if you're watching this video odds are you've already had your Amazon
Associates account banned just like me in 2019 let's get into it
welcome back to the channel folks my name's Shane if you new here don't
forget to subscribe and also click the bell. So I've been a content creator on
YouTube now since 2006 on my main channel but over sixty something million
views and well over a hundred thousand subscribers and I am always looking for
different ways to diversify and bring in different revenue streams so one of the
things that I decided on about 8 months ago so was giving the Amazon affiliate
thing ago. I did have it prior to 8 months ago but there was some sort of
tax thing that came in with Amazon where they closed all the overseas accounts
and you had to reapply awesome! So I did that I started making a fairly decent
income on there the first month was like 23 US dollars because it was just on the
last edge of that month and then it went up to about fifty two hundred three
hundred dollars a month five seven and then my last payment would have been
eight hundred and fifty dollars u.s. so I was doing really really well but
without warning I wake up to an email that says my accounts being closed and
I'm like what did I do wrong I had no idea I did anything wrong now I did
break the rules so I'm gonna put that out there and I unknowingly did this I
should have read the Terms of Service more but if you go through the Terms of
Service it's like 20 odd things that can get you banned and if you
don't know that he odds are your accounts gotta go as well without any warning so
one thing I made a huge mistake of was leaving my payments kind of stack up and
stock pile. I sort of put a hold in my account
since December of last year so it's now March and I had three of just over four
months of pay sitting in there and I would have got a pretty big pay at
around 2500-2600 US dollars and I am not gonna receive any of that right
and Amazon have made 45000 dollars off that off my work off all of
my links and the thing that got me banned personally was the fact that I
said these are Amazon affiliate links which you have to declare right that's a
part of the Terms of Service and it helps support the channel on my main
channel that intheblues and that what got me banned so I can't believe
that that's something that they say "it encourages people to bookmark those
links" I don't know about that that's sort of debatable whether it does
or not there's so many different people making and producing content online if
I like to let people know that they're supporting the channel by
using those links but that's against the Terms of Service now what's also against
the Terms of Service I'm just going to cover a few of these things right now
I'm gonna actually link a video up here a little bit later that will cover this
in more detail it's a great video I highly suggest you check it out so one
of the things that will get you banned is if you use any images on your website
from Amazon that will also get you bad what will also get you banned as well
another point you need to make sure of is if you don't declare on whatever
content you're listing these links that their affiliate links you'll also be
banned no kidding there's so many YouTube channels that
are doing this without actually declaring that their Amazon affiliate
links. goodbye account! odds are once Amazon do
another sweep they're gonna clear out those accounts keep all the money that
you've made them as well as the money that was yours that's the way that they
roll I wish they had some sort of warning system like a strike system much
like on YouTube where if you upload something we do something against the
Terms of Service you receive an email or some sort of notification where they say
hey you can't do this and the next time you do it you'll get a strike. I wish they did
that. I would have cleared up those links and those terms over all of my videos no
problems at all one of the things that was just brutal and a huge waste of my
time and I hope I can save you guys some time by mentioning this is the fact that
I called up the helpdesk for the associate helpline I said hey look my
accounts been terminated how can I appeal this how can I talk to someone
they go you can only do it over email it's like "great"
and he goes "odds are it's not gonna get you know turned around ads are you just
have to start a new account" so I thought you know what alright I've just lost
twenty five hundred US dollars or something like that that's not fine but
I like to move forward with my life I don't like to dwell on stuff that goes
wrong so what I did I started a whole new account
I started generating links and within hours I could see that it already
started making Amazon more money only to have that account closed because my
prior account was against the Terms of Service even though this new account
wasn't my old account was and that reflected my new associates account and
I spent hours and hours - I spent four hours straight that night from like
3:00 in the morning till 7:00 in the morning generating all these new links
for all these new products putting them in spreadsheets and making sure I had
them for any of the videos and I produced both currently in all of my old
content as well so these were things that I was like all right this sucks but
I can go through you know a thousand videos and just and basically just read
list all this stuff only to find out that that account was banned. So I wasted
all of my time contacting not only Amazon Associates helpdesk, I was given
wrong information and then I was banned a second time around so this totally
sucks I finally heard back maybe five days later about my first appeal and
they said " if on this new account you actually generated any legitimate income
we'll pay you after 60 days" which would have been I don't know like $25 or
something like that the thing is the Terms of Service are so ambiguous when
it comes to what you can and cannot do I highly suggest you check out this video
in the cards here don't make the same mistake I made this isn't the end of
anything either for me personally it just sucks you know one of the
interesting things is as of right now I still have my UK and Canadian and
Australian accounts still active which is interesting I thought they'd be all
closed down I'm tipping maybe at the end of this month at the end of March then
maybe they'll shut them down then and maybe I'll get a payout off those I'm
not 100% certain it's interesting that they can ban the one that was making the
most money and leave up the other ones I think that's kind of interesting all of
the links I was using with the majority going to the US UK and Canada so whether
or not they ban the other accounts coming up I'm not 100% certain maybe
there's different rules for those affiliate programs but just about
everything you do on Amazon is it has to be perfect if you make any mistakes
they'll ban you without warning and also take your money
seriously it's not worth it. If this happens to you and you get your account banned
don't reapply it it's not really worth your time look at
other options and I'll cover that coming up in a different video thanks for
watching guys my name's Shane I know this is a bit of a different video but
hopefully it brings some clarity to some of the do's and don'ts on Amazon if
you're an associate or affiliate use their program it's one of those things
where I thought I was doing everything aboveboard mentioning that they were
affiliate links and also thanking people for using it but you can't do that right
so if you do that you might want to reword it to just saying "Amazon
affiliate link" done I've also had a lot I've also got a lot of websites online
too so I had a lot of these links coming off tech review sites and and guitar
product websites and all that kind of stuff but it was funny because this
small channel on YouTube its main source of revenue was actually the affiliate
links but not anymore so anyway I'm gonna sort out a different system for
that coming up so if you have any comments or questions please leave them
below and I'll get back to you as soon as I can let me know has this actually
happened to you as well I'm sure it has theirs they seem to have swept out a
whole lot of accounts recently and just from my knowledge about this from what I
know now and also about what I already knew about the Terms of Service I can
foresee so many other large YouTube channels not this one obviously it's not very big
but my other channels quite large I can see a lot of other larger YouTube
channels losing their affiliate status pretty quickly based on what I see in
the descriptions and if I can lose it for not really doing anything severe
anyone can lose it so this isn't a piece to complain about it I'm gonna move
forward and do better things but it's definitely worth a discussion please
post in the comments let me know your thoughts enjoyed the video give it a
thumbs up thanks again for watching catch you soon see ya