Amazon US/CA just sent this round to affiliates (excerpt): So if there was any doubt before about sending direct paid search traffic to Amazon, wonder no more. Don't know how many it will affect - I wasn't doing it myself, but evidently someone was, and probably making loads too...
That's a big turnaround by Amazon but it's been coming for a while I guess. This will hurt some people for sure. On a lighter note... A funny thing happened to me the other day regarding Amazon. I was looking through my Amazon affiliate stats and had to laugh.. an AR in one of my small niches had referred prospects to a cheap Amazon product under $20 as part of building goodwill and sharing a good physical product. Interestingly dozens of prospects had bought all this other non related stuff (someone even bought a $1700 TV) so there was commissions coming from left right and center but as you know they are low compared to digital products but it all helps. Peter
For the most part, I don't think the new change is going to affect anyone unless they were using something like amazonhunter and sending traffic directly to amazon. For anyone who finds that they will start losing money because of the change, should simply setup their own website, send traffic to it directly, and still make Amazon sales. thnx, PuReWebDev