Amazon Affiliates and Free Search Results

Affiliate marketing is one of the most interesting businesses to be involved in. One day you could be on the top of the world. But things could change very quickly the very next day. The way states are going after affiliates with Internet tax, you could certainly see affiliates suffering and small businesses that are using this model to stay afloat closing their doors. But if you thought that was bad, wait till you see what Amazon seems to be planning for its own affiliate program. The company owns one of the most profitable affiliate programs on the market, but it seems it’s not profitable enough. At least not in the UK and CA:

In addition, as of February 1, 2010 we will no longer pay referral fees on purchases made by customers who are referred to http://www.amazon.co.uk or http://www.javari.co.uk via Free Search Results. Free Search Results are links containing an Associate’s tag displayed in a search engine’s free, natural, or organic search results in response to a search query which send customers directly to an Amazon site without the customer first being sent to an Associate’s site and the customer clicking on a link to arrive at the Amazon site.

So why is this bad news? You may ask yourself, how can you even show up in the SERPs with only your URL. Believe it or not that’s possible and is a tactic used by super affiliates to make money on a daily basis. It’s a fairly short-term strategy, but if your URL happens to show up in the SERPs, you can earn a whole lot of money in a fairly short period of time. But Amazon is cracking on that practice, and in the process penalizing folks who don’t intentionally optimize their links to rank higher in the SERPs.

I don’t know what to think of this move by Amazon. Free search results are not something you can control easily. They are not like paid search. This is going to be a devastating move to many affiliates that rely on Amazon to make a living. The company is making a lot of money off of its affiliates, but it seems the economic conditions have had a negative effect on the company. Why else would you screw your partners out of commission they have earned?

It’s not as if affiliates are trying to hijack Amazon pages or pretend they run Amazon.com. There are a lot of affiliates who just post Amazon links to their websites to drive traffic to Amazon and generate sales. If your site is popular enough, the links you use on your site can actually rank very high on Google and other engines. That doesn’t mean you should be penalized for your efforts.

Amazon is a great company. Make no mistake about it. But it’s just unfortunate that some companies don’t know how to deal with their partners. Affiliates may not be employees. They may not have much leverage with Amazon and other affiliate programs. At the same time, that shouldn’t give companies an excuse to treat affiliates as they do. Driving traffic and optimizing a site for search engines does take some effort. Unfortunately, it seems affiliates are going to get the shaft due to reasons that are not faults of their own. The economy is struggling, so are many affiliate programs. With the powers-that-be hell bent on bringing the Internet tax to as many states as possible, it’s just a matter of time before many affiliates lose their businesses. That’s the sad part of it all.