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Banned from Amazon – From $10,000 per month to $0

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Banned from Amazon – From $10,000 per month to $0

Servando: this is a guest post from Dennis from Passive Solutions. Dennis was making $5,000+ per month with Amazon Associates and now he’s earning less than $500 after being banned by Amazon. Here you can read the whole story and what he learned while looking for new alternatives.

Hi Folks,

If you’re a frequent visitor, you probably remember me from the post “the difference between $1,000 and $10,000 per month” that I wrote a few months ago.

Well, things changed, for the worse.

What happened is that Amazon decided to close my Amazon Associates account and ban me from the program for LIFE. The reason; sorry I didn’t save the exact email, was something like this: “Your site or sites provide inaccurate, deceptive, exaggerated OR otherwise misleading information”.

Whoa those are some nice accusations right there!!!

Obviously I tried to contact them in a number of ways to find the reason behind this ban as the above was kind of vague, actually the reason was a bit lengthier with more OR’s. Initially I didn’t receive any answer at all besides a copy/paste of the initial email.

So it took like 5 emails, 3 chat sessions and 1 phone call to find out the real two reasons:

  1. I used their logo in a prohibited way
  2. I used buttons on one site that said something like ‘special discount’

Apparently that’s not allowed and a quick warning email wouldn’t suffice I guess…, as it could’ve been fixed in a matter of minutes.

Are those the real reasons?

Personally I feel this wasn’t the complete reason, I bet they just weren’t too happy with the quality of some of the sites and just came up with those lame reasons.

Amazon Ban

After going over each site, 30+ in total, I found that some of my writers did make exaggerated claims in some of the reviews and I also saw that some of the reviews did mention price, amount of user reviews and star ratings, which leads to inaccurate information as if a product has 500 reviews today and a 4.1 star rating it could very well have 800 reviews a month later with a star rating of say 3.8

LEARNING POINT 1: Be very careful with mentioning prices, user reviews and ratings if you don’t pull it from their API, better said: “Don’t use such dynamic metrics at all”.

LEARNING POINT 2: Fact check every single outsourced article to avoid misleading, deceptive claims about products.

LEARNING POINT 3: NEVER use custom buttons that use the word Amazon in it, or anything like special discount. (For the record, till today I haven’t found a button on any of my sites that mentions ‘special discount’, I only found a button that reads SPECIAL PRICES).

By the way I also contacted my Amazon account manager, that was dedicated to me not long before the ban, she wasn’t of any help at all and simply told me that they are two complete different departments. Alright, after quite some anger and what not I decided to accept it and move on as it became more and more clear that they don’t give a damn and well, Amazon isn’t the only shopping platform right?

Looking for Amazon alternatives

When looking for another program some names pop up rather quickly, for example:

  • eBay
  • AliExpress
  • Walmart
  • BestBuy
  • Target

Here some quick thoughts on each of them:

Ebay – As my sites mostly rank for ‘best <product>’ I personally feel that eBay isn’t the very best match. Also in terms of warranty I wouldn’t feel too secure with all those ‘dubious’ eBay sellers. That’s just my personal opinion.

AliExpress – Unsuitable as people look for quality so when they type in ‘best rice cooker’ they don’t want some cheap crappy Chinese product for 10 bucks. Instead they are well prepared to spend over a hundred dollars to get the best one.

Walmart – Sounds like a great alternative to me, however only 4% commission.

Bestbuy – Didn’t look that bad either till I found out they offer between 0-1% commissions so I scrapped that early from my list.

Target – I know this company from Holland, they are not particularly big but it’s a reliable company and they offer 6% commissions, not a bad idea to give it a try, I thought…

So I decided to give eBay, Walmart and Target a try.

To leave you no longer in excitement, I made a whopping $300 in the last 45 days, as not all sites were instantly monetized let’s say that equals a full month.

What the heck, that’s like 10% of what I used to earn per month through Amazon!!! What’s even worse, one sale produced a commission of $110 at eBay, no idea what they bought as eBay doesn’t seem to report that or I haven’t figured that out yet.

Let’s look at the conversions of those alternatives

Here are my conversions and earnings from the eBay affiliate program:

banned from amazon ebay alternative

And here you can see my conversions and earnings from the Target affiliate program:

banned from amazon target alternative

Rakuten / linkshare data (Walmart affiliate program):

  • Approx. 1000 clicks in 3 days and a single sale of $9, that’s a conversion of 0,1%

Sorry I can’t provide a screenshot as each website needs to be signed up individually but those 3 are the main programs I tested.

What about my conversions at Amazon vs the others?

In the last month with my Amazon Affiliate site I converted at a rate of 5.5%. That would mean that I would’ve made 55 sales based on 1000 clicks.

Anyway, here’s a quick conversion overview form the programs I tested:

  • eBay.com: 3071 clicks – 17 winning bids – 0.55% conversion
  • Target.com: 1512 clicks – 5 actions – 0.33% conversion
  • Walmart.com: 1000 clicks – 1 sale – 0.10% conversion

As you can see eBay is the big winner here and I think I could increase that to 1% if I solely search for products with a buy now button instead of directing them to a search page which I frequently did as I didn’t feel like updating products every single month as it often involves ‘rest stock’. That means they buy a bunch of products from a company that went bankrupt so it’s more often than not a very limited supply and nothing ongoing like at Amazon where the major brands / manufacturers sell theirselves.

Still I have a very hard time pulling my head around on those absolutely dramatic conversions, I mean Walmart is pretty much of a price breaker but still only converting at a measly 0.1%.

Really???

I can hardly believe it and feel some dubious practices might be going on there.

And take Target, I used them for a while on my best performing site and the products were very similarly priced as on Amazon, many the exact same price level and the same vendor they work with. Still I could only get it to 0.35% with direct linking to product pages.

Quick conclusion: Those alternatives SUCKED big time for my sites.

Back to Amazon it is!

Well that’s not really an option of course, but based on the stats you’ve seen above it is really our ONLY option. I forgot to mention that I also tried some Adsense, a site that used to do $250/month brought in $2,50/month with Adsense monetization, hardly worth mentioning but just in case if you thought that could be your backup plan.

To get back to Amazon we have a couple of options, let me outline them quickly and talk a little more about the safety measures you have to take and how durable it can be:

  1. Viglinks
  2. Skimlinks
  3. Offshore company
  4. Account from a friend

Viglinks

What a strange company is this, I signed up, applied for multiple merchants (has to be done individually), after weeks none approved me, after an email to their support desk I was instantly approved for a number of them. After I applied for Amazon as well, again nothing for weeks and support tickets remained unanswered. Well just forget about this dubious company as in the weeks that I wasn’t approved I did generate a LOT of clicks, with zero in return.

Skimlinks

Requires you to have a site that generates traffic already, with this company I’ve been a little creative with my personal name, I also created a new email address and added that email adress to my PayPal account. I redirected one of my better performing sites to a new domain, moved the site and changed the theme and structure a bit, though kept the old content. So far so good. Skimlinks approved me and with Skimlinks you get approved for every merchant in their program, no need to sign up individually, which is great.

I haven’t had time yet to adjust and redirect my other sites as I was in the progress of testing Walmart after the disaster with eBay, Target, Adsense (and some smallish individual niche based vendors) but I see Skimlinks as a viable option to get things running quickly.

I’m not exactly sure how much Skimlinks pays as they provide an average commission and as you probably know the electronic department pays only 4% vs up to 8.5% for other products so let’s see.

Durability: As I’ve been a little creative with my real name and created a new email account my exact name will obviously show up when I receive my first payment through PayPal. I have no idea if they cross check this. I do assume that if I would use my name as it’s written on my passport that they would find out rather quickly and if I hadn’t redirected my domain name they would’ve probably found out instantly as well so let’s see. Playing a bit with fire here.

Offshore company formation

I won’t go into any specific countries here but if you want to stay 100% under the radar this is the only way to go.

I contacted Payoneer about this and yes you can hook up a company bank account with a Payoneer account under the company name.

Amazon also allows for affiliate accounts on a company name so there’s no reason for your name to show up anywhere.

Now if you’re a little paranoid like I am it’s smart to have your offshore formation company assign nominees for you as well as a director, this doesn’t come for free of course but prevents you showing your real name on the company documents. To be in full control of the company you sign a power of attorney with the assigned director. All this comes at a price tag of about 2,500 euro in the first year and 1,500 year in follow up years, depending on where you have your company registered so take it as a ballpark figure. This number comes from a respective company formation company with good reviews all over the web, I’m pretty sure there are more affordable ones but I rather pay a little more and do business with a reputable company.

As for your affiliate sites, I personally wouldn’t take the basic steps I’m taking with Skimlinks now, what I mean is that I wouldn’t just move the site to a new domain, setup a redirect and call it a day. I would go one or two steps further:

  • Option 1: Build a new site, with new content, use solid writers, fact check everything and redirect your old domain.
  • Option 2: Build a new site, adjust all the backlinks and point them to the new site. Obviously the downside is that it will take a long time to rank again, but it’s the only 100% secure way without spending a fortune.

As for me, I’m currently in the process of adjusting my sites for Skimlinks to see what that brings and my last resort is an offshore company formation in combination with option number two!

Is this all worth it?

Some may argue to just give it up and focus on other ways to create a passive income, that’s all fine and well but I tailored my private blog network pretty much to physical product niches, plus the fact that I spend tens of thousands of dollars on my sites, a huge part of that is link building content so I don’t feel too happy with throwing that away and as I’ve shown you, eBay, Target, Walmart, Adsense are no viable alternatives.

Besides that, I’m really no fan of digital products (Clickbank, JVZoo, etc.), call it a personal thing.

Obviously I could start to focus on health products, lead generation or perhaps even software reviews or web services. There are plenty of possibilities of course and I will pursue some of those ideas on the side.

But I will also continue with Amazon as it’s a very well converting platform AND it’s not a bad idea to have an anonymous tax free offshore company in your portfolio.

Anyway I hope you learned some things from this. Understand that your Amazon account is worth a lot more than you initially might think so be careful about it and don’t take it for granted that you can setup shitty sites and get away with it as once you do start to make considerable income they will double check you!

I really don’t think it’s a coincidence that I get an account review short after I got contacted by a dedicated account manager. Oh and I just reached total earnings of $50k+, such a nice round amount. At least it covers my expenses!

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Comments

  1. Hi,
    So, how is it going with Skimlinks?
    Or did you found anything better?
    I am in the same situation, Amazon band me when I got to 20k per month, and I never got the last 3 months payments of course…
    I was looking at eBay and it is a mess really!
    Rakuten, target, Walmart… no the best either.
    I own a YouTube channel and get about 5000 clicks per day.
    I did try drop shipping but it is time cosuming and the profit is just way lower than earning with affiliates.
    At the end of the day I have the feeling that If you pass a certain level, amazon will just find why ever reson to cut you out (withtout notoce) and by the way this is in there agreements! They can cut you at any point of time and without having to give any reasons, and you need to accept that…. lovely.

    Reply

  2. I too was banned by associates and was making a nice hefty sum a month. So Amazon has been very good to me until they banned me. But I am wondering, has anyone tried to create a new account with them without getting shut down again and without having to go offshore?

    I found this guide which shows you how to create a new eBay and PayPal: https://www.slideshare.net/AuctionEssistance/ebay-incognitostealth

    But I am wondering if it would work for Amazon affiliate account too? Would hate to totally abandon Amazon altogether.

    Reply

  3. I was looking forward on signing up with amazon, however, after reading this story, along with other similar horror stories, then maybe I wont. amazon was very shitty for doing this to you when this minor stuff could have been corrected in just a few min with a simple warning, then again, if amazon will ban sellers that earn $2m/year, do you think they are going to care about some affiliate making $5k/mo? Amazon is corporate corruption at its best; rather then working with you, they work against you, throw you under the bus, and drive the bus right over you, and you are talking about a company that has child like behavior when they ban affiliates in an entire state when they do not want want to pay taxes or pass taxes onto customers, and what the hell does this have to do with affiliates? Amazon is so huge that they really do not care if they lose money! If you ask me, amazon has no soul, period. I wonder why amazon let you ride so long for using bad content, as they could have brought this up long before you started making $5k/mo, must have been another review level process, if this is the case, unless you need the money that bad, then do not let your monthly income grow to large, otherwise, you find yourself under an audit, and instant termination, personally, I think this is just amazons excuse on cutting back on affiliate for whatever reason; it is proven that amazon is so big that if they catch even one violation on your site, then you certainly can be terminated….

    Reply

    • Nowadays it’s better not to put the price unless you can update it because they can cancel your account if you show lower prices to get clicks, etc.

      Reply

  6. Try going to some of the sellers directly that you sold a lot of their products. You could probably get a better payout dealing directly with them as well as they also pay high Amazon fees for sales. Even if you got a quarter of the sellers to work with you, at a higher pay out you should more than make up what you’ve lost.

    Another option is to create a corporation. Cheap and easy to do. Then open all corresponding accounts (bank, Paypal, etc…) using the corporation’s name. It’s legal and what I’ve done to get new Adsense accounts.

    Reply

  7. Here is the simple solution.

    Buy the same domain with a new extension. Redirect old site to new site. Ranking will be back in a week maximum. Just update content and few links.

    Get a new amazon account in a friend or family name and Done.

    Have a great day.

    Reply

  8. My best advice for any aspiring affiliate SEO: Stay away from Amazon.. Was an “associate” for 4 years and last year had enough of their BS excuses for not paying out. There are much better alternatives, and a lot of companies offer direct promotions for higher rates – Find them and make more money than your competing affiliates anyway!

    Reply

  9. Hey there,
    i’m not able to understand where i’ve read many people stating that we should not mention prizes on amazon affilaite websites. However, I see TIWIB (Thisiswhyimbroke.com) using all sorts of prices and linking them to amazon.com
    so why doesn’t amazon bans them ?

    Reply

  10. I ALSO GOT recently banned, make sure guys not to use any orange colors CTA buttons on your site and avoid words Amazon and Amazon.com in context especially in buttons, or you will get banned! btw not sure why my buttons are this big I can’t turn caps off lol

    Reply

    • Yeah, using Amazon words or prices nowadays is ticket to ban. I wish they had a team to help their publishers correct this things instead of just insta-banning everybody.

      Reply

        • Amazon own the word Amazon, the Rain Forest lost it many years ago. They also own the letters A, M, Z, O, N, and the colour orange in fact. Not sure how to say this, but they also own your soul. The most customer centric company on the planet… apparently – run by Adolf Bezos.

          Reply

  11. I was suspended 2 weeks ago and have tried several attempts to appeal but they denied it every single time. Now they just notified me that it is an indefinite suspension.

    5 years of work down the drain and the income lost.

    Amazon makes up 30% of my sales, but they do play a big role for me.

    Would you advise me creating another account or using these people to create a new one: http://www.auctionessistance.com/shop

    Reply

  12. SERVANDO,
    I HAVE READ YOUR COMMENTS REGARDING YOUR TROUBLE FINDING WRITERS WHO ARE RELIABLE, COMPETENT AND TRUSTWORTHY……… i UNDERSTAND YOUR FRUSTRATION.

    iF YOU CAN FIND THE TIME, PLEASE CONTACT ME AS I WOULD LIKE THE OPPORTUNITY TO WRITE CONTENT FOR YOU THAT MEETS YOUR REQUIREMENTS.

    REGARDS
    BOB W

    Reply

      • Why no just redirect the links out through a tracking script?

        Page A -> Site B -> Amazon?

        Resetting the referer is super easy (window.location=’amazon’;) and there is no real way to backtrack that.

        Reply

  16. What if we provide such a scoring function based on reviews, not real time but updated frequently, does it break the rules?

    Reply

  17. Dang! That’s sucks :/

    At least you were able to get something positive out of it, learn, share it with others, and move forward.

    I recently did an audit of all my niche sites to make sure they aren’t breaking any amazon associates rule. I feel like they’ve been getting stricter and stricter lately (kinda like google adsense when they had that phase of closing people’s accounts).

    Cheers,

    David

    Reply

    • Yes they do get away with it. They follow Amazon’s TOS. Prices are allowed if you use their api to import the prices direct from their site.

      This site is made by a few of the big guys in the IM world. I have not checked but I think they use the api. A lot of their traffic is paid traffic.

      Ps: #Servando, When I make a comment here all letters become capital.

      Reply

  19. I also got banned from Amazon UK.

    My question is: Will I also be get banned from Amazon US? as I am using the same email address.

    Also what about the check that they have issued but yet to be get credited?

    Reply

    • How would you see such deal in more detail? There’s a lot of costs involved like the site itself (content), backlinks (content + PBN maintenance).

      I do plan to launch a site building service soon though, more about that later!

      Reply

  22. Hello guys!
    i was build many website in the past but without any good income, now i was thinking to start amazon associate website, so i want to ask how did you promote such a website? facebook ads, google adwords and did you write the articles yourself or buy it from websites like freelancer?

    thanks!

    Reply

    • Have a look at this post for 15 case studies:
      http://nichehacks.com/increase-sales-facebook-ads/

      As for Adwords, I do know someone making money using Bing Ads as those clicks are likely a lot cheaper.

      As for myself, I purely relied on SEO as I’m an SEO provider myself with a large network. I never tried paid traffic though would like to experiment with that some day but now a bit difficult with my banned account.

      I got the content for my sites from several sources, TextBroker being one of them. I also used iWriter and HireWriters in the past but actually I’m not satisfied with any of them. Even when you select 4 or 5 star quality (and pay accordingly) you still get a lot of poor content at times.

      I got banned at all 3 of those platforms due to a high number of rejections and/or request for partly refund (which I got each time as we made a deal at some point as I didn’t always had the time to check each article and turned out it contained a lot of crap).

      I also tried to recruit writers from places like oDesk and Freelancer.com, it was often a hit or miss. Most decent writers at those places charged too much imo and often when you find a good writer they disappear quickly again, leaving you with a ton of pending articles (not good for someone who needs content for his customers ON TIME).

      Right now I have 2 writing teams from India, I know them for a long time already, think I found them on Fiverr back then. The quality is so-so but good enough for my lower quality PBN.

      When I need writers for my money sites I start a Facebook advertisement and recruit writers that way, targetting the US, UK and Canada. This also requires a lot of filtering and many writers do become unreliable over time.

      For example I started out with 5 and I already had to fire 3 of them. One started to merge articles he wrote himself so turning 2 articles into a 3rd one, another one started to paste full paragraphs from elsewhere in the articles and the 3rd one clearly started to outsource herself as the quality dropped big time over night.

      I tried to maintain good relationships with them but most still screw you over (3 out of 5). It also took about 50 applicants to end up with just 5 writers.

      Reply

  23. so i recently got banned, can anyone confirm if they actually ban you website also?

    as i was contemplating using a friends name and adrress for a new account….

    Reply

    • Most people just start a new domain because using a new account on the same website triggers bans very quick.

      Reply

  24. I’d like to add something to this post.

    eBay shows absurd low earnings and such, however they did send me 3 payments of $150 $400 and $300 while my total earnings according to their dashboard are stuck at $220,- total for the whole year while total payments received stands at $850,- so I guess it converts better than I wrote in my post above.

    Walmart and Target conversions are still terribly low after 1000’s of clicks, still stuck at approx 1% and with a commission of 4-6% that’s close to nothing.

    I do have one theory why Walmart converts so poor, the links are being redirected by Rakuten / Linksynergy and there seems to be some delay in the redirect and you see a very ugly long URL so that might scare / piss-off visitors.

    SUMMARIZED: Once banned at Amazon first try to get a new account, otherwise Skimlinks and if that’s not an option either then I would say go for eBay as they do give a fair commission and don’t convert that poor afterall (they just need to work on their reporting)

    Reply

    • Interesting man.
      I can’t believe a big company such as eBay has a delay problem with their reporting system. But good to know they actually paid more than what you expected.

      Reply

      • I’ve actually never seen my balance above a few hundred dollars so not sure it’s a delay issue. The more surprised I was when I saw a new payment coming in again lol.

        Reply

        • I have got banned just on individual titles based on contractors secretly duplicating content from some source on the internet. if you are going to use contractors, make sure to run a PLAGIARISM checker! Anyone else have that happen?

          Reply

  25. Denis & Silva
    What about Skimlinks? What is their commission structure and what is the policy of their amazon sell?
    If i send traffic amazon through Skimlinks then will i get same kind commission?(I guess they have 25% fee).
    will the count same kind sell or only one sell per visitor?

    Reply

    • No idea mate, I haven’t gotten that far yet.

      Yes I know this post is several months old now but I haven’t been doing anything with the sites for that long already, big shame on me!

      I only signed up one site with Skimlinks thus far but haven’t monetized it yet. I do expect some 25%ish commission for them indeed so for me it would only be a mid phase and later on startup an offshore and register a new Amazon account.

      Reply

    • I just checked the comm. for Amazon.com using Skimlinks:

      1% on electronics
      2% Video game consoles
      2% Physical media (CD’s/DVD’s/Books)
      4% For handmade products
      5,5% For all other products

      In the past I received 7.5-8% depending on how much I sold obviously so now I will get only 5,5% but it’s still a lot more then switching to eBay or others as you’ve read in my post above.

      Reply

      • Amazon normal commission:

        4% on electronics
        1% Video game consoles
        4-5% Physical media (CD’s/DVD’s/Books)
        4% For handmade products

        For all other product commission:
        If i sell 31-110 then other product commission is 6.5%
        If i sell 111-321 then other product commission is 7.0%
        If i sell 321-630 then other product commission is 7.5%
        If i sell 631-1570 then other product commission is 8.0%
        If i sell 1571-3130 then other product commission is 8.25%
        If i sell 3131+ then other product commission is 8.5%

        If you have few websites and ban that account then 5.5% still good. Isn’t?
        It could be good alternative. But, someone need to experiment on it. and later he should share experiment result for confirmation.

        Actually, I have seen a big website using skimlink. I guess, that website have few thousand articles.

        Reply

        • 5,5% isn’t too bad, especially when you compare it to the alternatives like Target, Walmart, BestBuy and a number of others that don’t offer more either (no matter how much you sell).

          But once you start growing bigger and end up in the 8-8.5% commission scale it’s nearly 50% more that you can earn by setting up an offshore or account under someone elses name.

          The diffrence between making $10k or $15k a month

          Reply

  26. Wow, getting banned from amazon is very unfortunate. I get income from amazon as well and would be sad to lose all of that income. I think that brings in a good point is to dig your well before you are thirsty or create multiple streams of income. a mentor of mine talks about having 9 income streams to create more stability for your future. i like that thought process it is like insurance for your income. so far i am making money through amazon, barnes and noble, the marketing and networking university has an affiliate program, plus traditional sources like stocks and some other smaller income streams. anyway i wish you luck at recreating your amazon stuff , and encourage you to continue to grow other income sources as well.

    Reply

    • The Largest advantage of Amazon is that it was in fact very passive, with 9 income streams there’s a lot of extra work involved.

      never did anything with books btw, do you niche down or do you aim to rank for specific titles?

      Ever tried paid traffic from facebook to promote books?

      Reply

      • How I originally started was taking popular out of copy-write books and added biographies and illustrations per amazon rules. Mostly because i did not have any money being unemployed at the time. after making some money i then began targeting micro niches that could be more easily won for the CATEGORY yet not huge over all sales. i was not the millionaire just thousand-air through it. I did a little marketing but not much. I think i only used paid advertising through facebook and did not have much success but to be fair i did not a/b test or anything just tried it once or twice. Then i just walked away and still getting hundreds a month on something I have not done in 5 or 6 years now. That said i will need to go back in and do more if i want it to keep going strong as it does die off over time but getting paid for 5 years for doing no additional work is pretty darn cool.

        Thank you for your question dennis. I hope i answered APPROPRIATELY.

        Reply

        • Thanks, I was perhaps thinking about making a site like thisiswhyimbroke but then for books and promote it as gifts on Facebook or another angle instead of per book title.

          Though ranking for certain categories is also an option indeed, never looked into the competition for that really, at least it sounds passive enough indeed 😉

          Reply

          • Interesting idea dennis. My method may not work as well now. there seems to be so many more sophisticated gurus of amazon kindle teaching youtube courses etc on that. I think I just kind of stumbled and fumbled but good enough to get it going and then amazon did most of the work for me. lazy marketing I guess! Good luck i hope you do well.

            Reply

  27. I am just recently banned by amazon and plan to use skimlinks. Does skimlink pays you immediately after they receive money from amazon, or is there any other delay beyond the amazon 2 months ?
    thanks

    Reply

  28. Wow awesome post. I have a few friends that were banned from Amazon and will be shooting this website over to them. Some great tips and ways to adjust to being banned from Amazon. It’s happened to us all in different businesses. I’ve seen over 30 people get their Facebook accounts shut down. That’s the downfall with building a business through someone elses website. They really do have all the control.

    Reply

  29. Hi Servando,

    I feel sad to hear and see that. Great article you have posted, from which we became to know about amazon, that the Amazon company banned our account with any vague reason at any time.

    Reply

  30. I was wondering, what would constitute a misleading / exaggeration of the product?

    Like..

    This chair will make your back heal in minutes?

    Shit like that?

    Reply

    • Perhaps but forgetting to update a price could already be misleading, eg mentioning it costs $99,99 while in fact it’s like $139,-

      Cheap writers do have the habit of exaggarating like this is definitely the best lawn mower you’ll ever find on the web, with it’s 2000 watt engine it beats all of its competitors bla bla.

      Reply

  31. Just had my account banned too, while still being owed $4700. Zero warning, just a vague account closure email.

    I understand Amazon’s need to maintain their standards and integrity by having specific affiliate rules in place. The issue I have is having everything shut down with zero warning, especially when the breaches to their T&Cs are very minor. It honestly seems like a cost saving mechanism in a place where they know they have zero accountability to anyone. ‘Hey associates team, we’re a bit behind on numbers this month, can you guys close down $500k’s worth of associate accounts for vague reasons so we look like our growth is continuing from last month? Great job.’

    It’s a little hard to get motivated to try and fix the sites up to adhere to the T&Cs when I may inadvertently do something wrong again and just have them closed yet again without warning. You win Amazon, I no longer want to help you sell your products.

    Anyway, great post. Thanks for writing it up. Nice to know I’m not alone at least, although I’m sincerely sorry for your loss there, knowing just how it feels.

    Reply

  32. Nice post and sorry to hear about the ban.

    I got banned myself for equally obscure reasons and I really don’t understand why they don’t just issue warnings before smashing down the ban hammer!?

    Anyway I was going to create a new account the usual way, i.e. new details, different IP, new computer etc, etc.

    However I was wondering if you know whether they ban websites or accounts? If they do ban websites, what do you think about using a 301 redirect to a new domain name and replacing all the content, (cleaned up and compiling with their tos) then reapplying with the new domain?

    Reply

    • No idea but what i will do is this:

      1) Build new website (new content)
      2) Redirect old domain to new domain
      3) Adjust all links I can
      4) Remove the redirect
      5) Monetize with SkimLinks

      The reason for the redirect is to give Google the signal that the site is moved, to justify all the links adjustments. Once that’s done I remove the redirect to avoid getting caught by Amazon in case they do check old websites that are banned occassionally.

      Reply

  33. wow. I didn’t think that would be so much conversion difference among the other affiliate programs! Amazon is really the best, but the commissions are changed as well…

    Reply

  34. same thing happen with me also, i use to make event niche sites like fathers day and all by doing that i used to earn handsome income from amazon..but suddenly they banned my account..and when i talk to support team they said i have not mentioned any child policy in my site …which is too strange for me …they said we can not reopen your account you have to make new one..luckily they have good policy …they paid me every single penny what i have earned from amazon..even after banning my account….anyways
    Thanks for this great post …it is very vital for me …now i will apply all this to my sites.

    Reply

    • Hi Tadanto,

      I guess in your case its not an indefinite ban….You can open a new account again is what they have mentioned.

      Are you able to open up a new account.

      Gaurab

      Reply

  35. Interesting. But what’s more interesting is that big (product review sites) tends to get away with it. Not sure if Amazon turning a blind eye and not caring small sites like yours and us.

    For instance, If you look for ‘best coffee machine’ (UK serp) there is authority product review site on 1st page. And that the prices are clearly mentioned on the page.

    What are your thoughts on this?

    Reply

  36. I was just banned recently by Amazon with no appeal. They didn’t bother to respond to my emails or give the the time to answer any of my requests.

    After wasted time, I just decided to open a new Amazon account with the help of Auction Essistance. So far so good, just praying that they don’t link me to my old account.

    Reply

  38. just a slightly blackhat suggestion..what about registering another amazon account with one of your family member’s name and create a new site that reviews all the same products.
    Then using the same amazon affiliate links on your original site to continue to get sales since the original site is rank higher on the search engines.

    However you cloak the amazon affiliate links on the original site and go through a double meta refresh to blank the referral so that amazon thinks your sale came from the second site.

    may or may not work….

    Reply

    • If I have to go through the hassle of creating new sites I’m better of creating an offshore company and registering an account on the company name. WIth family members there are always tax issues.

      I do get the stuff about meta refresh / redirect yes but not sure I want to go that way, better do it right, once and for all.

      Reply

  39. I, too, work with Amazon, and it is indeed all too dangerous to put an account at risk there considering how strictly their rules are upheld.

    I have some contacts who have been blocked without an apparent reason as well, but, as it turned out later, the problem was they were non-residents of the U.S. who were paid via Direct Deposit. Are you paid via checks or DD?

    The second question is, what exactly was wrong with the sites? Malformed content, bad formatting? Or, perhaps, it had something to do with inaccurate info on prices, discounts, shipping details, etc? Could you please email me the URLs or at least screenshots at [email protected] so we could put our heads together and think everything over?

    By the way, I, quite recently in fact, happened to see how a very trustworthy site (a top tier at that, ~1k average daily traffic) had their Amazon links removed. They must have been blocked, too. But they redirected to a new domain and made new links with a new tag only a month later.

    Sincerely, Den

    Reply

    • Like I said it’s a mix of things, some star ratings may have been used, on other sites some prices may have been quoted (likely inaccurate by the time of account closure), crappy content on some other sites. I think they just thought that it was low quality all together.

      I get paid through Payoneer direct deposit.

      Reply

    • Offervault is not a CPA network. it’s a search engine for CPA networks.
      There’s big money on CPA marketing although it’s a completely different game.

      Reply

  41. Well you did made a mistake with showing ratings and amazon logo, I know a guy who was making high 5 figures a month and was banned but we couldn’t find 1 single mistake , and of course amazon was answering with generic answers.

    Open new company with someone of your family or friend you really trust and apply again. But don’t risk using same sites, buy new domains and point pbns to them, also 301 old ones. Change content a bit, and ALWAYS consult with someone in amazon on live chat if your site is good to go before you add amazon links.

    Good luck, nobody converts customers as amazon, that’s why they are the best.

    Reply

  42. I feel comfortable with digital products what Clickbank provides, and got success there.
    But, Amazon is completely a different marketplace for me.

    I have recently created a site for Amazon niches. I just wanna ask one thing…How many contents are sufficient to get accepted by them. I have 5 Pillar contents over 5000+ words, around 1000-1200 words per post, also 10 reviews and resources.

    Is it okay to start with these nos.???

    Reply

  43. When you say : Adsense, a site that used to do $250/month brought in $2,50/month with Adsense monetization

    It means 2.50 dollars/month.

    Right?

    Reply

  44. Feeling sad 🙁 for you, I think companies like amazon should help their publisher to fix issues rather than banning. After all you guys are helping them to generate more sales.
    Best Wishes for You.

    Thanks

    Reply

  45. Hey mate, very handy guest post this, and i agree with your last statement about ” not taking your amazon account for granted” it took me 3 attempts to get my own amazon site approved, and im gonna make sure i do everything i can to keep it, every time i get an email from them my heart starts racing haha,

    they even made a change to their “disclosure policies” few weeks ago which meant everyone had to literally go into their website and add another sentence into their disclosure page, at the end of the day if we are monetizing our sites via amazon, google, or BIG blue (facebook) then we are at the mercy of their policies

    As a digital marketers there will always be “ongoing” things we need to keep up with to stay in business, or you could lose all your hearing in the blink of an eye!

    Reply

  46. Sad story to hear. I have also got my account banned a couple of years back and it hurt like a @!#$#! It was my first niche site which had great rankings and right before I reached $100 in commissions I got mail saying pretty much what Dennis described.

    Losing your first bucks online is like a stab in the back 🙂 So those who still are on Amazon should cherish those accounts.

    Reply

    • Yeah, it’s a pretty damn failure but you got to keep up working until you make it.
      But yes, it can be very depressing.

      Reply

  47. You are always the best silver and to me my best internet marketer and honest and frank. You are the help I get to do this coming all the way from Africa with many impediments that does not allow us market. things like not having cards to pay as it is not acceptable.

    Reply

  48. Good article, will save a bunch of people quite some time!

    Did you at least get your $50k payout? What usually happened to me when I got banned from programs is that they would use that as a reason to not pay out that final amount…

    What Amazon probably wants to see is most sales coming from a big, popular site instead of a bunch of crappy niche-sites that snipe away their own rankings one by one, lol.

    Reply

    • I got paid most yes, just not the last $5k or so which is pure theft in fact but what can you do besides sueing them.

      I do agree that they want to maintain a certain quality, eg larger sites instead of small crappy ones however there are still a ton of them out there. Not sure why they don’t ban every one of them lol.

      Perhaps they have hopes that people increase the quality once they grow bigger? Who shall say…

      Reply

  49. I wonder if you were just making to much money from Amazon? other sites like ebay have closed accounts for many and many affiliates over time slow lower their rates and time the cookie works. Seems the most likely is they want to regain that commission. If you are great at sales you might consider going drop shipping and making the difference there. This is a very competitive market and dynamic as it always changes. Once the Seller gets the customer they cut off your compensation and leave you out in the cold. I am sure many will wise up and make the connection over time. Having one seller for anything is not the best Idea as if one seller raises prices or cuts you out of the sales loop as in this case. Never depend on one source and if their is no return in a reasonable period of time it is time to move on. I learned that the hard way. No return on work then you would be better off to get a job.

    Reply

    • Thanks for your comment.
      I’m not Dennis but I have friends doing a lot more than $10,000 per month with Amazon so I don’t think it’s just because you’re making much money.
      Dennis explained a few things and Amazon can be quite picky sometimes (same thing happens with Adsense). It’s just a shame but in this world as you mentioned, you should never depend on 1 income stream.

      I’m sure Dennis will recover sooner or later.

      Reply

    • It’s not about too much money, but there does seem to be a threshold where they double check you. They assigned me an account manager when I earned roughly $50k and I suspect she kind of ‘snitched’ on me.

      That way it’s easy to think you earn too much while in fact it’s just a double check they build into their affiliate system.

      Reply

  50. Hey ..nicely explained ..same thing happened to me in May end.

    Just before that amazon acct manager called and discussed about how to improve the income.

    As usual they didn’t specific reason and I struck there with no idea of going forward .

    I will also try whether skim links works for me …Thank you for great information.

    Reply

    • Same as me indeed, an extra quality check from the account manager, can’t be a coincedence anymore. The reason has probably to do with the quality of your sites as well, not that I’ve seen any of yours but when I look at the average Amazon affiliate site they all suck really 😉

      Reply

    • Hi Sri. Did you also just pass the $50.000?
      I’m curious as I’m going to pass that mark in a few months.

      Reply

        • I just checked it and it’s working fine.
          He hasn’t paid his SSL certificate it seems, but there are no red flags from Google. If you install an SSL certificate and then do not pay it you just have to go to the no https version of the site to make it work again.

          Thanks for the feedback though. I’m sure Dennis will have a look at it as it’s quite easy to fix.

          Reply

        • I received a reminder from Namecheap and did pay for it and checked it right after I paid and it worked fine, but now it doesn’t indeed so thanks for mentioning, will look into it tonight!

          Reply

  52. Why don’t you sell your amazon niche sites on empirefilppers? You can get real nice capital and start over again even better than before.

    Reply

    • I did contact them but they weren’t interested, which is understandable, didn’t feel like leaving out any crucial information.

      Reply

    • Being banned as an affiliate is a different department so you can still sell and buy products on Amazon as far as I know. I’ll send Dennis the comments anyway.

      Reply

    • They banned my affiliate account so I suppose I’m allowed to sell there, however not too interested in that.

      Reply

  54. Interesting article. Sorry to hear how things went Dennis. Amazon provide ‘buy from amazon’ buttons in their program somewhere. That’s what I’ve been using, are these ok? They have their logo on of course. How did you miss use their logo?

    Reply

    • IMO I didn’t miss use their logo at all, at least I can’t remember and didn’t see it.

      One site did have a buy now button with the following text:

      “Check Current Prices – Eligible for free shipping with Amazon Prime”

      I think they just wanted to give some reason but the real reason is probably that most of the sites are kind of crappy with not the best content either.

      If Amazon provides this “buy from Amazon” button through one of their link generation tools than you shouldn’t have any problems.

      Reply

    • Amazon’s commisions are actually quite high, up to 8.5%, it’s impossible to find that anywhere else (talking large physical product vendors).

      I’ll have a look at your case study right now, very curious!

      Reply

      • What about commission junction? Some of the vendors were really big stores and depending on vendor, commissions were sometimes 10% etc.

        Reply

        • Browsed around their as well, the brands that I review sell directly on Amazon at much lower prices that those other large ‘niche’ shops can’t compete with.

          For example I had one site that’s very specialized in one of my niches, and they have like hundreds of shops in the US, I send traffic there and once again it converted terribly bad and they offered lower commissions as well.

          It seems that people that search online only care about the lowest price and the fastest delivery time, that’s the only reason how I can explain those dramatically low conversion rates. Seriously 0,1-0,5% vs 4-6% at Amazon. Crazy but true.

          Reply

        • Once again reminded not to put too many eggs in the amazon bucket. my number one selling product was flagged as a possible quality issue on an ebook. Sales dropped drastically, to be fair we did find some typos that had happened and when fixed should be good to go. it just reminds us that we need to have multiple streams of income; almost like having income insurance. – JT

          Reply

    • I just read it and saw you eventually created a new account to fix it.

      In one of the emails I received from Amazon they told me I was prohibited of opening a new account so I didn’t bother. I’ll just go with a new identity.

      Reply

      • I’d like to add that a couple friends got banned in the last 6 months and they created a new account and they’ve fine since then.
        It’s not allowed but just in case…

        Reply

        • [email protected] They are opening new account with same(ban) website? I am confused about this.

          If amazon close account that means they will not allow amazon affiliate that website. So, most of the people go to redirecting process.

          But [email protected] case study really interesting.
          USA people getting extra benefit? May be!

          Overall amazon confusing people and a sudden attach a rich man become beggar.
          This is not good. Amazon could be more strict affiliate approval.
          But you cannot ban me where i am investing lot of money. At least you should warn me.

          Reply

          • Yes, you’re right.
            When companies grow too big sometimes they don’t care about their affiliates as much anymore. Adsense is the best example of this, unfortunately.

            Reply

        • Would you use the exact same website that got banned, (after cleaning it up)?

          Or would you apply with a brand new identity, brand new website then just create a tracking code for the existing website?

          Very keen to know this.

          Reply

          • Hey Harry,

            Even when using a 3rd party like Skimlinks I would still choose to go for a new domain at the very least.

            If I decided to use the old website I would definitely check it for anything that might go against Amazon’s TOS.

            Hope that helps.

            Reply

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