Perhaps this news came out six months ago, and I missed it. Or maybe Amazon slipped this into the fine print in yesterday, knowing it would be ignored amid the Kindle DX media frenzy.
In the last paragraph of yesterday’s announcement of Kindle DX on the official Amazon Associates blog:
Please note that books formatted for kindle are not eligible to receive referral fees through the Associates program. Associates can earn referral fees on qualifying sales of the following Kindle products: Kindle reader sales (this includes Kindle and Kindle DX), Kindle magazine, newspaper, and blog subscriptions.
Speaking as a longtime Amazon affiliate, here’s the irritating thing about this: Amazon is displaying Kindle editions on my site’s Omakase banner ads. In other words, I’m paying to host Amazon ads that Amazon isn’t paying me for, even when they result in a sale.
The first three titles they’re showing on my sidebar (pictured left) are Kindle editions. No indication that the ads are for Kindle editions unless, of course, you click on them and leave my site. To add insult to injury, one of the ads is for a public domain book they’re giving away free.
Omakase ads are displayed based on the browsing history at Amazon. I’m not sure if other Associates banners and widgets are doing this. It certainly explains for me why my Associates payouts have dropped like a stone recently while my traffic and clicks have gone up.
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9 Comments
This is not the first time I have heard this.
Although it is the first time someone has pointed out that the site owner is paying to host an Amazon advertisement that is targeted to a non-commission paying product.
As my site traffic builds I will be adding associate adverts for books.
I am left wondering is Amazon the only provider for this?
Do we have a choice to vote with our feet?
For this reason, I replaced the usual Amazon widgets in my sidebar with ads for Sony's ebook reader. I hope other associates will do the same.
Yeah…I knew nothing about it until I recently checked my stats to see that I didn't receive a commission for an order. When I looked up the details I realized someone purchased a kindle edition book.
What's irritating is that I specifically linked to the paperback version of the book, and Amazon placed a small banner at the top of the product page advertising the kindle version… which means that's a sale Amazon wouldn't have received had I not sent the visitor.
I know the commission would only be a few cents on a $9.99 kindle version, but it's the principle of the matter. Plus that few cents adds up when you're sending a lot of visitors. Anyway… thanks for letting me vent a bit.
- Jack
It adds up fast. At this time I am missing about 50% of my revenue due to kindle purchases each month. I would much prefer them to just give us a smaller % for kindle purchases than nothing.
Of course though, I just use my referral fees to buy the kindle books I read in a month. So I guess it all evens out somehow.
Thanks for the info. I was just wondering the same thing. Based on their chart showing Kindle (one word) lumped in with mp3 and game downloads to be at a high 10% commission, I was looking forward to selling a Kindle edition. Then I saw my referral fee at 0% for an ebook and had to run a Google search to discover the fine print. Wouldn't they making more money on Kindle ebooks? But they can't pass on a little of it?
This is very interesting to read about the kindle from Amazon.
I had recently thought about being an affiliate for Amazon, especially to
promote the Kindle. Now I am glad I changed my mind!
Thanks for the info.
Any chance they will change this in the future? The weird part is that I’m seeing Kindle book purchases in my summary report but as you mentioned, they’re not included in the earnings section. If they do not intend to give commissions on Kindle format purchases, then why do they even include it in the reports?
Thanks — I just figured this out, too, when I saw no revenue on the Kindle book sales.
But the cool part about it is that you still get clicks and credit for other stuff people buy while they’re under your cookie, so thank God people bought an actual Kindle book reader and other stuff.
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[...] Back when Amazon had an unchallenged lead in e-books, with its Kindle reader responsible for 80 percent of the market, Amazon told affiliates it wouldn’t pay commissions on sales of Kindle books. [...]