and now I am on the same boat.
Out of nowhere they told me the following.
“You are not in compliance with Participation Requirement Number 30 because the sources of your traffic are obscured in such a way that we cannot reasonably determine on what site or sites your Special Links are displayed.
We have determined that an account belonging to you (or a person affiliated with you) has previously been closed for violations of the Operating Agreement or one of the other Associates Programs operated by our affiliates. ”
I complaint that all of my URLs are naked Amazon affiliate links and I did not share any of the links to any social sites or any other sites.
I am guessing that they are in the process of revamping the affiliate program as I have seen discussions that they are restructuring commision rate as well.
Not sure what my next move should be at this point, but one thing for sure, relying on Amazon income 100% does not seem to be a wise move. They can close your account down with very vague reasons.
How did it go, did you guys get back at it or went on for other programs?
I reapplied to the Amazon associate program but removed the sites that had issues previously and only kept the sites that have never had issues before.
The first attempt failed. Was told that I was using “Amaozn.com” on the buttons, which was against their policy. This is a gray area because Amazon does want affiliates to tell users that they are sending users to Amazon.com. It clearly shows people who are approving accounts or shutting down accounts are interpreted with a lot of subjectivity. A non-issue for a reviewer #1 might be a large issue for reviewer #2.
So I removed the “Amazon.com” text and now it’s approve.
Now the account is up and showing earnings.
Haven’t got paid yet so fingers crossed.
Good luck. I hope for your sake that Amazon don’t find out that you have a new account, particularly the UK associates – they are generally intolerant and will likely close it. That has been my experience..
So should I first see everything whether it’s fine or not and ask amazon team to check my site before applying for program?
Will they review the banned site if I correct everything ?
I would say, yes give it a try. If they don’t like it, they would tell you so. Nothing to lose.
Wow dude,
I’m in this situation right now.
They sent me an email saying: “We have taken this step because we have previously closed an account that we have determined belongs to you or a person affiliated with you or acting in concert with you for violations of the Associates Program Operating Agreement, the Product Advertising API License Agreement, or one of the other Associates Programs operated by our affiliates.”
Now it’s true, I had an account that I had an issue with the amazon logo and one of the photos and shared my links on facebook… (was innocent mistake). Ever since, I fixed all this issues, asked their customer service if I can re-aply and they said yes go ahead open a new account.
ANd today?
I’m pretty confident that my website is ok with the amazon TOS, so I really don’t know why they closed my account.
I contacted them by phone and by chat, and they had silly answers – very annoying!
One of the customer service guy told me that I will not be able to sell on amazon associates! I really don’t see why they behave like this, I really try hard to be ok with their TOS and I do.
Right now I’m waiting for an email of their “Account specialist”…. I hope everything will be fixed…
Would love to hear some tips or hear from someone who succed to reaply
I am sorry to hear that it happened to you.
I highly doubt they would reopen the closed account. I have personally tried and seems so many people tried and failed (based on their online feedback).
If you have multiple sites, you might want to pick the best one or two, make sure they are perfect (in terms of complying to Amazon TOS) and reapply.
As you pointed out, it seems every Account specialist are very subjective in terms of approving and closing accounts. I guess Amazon doesn’t have a central guideline internally to really dictate what kind of sites are complying to their TOS and what sites are not. So based on what they are doing, it is possible every Account specialist just read the TOS and interpret the way they understood it subjectively.
Hi Tony (and everyone), your site really is helpful. I appreciate how you take time to reply to all posts! Of course my account got sacked. It seems it takes a different amount of time as this is my 3rd time. This one was very vague and I am not sure how to correct:
Hello,
I have reviewed your application to the Amazon Associates Program and found [you listed the URL for your web site as: http://www.starscreamoptics.com. / your web site includes the unapproved use of Amazon.ca trademarked words, images, or reviews.]
We dont allow the use of URLs, trademarks, logos, etc. that include words that are trademarked by Amazon.ca LLC. This includes variations or misspellings of any trademarked words. Therefore, were unable to accept your application. As a result of this decision, youll no longer be able to access your Amazon Associates account.
Please review our Operating Agreement for further details:
https://associates.amazon.ca/gp/associates/agreement
We hope to see you again.
I contacted Amazon via email and they said they are not allowed to preview un-associated websites (as I was recently given the boot, I guess I no longer apply.
Would you know if you are allowed to copy and paste amazon products from their website? I generate unique text and descriptions for all the products I place.
Thanks,
Hi Dave,
Sorry to hear that. I took a look at your site and my honest opinion is that is has very little unique content. I don’t really see any Amazon trademark violation though.
I have had sites that had very little unique content and Amazon did not like it. The reason I know is that they got disapproved for the Amazon CPM ads back then.
When they shut down my account and I had to reapply, I decided not to include the sites and my account was approved.
I am guessing Amazon is trying to find any kind of reasons to just not approve your account based on the kind of site you have.
Thanks for the look. I have since removed all my “cut and paste” images and used their HTML links. I have also added the disclaimer. We will see how long this lasts.
amazon is a monopoly and theyre too big for their own good. my account got closed, the reason they specified was 100% invalid, i lost $20,000, and any subsequent attempts to re-open the account failed. they will provide excuses, and when there are no more excuses, they will close your account again, stating that another one of your accounts was previously closed.
i personally believe people should look for alternate affiliate programs. when everyone jumps on the amazon bandwagon and gives them so much power, this is exactly what happens. one day your account might get closed, and they wouldn’t care one bit about losing your referrals. in my business, not having amazon is extremely difficult to profit, because most people prefer shopping on amazon. someone needs to break this monopoly up. when a company no longer cares about terminating legitimate affiliates who are bringing you $160k sales a month, that company is too big, and no longer cares about the little guys.
Well said John.
Are you looking into other affiliate programs? If so which ones do you recommend?
The only other affiliate program that comes even close to amazon is ebay. i think there is a fundamental problem with CJ, linkshare, shareasale, in that publishers can abuse the system. for instance, refund rates on amazon/ebay is maybe 3%, but on CJ, it sometimes is as high as 30%. you could attribute this to “bad companies”, but i believe more probably, many publishers simply falsely report refunds/reversals/invalid sales to CJ who then reverse the commissions, and it’s impossible to differentiate a real reversal from a fake. this makes it very difficult to stay in business without depending on amazon or ebay, which is very unfortunate.
Hello,Tony, nice article. I got this mail today from Amazon. Don’t know what to do. Don’t you think this is blatant fraud?
Upon review, we are unable to accept your application because we were not able to view your site. This is due to one or more of the following reasons.
– Your website was unavailable to be viewed by the public or requires a password
– The server response was too long and the browser timed out
– The URL provided was invalid
– The site was either under construction or not yet published
When reviewing an application, we need to have a valid URL for your web site so that we can view it to be sure it fits in with our program. Unfortunately, we are not able to review an application once it has been rejected. Once your site has been developed further to be visible, and contain beneficial content, you are welcome to submit a new application at the following URL:
https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/join
We look forward to receiving your next application.
Really sad. This is plain fraud.
You are sooooo right!!!!!!!!!! Well said!!! Well said!!!
Hi Tony,
Regarding the many people here who got there affiliate accounts shut down, and lost the
earnings Amazon withheld and never paid out after closing the account .
Let’s say they closed the affiliate account (claiming you’re breaking our terms or service etc)and never
paid the account owner $5000 he was owed .
Could that $5000 that Amazon never paid , be claimed as a tax loss at income tax time?
Hi Mac,
That would be a really good question for a Tax accountant.
My guess is that money was never made in the first place if you use cash basis accounting, but if you want to account it using accrual basis, it would be shown as money in / money out, so zero in the end and no Tax benefit.
That’s just my guess. I am not an accountant so better check with one.
Hello Tony,
I got account closeure today with my account that not problem over 9years right now the reason amazon tell email doesn’t clearly for me
“-Your Site makes inaccurate, overbroad, deceptive or otherwise misleading claims about Products, the Amazon Site, our policies, promotions, or prices.”
First my site don’t show any price, promotion and didn’t edit. I had a landingpage that when click from content of my site it will going to landing page which use Amazon Products API to request data it a real data no cache and i had date & time shown that request from what date and time to make sure it not violate the amazon term but i use api to get review and it was an iframe i see other site doing it so i doing same and already ask them it can be use like this or not they said yes. I read the api using they allow to get Reviews so i’m not sure what i wrong.
Second the button in landing page is shown it will go to amazon and i had native ads widget that will show the price of products instead get from api which have more risky
Third this i can request to re apply more account or open it again i lost i thousand dollars on this account ?
Thank you
Rajapatr,
Thank you for sharing your experience and so sorry to hear about your Amazon associate account.
Based on my limit knowledge Amazon API (I don’t use them personally), what you did seems to be inline with their guideline. Reviews and Pricing are updated in real time so Amazon shouldn’t use that as a reason to close your account.
Did anything change at all in the last few months? Maybe drop in traffic? or drop in earnings?
When they closed my account recently for the second time, one of my sites had a substantial drop in traffic that caused my earning to drop quite a bit. This was also right after holiday seasons so that also contributed to the sales drop (the usual seasonality factor).
My guess is because of this sudden drop, Amazon took notice of my account and for whatever reason they decided to shut it down by giving a very vague violation reason.
I wonder if this was the case for you.
It seems Amazon is actively getting rid of accounts that are not serving them well these days.
As far as opening a new account, yes, it is possible to re-apply. If you have multiple sites, you might want to leave out the site(s) that caused the problem when re-applying.
In terms of re-opening the closed account, that is most likely not going to happen.
I think this was the case for our account as well. We got a huge increase in traffic where upon the investigated our site and closed it for whatever stupid reason. They can definitely see when traffic is changing heavily.
Haha i think i got the problem like you my traffic drop after november and december
Hi Tony,
In your most current rejection, they reference the fact that you had a previously banned account. It seems crazy they would wait two years to ban you but I’m wondering if that is what happened this time around.
I’m considering buying a site from someone who’s account was banned. The site is clean and the ban was for another reason. Wondering how dangerous that is? Also wondering whether having multiple accounts is still a no-no.
Hi Jeff,
The first time they shut down my account two years ago it was due to the “TRI” site so I purposely used the “TRI” site to signed up again to make sure my site did not have any problem. It lasted two years.
This time round, I used a different site and was approved. I have not added back the “TRI” site up till this point because it might increase the chance of getting my account shut down again.
So to answer to your question, if the site you are interested in was the reason the account was banned, I would not touch it.
Another way around this problem is to buy the site, get a new domain and 301 everything so it appears as a new site.
As for multiple accounts, I have not seen anyone done that yet. I know it’s possible to set up a new company with a new address, bank account etc, but I think for most people the return of investment for such activities is just not high enough.
Do you have websites at Blogspot.com or other old blogs that has their ads code?
It has been proven Amazon will do anything unethical including robbery and cheating. Anyone with blogspot.com sites selling for Amazon is a complete moron. Sorry to say that.
1. Amazon will terminate your account and rob you of all earnings claiming you have violated agreement or even for no reason at all. In my case, they claim the termination is due to sexually explicit content, something they knew and approved. At the same time, they shamelessly spammed sexually explicit ads to my website 24/7. They did all that knowingly and willfully. Look for things like “Vagina Masturbator” – https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/4130pzHDfnL.jpg or here https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0K8FMxeCHQo/WS2dZi5FTKI/AAAAAAAACVg/dOCw7EZKGXMAye4bCY3pgV-gelp-pBT4ACLcB/s1600/9%2BInch%2BDildo%2Bwith%2BSuction%2BCup.png
If it’s true they strictly run by the rules, they should just terminate the ads they day they finished the audit/review. NO, they keep the ads running untill one day before it’s time to pay … 60 days later.
2. They terminated my account but they won’t disable the ads code. Why? The reason why they keep the ads code active is because they wanted to hijack your websites, likely at Blogspot.com (the more the merrier), so they can use them to advertise for free. Ihave like hundred carrying their native ads – some I don’t even how to find them …
3 And this the true reason why my account was terminated – you wanted steal my traffics for free.
4. Unless they cancel the sales, they have no right to keep the proceed from whatever sales you have generated. It’s your efforts. Therefore, they have robbed you under the broad daylight by keeping the proceed for themselves.
That said, don’t waste your time Amazon. There must be better things out there.
Unless becoming a sucker is your hobby, Please disseminate this fact far and wide.
Jeff Bezos is a low life THIEF.
.
I agree with John, Ted and others that if Amazon closes our account we should be paid for the commission we made. I am new to AA and I got a sale before the 3 month deadline. So anyway after 2 days of that sale I got this email from Amazon.
==============
Thank you for applying for the Associate program. Upon review, we are unable to accept your application. A part of our criteria is that your site has to be established with enough unique content. We rejected your application due to one or more of the following reasons.
– Lack of content which is original to your site and beneficial to your visitors
– Pages that are mainly empty when advertisement content is removed
Unfortunately, we arent able to review an application once its been rejected. If your website has been further developed and now contains appropriate content, youre welcome to submit another application by using the following URL:
================
I emailed them since I want everything in writing. I told them that it is so unfair to close my account without any warning plus the thing that pissed me off was they closed my account after I made a sale. They could have checked my site before they issued an ID. A warning would be nice since I am new to AA and their TOS is also confusing. To make it short – I didn’t call them crooks but my email sounded like it. My commission was very small but I demanded that I get paid. I said – it is a small commission but if there’s a thousand accounts that were cancelled that’s a lot of money for Amazon from free advertising. They made money from our hard work. We put in time and money to get these websites up and running. I am at least glad that their customer service was good in following up. But because I was so pissed off I never replied back or thank them for the quick reply. One good thing is I got paid.
After a week I reapplied again and got approved. Same website and added 3 pages of content. I changed my id but all info are the same. I wish I can share the email but they might be able to trace it and give me a hard time. I forgot to mention if I reapply they should count my 1st sale. If I get cancelled again I am not wasting my time on Amazon. I’ll make sure they get some media attention on how they screw up their affiliates.
Jeff Bezos we are not a billionaire like you we are just small people trying to make some money on the side. Please don’t screw us up!!!
Well anyway, Tony if you are aware of a class action lawsuit count me in. You have my email address please let me know. Thanks
Having legal experience, this affiliate program is considered a self employed business. As any self employed business you work hours that are typically expected to earn minimum wage or higher, no? My argument as a lawyer, affiliate excuse (by Amazon) or not would be that since they didn’t provide an explanation for canceling prior to a particular date, any earnings prior to the date they cancel you or close your account, should be paid out. They would be paid out due to the idea that your time is valuable and should be paid as such. It’s written in Federal Law that you earn at least minimum wage. Technically if you kept a log of hours worked and how many employees you had working underneath of you and their hours, you could go after Amazon for that amount.
Thank you for that input. Do you think there is a merit for a class action lawsuit? I am sure a lot of affiliates have been affected by it so if there is a legal merit, it could be a huge case.
I just signed up for an account, had it approved and was already earning money when it was closed within the week. Their excuse: I used the name Amazon on my website.
So how am I going to tell people that my products are available for sale on Amazon without using the word Amazon?
I did note that just prior to closing my account (which already had some money in it) my web provider documented an IP address from “Amazon India” who had looked at the site. Now, I do not market to India nor do I ever intend to do so as the country is a cesspool of corruption.
Anyway, about the missing cash from the commenter’s accounts. Who do you suppose that goes to? Amazon or the (Indian) IT workers who close your account?
Just saying their might be some ulterior motives for them to be closing your account.
That is an interesting theory.
As far as using the word “Amazon” on the site though, I have had the same kind of warning.
When I applied again for a new account after my account was shut down again this year I used “Check it out on Amazon.com” on some of the buttons. So they basically told me not to do that and took away the earning up till that point and closed down my account again.
However, in the warning email, it did mention that I could reapply after fixing the issue so after removing the word “Amazon.com” on the buttons I reapplied and my application went through. Surprisingly, I even got a payment for the amount I had up until the point my account was shut down.
So to clarify, it seems if the account is new, if they do close down your account you could still reapply because your account is considered “new”. Not only that, if you manage to get your “new” account reinstated, you could get paid for the earnings that you had in the account.
I thought we had to put Amazon on the redirect button or they would close the account? On our site all buttons say for example “99$ on Amazon”. Should we remove that and how would our users know where they are getting redirected
That’s where the affiliate disclosure comes into play. On that page you should mention your site’s relationship with Amazon. Here is an example.
https://digitalreadymarketing.com/affiliate-disclosure/
I got banned two because of one of my websites. But even after opening a new account and applying, they still closed it down.
Has anyone had success in opening a new account or even buying an Amazon account from sellers such as the Aspkin forums or even Auction Essistance?
Did you try different things? Like finding out what caused the closure and fix those issues? Change the primary website for registration ( if you have multiple sites). Change the account name (if you happen to have multiple names) etc
I’m furious this just happened to me today. I worked my butt off for them next month was going to be my first pay out!! I haven’t even received anything from them and sold over $7,000.00 for them!! Looks like from your experience it isn’t worth trying to stay with them because they can do this anytime they feel like not paying someone. Fantastic post and I hope you get paid!! Good luck with Amazon I’m done with those theives!!!
I am sorry to hear that. The saddest thing is that there are no other Affiliate programs convert as good as Amazon. This is why there are so many of us trying to get back in.
hi. i have a question.. Right now i have 2000$ in my amazon affiliate account , all the earnings are generated in this month (august 2017).. If (let’s say) they will close my account, are they going to close it on 1th september or after 60 days after the end of august ? so when is the time when they use to close it?
Regards
VicenZo
They could actually close it anytime they want if they find something is wrong with your site. So you might not even get paid AT ALL if they choose to close it before the 60 days.
Below is my affiliates account cancellation email from Amazon … and I have absolutely no idea what they mean, no idea what I have done wrong. I have been an Amazon affiliate for 7 years. I only ever link to Az from my websites, I don’t do emails or have any funny things they mention in their email. I don’t show prices. My websites are very simple and helpful to visitors, just interesting articles. But now my money is gone – as is many thousands of hours work.
My websites are a few thousand personally hand-crafted articles, filled with hand-selected and individually edited Amazon links. Which means my websites now are totally useless as I have no physical way of removing/changing all the links – there are many thousands of them.
Because their agreement says ” we may terminate your account at any time, with or without cause”, I do not intend to try for re-instatement. I am never setting myself up for this kind of loss ever again. Now I gotta find new affiliate programs and remove all my Amazon content – anyone have any suggestions on how to do that quickly on large websites? I have currently put my websites offline with an “under maintenance” plugin, which obviously is not good for SEO.
Anyway, here is their email:
*** Hello from the Associates Program,
We are writing to tell you that effective as of today’s date, Amazon is terminating your Associates account. Under the terms of the Operating Agreement, we may terminate your account at any time, with or without cause. This decision is final and not subject to appeal.
It is important that you immediately remove all Amazon Content from your Site(s). Please be aware that any other accounts you have, or may open in the future, may be closed without payment of any fees. Amazon reserves all other rights and claims.
Because you are not in compliance with the Operating Agreement, Amazon will not pay you any outstanding advertising fees related to your account. Amazon exercises its right under the Operating Agreement to withhold fees based on violations, which include the following:
-You are using Content or Special Links, or otherwise linking to the Amazon Site, on or in connection with a browser plug-in, toolbar, extension, or other client-side software.
Thank you for your participation in the Amazon Associates Program.
Warmest Regards,
Amazon.com
It’s best to keep your sites’ rankings while looking for a new affiliate program so putting your site offline is not ideal.
You might want to look into changing the links directly from the Database. The Amazon links should be easily identifiable using the regular expression. So you should be able to mass remove the Amazon links without much problem.
DItto. Received the same thing this week. Not like I’m raking in thousands of dollars, but I did finally figure out how to generate better commissions. Best day was $100 right before they pulled the plug. Very interesting timing. Thanks for an amazing article.
I received this same message. I had my developer investigate and turns out that our site was being attacked by a bot or scraped. We are a unit price search engine for Amazon and log all of our searches. While we typically get about 20K searches a month, we had 3 million the month we got shut down. I now pay for a firewall which detects and blocks attacks like this. While not perfect, it did eliminate 90% of the bad traffic. However, I have been unsuccessful in getting my account re-opened and have even signed up for a new account which was rejected because it was associated with the old account.
Tony did you change your ip, address banking information,device used to connect to the internet etc this time around? Or you opted for a business option to run it through a business
It’s still my personal information. I did not add the sites that historically had issues and made one of the newer sites as the primary site. The site looks professional, it has never had any issues, and with only a few well formatted Ads etc.
Sadly, the current Amazon attitude seems to be “if you violated our agreement once, we never want you again, no second chances.”
I used no cloaking, and I only linked to Amazon on my own content. However, it seems Amazon only consider your own domain (or URL) your content, not content hosted anywhere else (like an FAQ). I missed that particular wrinkle, so I deserved the first hit. That’s understandable. I started up two blogs, converted the content over, then applied again. AFAIK, this time it’s all legal. It worked for ONE WEEK, then they deleted my new account with NO WARNING. The only reason given was “you were a violator once” (not exact quote).
Tried to chat with associate support, they blabbed about sending my case to a “review team”, but I have a feeling nothing will be done.
Apparently, the only way to get back on with a clean slate is with a different credit card, different prime account, and a different address altogether.
Yes! That’s what I thought too. It looks like they keep an eye on people like us then those who never got caught even if they are violating the policy. So once your account got closed, it will be closed some day again for sure. Really. Because they do not trust you. You’re right. They treat us like “once a liar, always a liar.”(not really a liar but you know.. :) Even thought we didn’t do it on purpose, they don’t think that way.
This is another story but I once asked a simple general question about their policy to the rep. His attitude was little angry? and said “are you violating the policy?” My question was just “Is it okay to write prices in the title?” But he’s first answer was that. Kind of accused me of violating their policy by just asking a simple question. So I freaked out and said “no no~~ blahblah”.. And he finally answered my question. I felt like he was very sensitive about this issue, violating the policy. We were talking and I told about others and he asked me to provide their URLs.
By the way this account has no relation with my previously closed account a few years ago.
Hello, Can you use banned website to focus your marketing elsewhere?
You could use it for other affiliate marketing programs if that is what you are asking.
Hello,Tony, nice article. I got this mail today from Amazon. Don’t know what to do. Don’t you think this is blatant fraud?
Upon review, we are unable to accept your application because we were not able to view your site. This is due to one or more of the following reasons.
– Your website was unavailable to be viewed by the public or requires a password
– The server response was too long and the browser timed out
– The URL provided was invalid
– The site was either under construction or not yet published
When reviewing an application, we need to have a valid URL for your web site so that we can view it to be sure it fits in with our program. Unfortunately, we are not able to review an application once it has been rejected. Once your site has been developed further to be visible, and contain beneficial content, you are welcome to submit a new application at the following URL:
https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/join
We look forward to receiving your next application.
It sounds like they simply just couldn’t get to your site.
The message doesn’t say they would not let you join so just reapply after making sure your site is visible to everyone.
I received the exact same thing after cyber monday. I contacted my hosting server and they assured me the server was working perfectly. Forwarded the email to Amz. Then Amz replied back with a different unapproval reason. I really wonder if Amz unapproved it because they don’t want to pay the commission. It was black friday and cyber monday afterall.
My account got closed once years ago so I asked them why they closed it. They didn’t even know the reason. The reason was never written in the email either. Then I created another account this year and got closed recently again. Always when I achieve the surprisingly highest payment. This is also funny because I know so many bloggers and website owners who are obviously violating their policy so many years but their accounts never got closed. I know why they are violating the policy because I used to be involved with them. I can still check their websites and blogs and I know that they are still violating the policy. You don’t have to be involved with them to know that they are violating the policy. You can just see that they are violating it when you visit their websites of blogs. But Amazon thinks all the websites and blogs are all under their control. They said the accounts of those who are violating the policy got closed but the owners just don’t know their’s are cloed, or will be closed. But that was not true. Only ours are. They are still happily making a lot of money. I really do not understand their criteria. I feel discriminated and lost my trust in that company.
Thank you very much for sharing your experience. I have made a silly mistake as beginner I purchase a product through my own affiliate link just to make sure that amazon will really pays me commission or not but I purchased the product from another amazon ac and not from my ac which have amazon affiliate ac linked. So what happen next is that it is mentioned in my affiliate dashboard that some products are ordered(which are obviously the products that I ordered from different ac) but I didn’t get the commission and also amazon didn’t ban me yet it is above 3 months from that silly mistake. Also to mention that I have made purchase though from different ac but from the same pc which I use to handle both of my ac. So now I will reach to minimum threshold soon. So is it possible that they will bann me when I reach minimum threshold and request for payment (as they have not banned me yet). When I made some research this is what I found >>>https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/help/node/topic/202050040 I request you to check that out and please tell me what does it mean according to you, are they going to terminate my ac or it will be fine??? And also when did they close your affiliate account, as soon as you clocked the affiliate links or at the time of payment. Eagerly waiting for your reply…
Based on the language in the link you provided, the only penalty you would get sounds like is going to be not getting paid and not necessarily leading to account shut down. However, as you can see from other people’s experience, Amazon could do whatever they please so it is difficult to say what Amazon will do for your account down the road.
In my case, the cloaking software caused the “click” number to jump substantially and that caused them to investigate and ultimately shut down my account within a week.
Do people actually click postings or URLs without knowing the price? I’m worried about this. Don’t I at least have to tell them that which price is cheap and which is expensive? I don’t want my visitors to pay $100 for an item that actually cost $50 and the consumer price is $70. Or do I have to be like this if I want to earn?
Amazon really confuses me. You should know some major websites like slickXXXXX or camexxxxxxxxxxx. They write prices and even record them on websites but their accounts were never closed. So writing prices or recording the lowest prices shouldn’t be a problem. They said it’s okay to write prices if you posted it with their API. But other major websites also write prices manually. This includes slickXXXXX. You have to write a price in a text box. They don’t use API. Seriously. Or is it okay to let visitors to write prices manually on our websites while the websites owners can’t? I’m really not sure this price thing is really an issue for everyone. By the way, nice article. Thanks.
OY… I didn’t read the last paragraph. Your account got shut down again? Is it three times total? Your website should be perfect and not violating any policy. You followed their guideline and kept asking them. What’s wrong with them? I think earning drops don’t matter. It always has ups and downs. The numbers can’t just keep going up. It’s impossible for everyone. It should be okay if your earning is more than $0. Well.. anyway mine got shut down again, too. I received a different email this time. They shut it down because the websites and blogs they previously closed seem to belong to me. I thought it’s okay to re-apply with same domains if I made changes(contents, URLs, tags, etc.) just like before I received the “you are violating the policy. We’ve shut down your account” email. Don’t know what to do. :(
Sorry to hear that Kon. They shut mine down twice so far.
The second time they shut it down, I used a clean site as the primary site in the application and removed (not adding) the questionable sites (sites they have previously pointed out as “violation”).
I know this method probably won’t work for everyone especially people who are working on one Authority site rather than multiple small niche sites.
Hey Tony. Thanks for the reply. Mines are actually all multiple small niche sites. Anyway, just came here to say good luck. Your article helped me(thanks!) but it’s time to find other affiliates because they keep shutting my account. haha Three times so far. :( I recently signed up with a new account with all different information(address, phone number, and etc. With a new identity.) and new domains but they shut it down saying “we have determined belongs to you or a person affiliated with you or acting in concert with you for violations of the Associates Program Operating Agreement.” They can’t know the new account is mine. BTW VPN won’t help either. Isn’t that weird? How did they know? I thought that’s really creepy when I received the e-mail. Anyway that’s why I decided to leave them. Good luck!!! :)
Oops.. I made a typo on my name. :(
Thank you for sharing your experience Kon!
I have also started looking into other ways to monetize my sites and no longer putting more resource into developing sites for Amazon affiliate purpose. Have been experimenting with Google Adsense and may expand a site designed to monetize from that method. Will share it in a blog post If it gives a substantial result.
I now have serious reservations about whether to spend the time and money to develop an Amazon affiliate site. Their apparent eagerness to close accounts on a vague whim and keep affiliate’s earned commissions simply doesn’t pass the sniff test.
After having reviewed many of the above posts it is my opinion that Amazon may very well be engaging in outright fraud against many affiliates. Undoubtedly, many have ‘violated’ their ambiguously worded policies. Even if true Amazon should not be relieved from paying out ALL previously earned commissions, regardless of the onerous conditions Amazon forces affiliates to ‘agree to’ prior to being accepted into their affiliate program.
Perhaps the situation is ripe for a class-action lawsuit for lost earned commissions/lost income for those who have had certain accounts abruptly closed. Could their actions toward affiliates be part of their business model where they no longer really need affiliates to drive traffic/sales and are in the process of putting the squeeze on in an attempt to discourage them while
simultaneously padding their bottom line with stolen commissions? Have the commission rates got better or worse for affiliates over time? Apparently Amazon doesn’t need affiliates as badly at present given their world dominance and lower payout scheme.
If the past is any indicator of the future, Amazon affiliates appear to be in for a rough ride.
Hello!
Thanks a lot for your post!
Amazon also banned my account some years ago. Don`t know exactly why (because i lost access to the email that i used to register on amazon), but i think i got banned because of spam (200+ twitter accounts twitted every hour amazon products with my tracking id) :)
May i ask how you created new amazon affiliate account? Did you use the same name & address?
Thanks in advance!
I used the same name and address but used a different site as a primary site for registration. In the latest attempt, I did not add the sites that had been pointed out by Amazon as “bad quality” sites.
Tony, I have purchased WooZone WordPress plugin, I setup a shopping site and used the plugin to add only cosmetics and thus make a cosmetics shopping cart site. I am just starting my nice web site, still working on designing the site, I also started a Facebook shop that the buy button instead of buy says “check out on our website” and redirects the viewer to my site where they can add the product to a shopping cart and when they are ready to click “checkout” it will redirect them to amazon where they either checkout if they are already logged in to amazon or they will need to login to their amazon account and then all of the selected products are automatically added to their Amazns cart and they pay thru amazon.
For what i can see here I need to make sure to add the Affiliate disclosure on my site and maybe other things that will aid in keeping me from getting closed. I understand that if they want they can close me. but if i stay within their policy i might last a little longer than i expect.
What is your opinion on woozone and woocommerce shopping sites that redirect to them?
Based on the conversations I had with people who got their account shut down by Amazon, it seems Amazon dislikes sites that are solely designed to gain clicks such as price comparison and product search engine sites. They want sites that add values so obviously sites that describe in depth about certain products Amazon carries is the best way to go.
Blogs would obviously be the simplest form of that, but there might be other creative ways to do it that I am not aware of.
Hi Tony,
How did you update the link automatically instead of doing it one by one?
Try this plugin https://wordpress.org/plugins/better-search-replace/
You can search for the existing affiliate tags and update them easily across the site.
Hi Tony
I recently had an account closed like you and was going to reapply again with a different website but same name and bank account. I am just wondering if it will work because I am in the us and will have to enter the same Social Security number again for the tax information. I was wondering if you think they will be an issue, I didn’t know if you were also a US based affiliate. Thanks
Hi AJ,
It is possible they might let you open a new account. Try using a different website as the primary site in the application and don’t include the site that got banned.
Hi,
I too was randomly and very suddenly shutdown last week and I’m also being given the run-around. I have no idea what I did wrong and how I did it. I’ve asked multiple times via phone, email, and chat and I’m still given the “You did something wrong, we are shutting down your account. GoodBye.”
Now I’m at a loss, literally. Should I try again and open a new account? Should I use the same info or is that too risky and since I don’t know what was wrong what’s stopping them from doing it again?
I put way too much time and effort into this for them to just give me the boot without any explanation at all it’s so frustrating :-(
Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
If you only have one site and that got tagged as a “bad site” by Amazon, that’s pretty much it… game over.
Based on my experience, when I added the “bad site” back when I managed to re-open the Amazon associate account the second time, the “bad site” again seemed to be the reason why they shut my account down the second time.
I do still have Amazon affiliate sites up and running but have already moved on and not developing any new Amazon affiliate sites for reinvesting to the existing Amazon affiliate sites any more.
i am using Shopabot platform for my Amazon.de affiliate for 3 month ago.yesterday Amazon.de ban my affiliate account but i am not sure what the issues Amazon.de ban my account.
Hi Iwan,
sorry to hear that your affiliate account got banned.
I am not familiar with Shopabot so not sure what kind of affiliate link URLs it generates or how it pulls images from Amazon but those are some of the points that should be investigated to make sure they are in compliance with the terms that Amazon laid out.
Thank you for an awesome post! Question, so my account was closed as well. I have over 20 posts. Does that mean that I have to start again from scratch and re-do the links? :(
Hi Darkis,
Sorry to hear that.
If you can manage to open a new Amazon Associate account, all you need to do is to update the affiliate links to the new tracking code.
There are plugins out there that can help you do this easily.
Here is one that I use – https://wordpress.org/plugins/better-search-replace/
I was recently kick-out by Amazon for not making the required three qualified sales within in 180-days of sign-up. I am still on the process of appealing my case because 2 weeks before the supposedly 180-days period expires, I made three item sales. I don’t know what is “three qualified sales” they are referring to. Is it three separate sales from separate buyers or three products sold whether from 3 unique buyers or 1 buyer ? Anyway, should I still continue with my Amazon Affiliate site until I receive consistent traffic as per Amazon advice or just give it up?
Since not making enough sales was the reason for the account shut down, if I were you, I would give it a try again.
Let’s face it – Amazon hardly needs the money from small-time affiliate’s – and it sounds like they have become incredibly arrogant. I’m a full-time affiliate marketer and signed up yesterday with Amazon, thinking I could add some extra product offerings in the sidebars of my websites (I have about 15) – but reading through this stream of negativity, has put me right off Amazon as a business partner. I’m going to cancel my Amazon associates membership before it starts. I only work with certainties, and am seeing time spent building my business via Amazon as a potential loss… Good luck to anybody who continues with them – but I’m out! Plenty of business owners out there, who are desperate for good quality affiliate’s, and who pay a lot more commission than Amazon…
(I’m unable to un-tick the box at the foot of your form – please don’t add me to your mailing list, or send me any newsletters or marketing material – thanks)
I am thinking the same way, but what’s the alternative to Amazon. It would be great if there is a competitor.
“…you did not include a valid business justification that explained your intended use of the Product Advertising API.” Question is how to justify it?
#1.
Hello,
We completed a review of your application to become an Amazon.com Associate, which included a visit to the website where you planned to create links to our store.
After careful review, your site appears to be unsuitable per our Operating Agreement. Weve decided not to approve your application to become an Amazon Associate or grant access to the Product Advertising API. As a result of this decision, youll no longer be able to access your Amazon Associates account.
Please feel free to review our Operating Agreement here:
https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/help/operating/agreement
We hope to see you again soon.
===========
#2.
Dear Associate,
While reviewing your request, we see that you did not include a valid business justification that explained your intended use of the Product Advertising API.
As a result of this, you’ll no longer be able to access your Amazon Associates account.
Please feel free to review our Operating Agreement here:
https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/help/operating/agreement
We hope to see you again soon.
We’d appreciate your feedback. Please use the buttons below to vote about your experience today.
Best regards,
==================
Hey Tony,
(2nd Time)
Have you added the same website while applying for the second time?
(3rd Time)
Did you keep the website field blank?
Also, is the account still active or it’s dead?
I’m going through the same phase so please do reply to my comment if you’re reading it. :(
(2nd Time)
Yes I did, and I think that was why I got into trouble again.
(3rd Time)
I just used a different website that has never got into trouble as the primary site and never added the sites that caused troubles before.
The account is still active.
Hi! My account has been closed for the second time because I made only two purchases (the first time I didnt reach not even one). I want to open another amazon affiliate account with another website that has more traffic and is doing good. My question is: can I still open the account with my name and my payment information (the same credit card)?
Thanks for the help!
If the reason they closed the account was due to not making enough sales, you should be able to use the exact same information again.
Hi!
I recently had my account “not approved” after using it for 3-4 weeks. I did not realize that I was technically still awaiting approval and I was putting all my “affiliate marketing eggs” in the amazon basket during that time. I was really disappointed because I had invested a lot of time into curating an intragram feed and a facebook presence that directed people to my website, where they then could find links to fashion/clothes products. I was told that my website content wasn’t substantial enough and was “mostly” advertising. This is probably true, as I was using my website as a platform for people to find the products that I wear/like.
Moving forward, I plan to add more pages to my site that are informative resources before I reapply.
As far as I know, I was not rejected for my linking style. I have been using the “embed” link feature in word press so I can display the name of the item as a hyper link (Women’s Casual Long Sleeve Blouse) for example, and then the link associated with it is my amazon affiliate link. If you hover on the link, you can tell it’s amazon. From what I am reading this is not CLOAKING, but does it count as shortening or obscuring? I do not want to get in trouble again if I reapply. I prefer having the links look nice and show the name of the product, but I will not do this if it is not allowed. Can someone clarify what I can and cannot do with the amazon affiliate links?
ALSO, if I do re-apply, will I now need to replace all my old links?
Hi Brenna,
the way you placed your links was not cloaking.
If you do re-apply with a different affiliate account, you would need to replace all of your affiliate links because the tag would be different.
You can just replace the tracking portion of the link using plugins such as this one https://wordpress.org/plugins/better-search-replace/
Hello,
I am facing problem in amazon affiliate.
“Valid business justification that explained your intended use of the Product Advertising API”
How to resolve this?
Sorry, I have never used API.
Hope someone reading this with API experience could help…..
I have faced this same issue. I posted some products using my own affiliate links and not use any images which may have copyright issues on a blog that i have written. Suddenyl all the images were disabled and not clickable and they closed my account. Do i have to mention about every webaddress where i am posting the products. i dont know why they closed my ccount.
Sounds like you posted your Amazon affiliate links on someone else’s blog? If so, you should not have done that. You can only post your affiliate links to your own sites, not someone else’s.
Hi, My account got banned as well..
so how do you really make a link back to the Amazon affiliate links? should you use the product name as anchor text and link back to the product? or you should make a button?
this is confusing thought.
You can use both of those methods, as long as they don’t violate Amazon’s terms.
They also shut down my account today saying your website includes an unapproved use of Amazon trademarked words, images, or reviews which may include variations or misspellings and this is a violation of our Trademark Guidelines.
can anyone know what to do next?
This is really great story, Thanks Tony for sharing this post with us; as Amazon is expert in closing accounts without any reason, they have done this with me many times, and when i asked they never come up with satisfactory answer to me! I my view too they actively looking for new publisher so that they can easily close their accounts.Well, from the beginning i have been facing problem with this largest and most successful online affiliate network for publishers, not only with you and me but there are tens and thousands of publishers out there who have lost their account and earning with Amazon. Now, we know by this way they have become one of the largest and most successful online business in the world.
I can understand this situation when I found that someone bought a lot of stuff using my Amazon links and earning reached 12K$ in 3 days, I was happy that someone went from my site to Amazon but after 2 days, I received an email from Amazon that my account suspended because they are unable to find the source of traffic. However, I am thinking to apply again with the same website, do you think it be a good idea or I have to buy a new domain and start from scratch.
It’s worth trying but based on what happened to me, I am guessing that they probably have a way to trace back that your site violated the terms once before, and may shut down your account again.
I’m currently facing the same issue.
Account application rejected due to violation of Trademark Guidelines. I am displaying their prices in a comparison table, and furthermore am displaying user ratings, including ratings count, stars and a link to Amazon.
I suppose my violation is caused by my use of their user ratings?
thay closed mine also!
and i cant find any email to talk with them
its amazon uk
can i get some email or phone?
You could just reply to the email that they sent you.
Also, here is a page where you can contact them.
https://affiliate-program.amazon.co.uk/contact?ac-ms-src=ac-nav
Hey ,
Thanks God I found this post. Great Write up.
So you’re telling me if I create YouTube videos of reviews of certain affiliate products…I can get banned if I mention the price?
Please advise.
Regards,
That is a good question. I have no idea…..
Can anybody chime in on this?
Effective in 7 days, Amazon is terminating your Associates account as well as the Operating Agreement that governs it.
Note that this communication is regarding only the account listed in the subject line of this email.
Why?
You haven’t referred any qualifying sales for more than 365 days.
What’s next?
You must stop using the Content and Amazon Marks and promptly remove all links to the Amazon site. You will be paid on the regular schedule for any outstanding fees that have accrued prior to this notice.
You are welcome to reapply at any time by visiting Associates Central.
Thank you for your participation in the Amazon Associates Program.
Amazon.in
Can me tell you what is this? Why they mail me as I got clicked and orders through my referral links.
My guess is they are referring only to the sites that did not generate sales?
Is there any way to get back my previous amazon associate account ?
please let me know. I’m little bit confuse.
Based on my experience, once they decide to close it down, that’s it.
hi tony im having a different problem through amazon new api policy where i am going to have to terminate my site ive spent ages building.During construction of my site amazon changed the api policy where have to make 3 sales or lose your key well as my site wasnr even finished at the time and not even live how can i make 3 sales? catch22 love to know what marketing amazon genius thought that one up.
They took my key off me on march 18th so my prices are well out of date on my site and have no way to sync my prices with amazon as have no working key so although getting plenty of traffic potential customers are being put off by my site showing different prices to amazon and not going through with the sale.I had another site on same account that was making money which i decided to shut down and concentrate on new one so the money i have in their account which is just under £25 and not a lot but its mine i earned it and amazon wont pay it me.
I really liked the affiliate program till the api change now its just not worth it for a new website using their affiliate as you cant make sales with no working key.
Sorry to hear that Stephen.
I have never used the API but maybe building up traffic and making a few sales before turning on the API might be the way to go next time.
Great article, Tony. Like you, I was recently put through the hoops of detected agreement violations, site fixes, additional agreement violations, fixes, requests for clarification, and eventually closure do to the way my site was displaying product pricing.
If I accept defeat, start a new site that follows the rules more clearly, and apply for the Associates program again, can I do it with the same Amazon account that was associated with the previously closed Associates account, or should I create a fresh Amazon.com account when I reapply? Thanks.
Based on my experience, once Amazon decides to shut down an account, that’s pretty much it. Nothing much can be done.
The best thing you could do is to start a new one.
Amazon just closed my account of over 9 years! They first claimed I clocked the links. I got them directly from their “link creator”. After I wrote them a few times they then claimed I was emailing links. Now, I have not been actively working my website for 3 years! I never emailed any links either. I just happened to log into the email account to see if I still knew the password – I was thinking of picking it up again. That is when I found their first email, 3 days old, with surprisingly strong language, as if I was a criminal. I guess that is how they speak and treat their loyal “customers”!
From my research I can tell that this happens a lot. I think they just pick random people and do this to them just because they can. There are just too many people with the same stories.
In general, I’ve been hearing more and more negative things about Amazon, from how they treat their workers to stories like ours. I’ve now decided that they are too big and need to be broken up. I’ll do my part by closing my Prime account and not use them for personal and business any more. I spend between $125-175K per year with them. I hope others will do the same. We all made them big, now we have to break them down “to reality” again.
I hear you Mike.
It took me a while to get over the shock too.
My account was not as old as yous but In the end, I decided to use that energy on other projects rather than keep thinking about Amazon.
Maybe I should start asking people to share what they move on to after their Amazon associate account got shut down.
Clickbank sites by email list building .
Clickbank usually doesnt ban affiliates for any changes in website.
and moreover the list can be used to promote various other products.
Hello Toni!
If someone has a Buyer (customer) Amazon account that is suspended, then can they open an Associate account where to use their own website? No customer, no Seller, just an Associate/Affiliate account.
Peter
You should be able to open an associate account but whether they would approve it is another story…..
Tony, Did you ever find out what people are moving to? I’m very interested!
Clickbank is one of them. There are many other affiliate programs out there but based on my personal experience, none of them convert as well as Amazon does.
Here is what I am moving to in case you are interested.
https://digitalreadymarketing.com/life-amazon-associate/
today my account got closed too.
full disclosure, i dont use affiliate links on my website, instead every customer who asks for advice gets the link with the product for him. its sidebusiness with our customer base we usually do other things in that field.
first they ignored the largest order last month even tough i KNOW they ordered it with my link.
now this month i had 3 large orders, finally getting over the mark to pay out.
suddenly without warning (not even a 3 days notice) account closed, no way to contact them (no access to mail form, reply not possible)
thankfully all small times stuff, very smalltgime, we talk an average of like 100-200 revenue a month, just happend i opend the affiliate at the slowest month so i wasnt even over the 25€ mark. this month it would have been 400 something (not counting 200 from the ignored order)
this seems way to systematic. they use the small ones to get first time customer to amazon, then boot them to never pay them.
they keep however the very big ones simply they cant afford big ass youtube channels to rant against amazon ofc.
bottom line, this is plain fraud, and defently not compliant with EU regulations the way they do it.
however the barrier to courts in this case is so high that the small ones wont go there. as much i want to its not worth it
Hi,
I am from India.
The same thing happened to me twice.
I think these guys do it to reduce their payment liability. If at all they feel that we are doing something wrong, they should warn and help us rectify the issues. Straight away terminating the account without any reasoning and discussion shows malicious intent.
This is very demotivating and it feels like all our hard work & efforts are in vain. I just wonder what kind of a business strategy is this?
I think its a lesson learned. We should not completely depend on one affiliate program.
They seem to be closing affiliate accounts with no basis. I do believe there is potential for fraud. Amazon Affiliate Class action lawsuit perhaps?
Demotivated right now. I have just (about an hour ago) received a mail that my affiliate account shut down. The main reason they mentioned is correct. My store name had ‘amzn’ into it. So this reason behind shut down is acceptable. When I open Amazon Affiliate account at first, I just thought of using store name as ‘amzndiscnt’. I had no idea about rules and regulations for amazon affiliate. But when I realised it I tried to change it but I couldn’t, and now its shut down. Damnnn..
Anyway as I have to move on, do you know what will happned to my previous links now? Apart from my website, I have put links in many blogs, and on different platforms. Should I write back to Amazon and wait for their answers or should I create new store id and start replacing links? Tony or anyone? Any thought on the same is highly appreciated.
Sorry to hear that Sagar.
Those old links are deactivated so I wouldn’t worry too much about them unless you plan to use the same site then obviously you would need to update the old affiliate links to new ones site-wide.
Hello!
thank you for this article, super helpful.
My account got banned and they sent me this: “We noticed that you are not using tags associated with your store in any of the Amazon Special Links you have created on your Site”
i used helium10 to generate links with keywords in them, keywords related to the products, not my site…does this mean I should add keywords related to my website next time? or this means something else? I don’t understand haha
It probably means links on your site do not contain the tracking code associated with your account.
I am not sure if I understood it correctly but it sounds like you sell products on Amazon and have your own site that promotes it?
In any case, the affiliate links should contain a tracking code that is associated with the site you specified in your Amazon associate account.
Hi Tony,
I was, and still am, a newbie with affiliate marketing. I joined Amazon’s program without knowing much. They also shut down my account but for what I view as an innocent mistake that could have been remedied had they emailed me first.
I had closed my website and opted for a different domain. I didn’t even know (newbie again sorry) that I needed to notify Amazon of this new domain website and to close the other. I have since reapplied and all seems okay, except reading your article there are some things you talked about that I have to go back to my blog and take care of (saying how many stars were received, etc.)
My issue comes with Amazon keeping everyone’s money – it just doesn’t seem legal and makes me doubt Amazon’s ethics. My income wasn’t nearly as much as others so I should be grateful for that but I’m hesitant in going forward with them as it seems from the comments that they can close your account on a whim and keep any commission.
I’m looking into other affiliate programs and I’m thinking maybe use the others as much as possible just in case I do something inadvertently wrong with Amazon and they shut my account down again.
Thank you again for posting.
Hi Debbie,
Thank you for sharing your story.
I do agree but at the end of the day, it’s their affiliate program, so we are powerless.
I have moved on and here is what I am thinking in case you are interested.
https://digitalreadymarketing.com/life-amazon-associate/
they repay me wit this
”It is important that you immediately stop using the Content and Amazon Marks and promptly remove from your Site(s) and delete or otherwise destroy all links to the Amazon site, all Amazon Marks and all other and any other materials provided or made available by or on behalf of us to you under this Operating Agreement or otherwise in connection with the Program”
how i can regain back
If that is the only reason, in theory, you could remove the content and Amazon marks (logo I presume?) and reapply.
However, based on my experience, if they have had an issue with your site once before, they could come after you with something else even if you have fixed the issue they have pointed out.
Amazon did the same thing to me, 1 week ago.
Their reason, which I still do not understand stated : “Purchases resulting from Special Links on your Site have been for personal use, resale, or commercial use, or have been made by your friends, relatives, employees, contractors, or business relations.”
I don’t resale, I don’t use it for commercial. Links are on our cooking blog and Youtube video (nearly 1M views) which is access via organic search and communicated via social media, and yes, friends are reading it, but I doubt that would be the reason. So I don’t understand their justification. Was it because my wife used her amazon personal account on our family computer which may have had the affiliate cookies stored? I doubt it was my wife’s activity on our family computer, I never saw our purchases on our affiliate account. Or was it because I canceled my Prime account the month prior? And to tell you frankly, if we barely made 10$ a quarter that was a max ;-). So luckily we are clearly not living on Amazon and that’s maybe the real reason why they wanted to close that account!
I did appeal to this closure, and I got the following answer … which means, — we don’t give a sh**t about customers/affiliates —
“we may terminate your account at any time, with or without cause. This termination is final and not subject to appeal.”
I am trying one last attempt to contact them and get the reports from my closed account to see what types of clicks may have shown up on it and I would need these reports to file (or not) the 1099-Misc in the US. I would think that legally they would have to provide it, even if our earnings for 2019 were low.
We will see, but I don’t have any hope about these corporate dictatures. As mentioned on the previous comments, you have to sign these T&Cs and have no word to say, no rights, no nothing :-), but you have to sign it if you want to bring them revenu. It is like their decision to increase prime from 99$ to 120$ from one day to the other … this is a simple 20% bump on their bottom line with 100% benefits, no cost, no efforts, and bump their share price.
Anyway, I just wanted to share with others that we are not alone here :-).
Good luck, diversify, get creative, move on, life goes on.
Hi Laurent,
Thank you for sharing your story.
Diversify, get creative, move on indeed.
https://digitalreadymarketing.com/life-amazon-associate/
Hi, sorry to hear about your story. I went through something similar last week for other reason (if there was one).
I’ve found Skimlinks to be viable alternative (but they will take 25% off your earnings).
If you are interested on what actions I did and how my account was reinstated check : https://mzerak.com/amazon-associates-account-closed/ …
Hi,
Just tried logging into my Amazon affiliate account and got the error “The e-mail/mobile number you are using is not connected to an Associates account……. “.
On checking email, Amazon says that I have not generated any sales despite having sold several items this year. there a minimum number of sales or amount of commissions. Also, what happens to my commissions.
I highly doubt if Amazon will get back to me and am not sure I would like to continue with their uncertain program. This is a bit depressing considering the efforts one makes to make a sale. However, am ready to move on and look for other affiliate programs with better terms and patience
Thanks
Mike
It might have been a blessing considering now Amazon has cut the commission further on April 21, 2020.
https://searchengineland.com/amazon-affiliate-commission-rates-cut-332966
Hi, i am sharing udemy coupons on my website and in middle of posts, i add amazon product links that i get from stripe…
so as i share udemy courses, i share the exact content of udemy.. i was wondering if Amazon has problem with this because i dont own the content.. i also have amazon banners and other type of ads bc i dont have adsense on my website.
I added that i am doing affiliate to footer but not to every post.
Please am i doing wrong?