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The Amazon Affiliate Program: What’s Changed Recently

You may have heard that Amazon has changed its terms for its affiliate program. Here is the change.

“In addition, notwithstanding the advertising fee rates described on this page or anything to the contrary contained in this Operating Agreement, if we determine you are primarily promoting free Kindle eBooks (i.e., eBooks for which the customer purchase price is $0.00), YOU WILL NOT BE ELIGIBLE TO EARN ANY ADVERTISING FEES DURING ANY MONTH IN WHICH YOU MEET THE FOLLOWING CONDITIONS:
(a) 20,000 or more free Kindle eBooks are ordered and downloaded during Sessions attributed to your Special Links; and
(b) At least 80% of all Kindle eBooks ordered and downloaded during Sessions attributed to your Special Links are free Kindle eBooks.”

This affects people who rely on posting free books as part of their business model. The reason you’d drive traffic to free books is because Amazon’s rates change depending on the total number of books sold.

For example, let’s say I sell some books for Amazon by blogging about a book and pointing to Amazon with an affiliate link, a specially constructed URL that points to the book on Amazon. I get a very small percentage of each sale. That percentage can differ according to what merchandise it is, but it also differs according to how many items I’ve sold that month if it falls in the “General Product” category.

So let’s say I do that. Perhaps I mention that I often use Samuel R. Delany’s wonderful About Writing in teaching. Over the course of a month, three people buy the book (in my experience this is an optimistic estimate. Let’s say that’s all the traffic I drive this month. Because I’ve only sold 3, my percentage is 4%.