Amazon Associates Drops Paid Search Referrals
Amazon is changing the way affiliates do business.
As of 1st May 2009, the affiliate program, Amazon Associates, will no longer pay referral fees for Paid Search sales. This means that if you have been driving PPC traffic to Amazon via product keywords on Google, Yahoo and MSN, you’re out of luck.
And Amazon’s not dumb. They know about interstitial pages; they won’t pay referral fees for these either. In other words, paid search advertisements to page redirections are also not allowed.
Your only option now is content. You have to build some value about the product that you are selling. You are still allowed to use PPC to drive traffic to your website, but you’ve got to win your customers by selling value. You can also use your SEO skills to drive organic traffic to your website.
Might as well start checking out Info Product Killer. This is a good blueprint to build your content around a range of Amazon products that you are targeting. It targets the Christmas season, mainly because of the buying volume during that period. But that knowledge is evergreen - it will also work when you build product content around themes.
