So many of you have probably
seen the recent change
with Amazon associate's program,
where they essentially slashed
their commission rates.
And many of you have been asking about this
and I told a few of you
that I wouldn't be making a video on it
because I didn't think it was a big deal.
However, after seeing
all of the new Clickbait themed videos on YouTube,
I think there is a ton of misinformation out there
about what's really going on
and what your strategy should be.
So in today's video,
I'm going to cut straight to the chase
and share with you guys the real information
that you need to know about the situation,
starting with what the facts are that happened.
What are potential alternatives?
Should you need them?
I'll talk about this later in the video,
what my personal course of action is going to be
in response to this change
and lastly, why this change is actually
going to likely lead to most of us
making more money with the Amazon associates program.
Hi, everyone and welcome back to another video.
If you're new here,
my name is Greg and I like to talk about
online entrepreneurship and sharing the important resources
that I wish I had along my journey.
So if you're interested in making money online,
feel free to look around
the channel and consider subscribing.
All right, so let's dive right into this video,
starting out with the first section of this video,
which is going to talk about the facts
of what happened with the Amazon associates program.
So, all of this began on April 14th, 2020,
Amazon sent out one of their routine emails that says,
"Hey, there was a change to the program."
And generally this is just small things that were made.
However, if you clicked on the link
that brought you to the changes and you read through it,
you saw that there was actually a pretty big change.
What this email sent on the 14th was that
effective in seven days, which is April 21st,
the rates in the following categories
are going to be changed.
So, I'll go ahead and put a graph up on the screen here
and you can see the categories that were affected,
what their percentage of commission was before the change.
And now after April 21st, 2020,
what their percentage of commission
will be after the change.
Now, something that's really important to note
is that not all categories were effected in this change.
Now, as it stands right now,
this change is only effective
for the United States Amazon marketplace.
Now, the last thing in this fact section is that
this is not the first time that this has happened.
Back in 2017, there was another huge change to the program.
People were calling it, the Amazon apocalypse
and back in 2017, they made some big changes to the policy.
One of them, if I can remember correctly
was the cookie was 60 days previously.
So, when someone clicks your link,
anything they buy in the next 60 days,
you get a commission on,
as you guys know now with the current program,
there's only a 24 hour cookie.
So when they click your link,
anything they buy in the next 24 hours or one day,
you get commission on.
So as you can see, there were some massive changes
that have happened in the previous years.
However, considering the fact of this situation,
back in 2017, when the it's happened,
most people thought that this was the end of the program.
And since then people have been making more than ever
on the Amazon affiliate program.
And I'm going to explain why this happens
later on in this video.
So those are the facts of the situation
and now I wanna briefly talk about
if you need them, what are potential alternatives
to the Amazon associate program?
First off, we just need to understand
that as the content creator of affiliate marketing content,
we are flexible.
We can choose to monetize our content,
however we want.
What that means is if you have Amazon affiliate links,
you can easily swap out those Amazon affiliate links
with other affiliate links at any time.
This is legitimately as simple as going through your article
and swapping out the Amazon affiliate links
with your new affiliate links.
Now, I wanna be clear the alternatives
I'm about to give you are just if you need them,
wait till later in this video
and explain why you may not wanna change out
your Amazon affiliate links.
So the first big alternative you have here
are niche specific marketplaces.
For example, if you were selling
any furniture niche on Amazon,
your previous commission
before this change was 8%, which is amazing,
after this change is 3%.
Now, since that is a pretty big drop,
you may be looking for an alternative
of how you can swap out your Amazon affiliate links
with something else.
By going to a niche specific marketplace,
for example, for furniture,
you may go to wayfair.com,
wayfair.com is probably
the largest online retailer of furniture.
Although Amazon sells everything, including furniture,
Wayfair specializes on furniture
and that's all that they sell.
They are an authority in the space,
they have full credibility
and people won't be afraid to make purchases
from Wayfair because of all of that.
With that being said, the affiliate program for Wayfair
is a 7% standard commission with a seven day cookie window.
When you compare that to what you used to have on Amazon,
which was an 8% commission with a one day cookie window
and now a 3% commission with a one day cookie window,
Wayfair looks pretty good.
Now keep in mind, that's not just furniture,
you can do this for any category that you're in.
Now, the second alternative,
which is one of my favorites
is going direct to the seller or the manufacturer.
If you were in a specific niche
and you work with a specific product,
you can go to whoever makes that product
or sells that product
and see if they have an affiliate program.
Now, most of the time you can type in
the name of that company or website
and then affiliate program right into Google
and you'll be able to link straight
to their affiliate program and apply from there.
Now, if for some reason it doesn't come up on Google,
you can go to their homepage of their website,
scroll to the bottom and typically you'll see
an affiliates button in their footer.
Lastly, if you can't find an affiliate program at all
for the company that you really want to work with directly,
you can shoot them an email and reach out to them.
I have absolutely seen in the past
that they do not advertise their affiliate program
for some of these companies
because they only want to reach out
to specific affiliates who they wanna work with.
So if you shoot them an email
and you reach out to them first,
they may be able to share that program with you,
although it's not publicly advertised.
So with that said, those are the two big alternatives
that you have for swapping out
your Amazon affiliate links should you need them.
Stick around a little bit further in this video
because I might talk you out
of switching your Amazon affiliate links entirely
because I think that this change
is going to lead to people,
making more money with Amazon associates than before.
Alright, now I'd like to get into
what my personal course of action
is going to be in response to this change.
Feel free to use the same strategy.
This is what I'm personally doing
and I hope it's valuable sharing it with you guys.
First things first,
all of my sites that have Amazon associates on them,
I'm going to be keeping all of those links on my websites.
Additionally, I'm going to be continuing to create
and grow new Amazon affiliate websites.
Quite frankly, I'm going to be putting even more resources
into creating and growing these websites even faster
and I'll explain why in a couple of minutes here.
The next thing I'm going to be doing
is taking a hard look at all of my websites
and analyzing what opportunities
I could use to diversify the monetization on these sites.
For any affiliate marketing website that you have,
you don't wanna have all of your eggs in one basket
for how you're making money on that site.
With that being said,
I already have most of these on all of my sites.
However, I'm going to be going through
all of my sites one by one
and seeing how I can add in the following.
In addition to standard affiliate marketing on the website,
writing content and putting in affiliate products
I'm focusing on where I can add in ad space to the website,
downloadable information products,
courses, affiliate link to other courses
that I don't own,
but I know are good courses,
niche specific print on demand items
and even selling leads.
Those are just the main ways
of monetizing your site.
Those are the big ones I focus on
going through all of my sites
and just know that you don't have to focus solely
on affiliate marketing articles.
To give you a perfect example,
the other day, I was watching a video
from a guy who owns soccer reviews for you.
It's a YouTube channel and also a website.
Now months ago, before this Amazon associates
situation even happened,
he was talking about how he was monetizing his sites
and where he saw a good opportunity.
He was doing the traditional soccer reviews articles,
where he was reviewing soccer cleats.
But as he was doing this,
he saw that one of the most popular cleats
that came out had shoelaces that were tearing.
He saw the opportunity to create shoelaces
that were branded from his website,
sell them at an affordable rate
and collect the profit margin
on all of those shoelace sales.
This is a way of creating a product,
advertising on your site,
where you already have targeted
niche related traffic coming in
and using that as your platform
to make sales on that product.
Now, obviously that example is with a physical product
and not a digital product.
However, there are ways to automate this.
You can dropship those products
from the manufacturer to the customer
and you don't have to actually hold inventory
and go to the post office and ship it out yourself.
So keep all of these things in mind
and remember, most importantly,
the content that you have on your niche
affiliate marketing website
is where the value is coming from.
You can easily switch out the links.
You can easily add more monetization
ways to your website
but it's the content that's going to be bringing in
the targeted traffic to your site.
Now, let's get into the section
that I think is the most important for this video.
And that is why I think this change on Amazon associates
is going to lead to people
making more money than before.
Now, the vast majority of people
are saying, "The commission rate went down,
"so we need to leave Amazon associates
"and find other alternatives."
However, you have to consider the bigger picture
and not just focus on the commission rates.
When you look at Amazon's growth
and Amazon sales year over year,
more people are getting more comfortable
and making more purchases on Amazon than ever before.
What this means for us
is that it's not just about the commission rate.
It's about the commission rate,
the conversion rate and the order value.
Those three things are extremely important.
In addition to keeping those three things in mind,
keep in mind that you're going to get commission
on the secondary sales.
So for example, let's say
that you linked someone over to Amazon
on an affiliate link to soccer cleats.
Well, let's say that they didn't actually buy
those soccer cleats,
but within 24 hours,
they bought a $300 Dyson vacuum cleaner
and maybe even a soccer goal for their backyard.
Keep in mind that not only will you still get commission
on those two purchases
but you're going to get commission
on their respective commission rates in their categories.
So, even if your specific niche category
was affected by this change,
all of these secondary purchases
are still in their other categories.
Now, for some of you who are newer to Amazon associates,
you may not know this,
but typically about 50% or more,
I've seen all the way up to 80% on websites,
of the items that you get commissioned on
are secondary purchases.
They're not actually the items
that you linked to people on Amazon.
This directly explains why back in 2017,
Amazon reduced the window from something like 60 days
to only 24 hours.
Because in the last few years,
people have been buying so much more
and so much more frequently on Amazon.
Now, additionally, another huge reason
that I'm staying in this end,
why I'm making more sites than ever
is because I think competition
is going to drop drastically.
As you guys have seen just as well as I have,
all over YouTube are tons of videos
saying that, "The program is dead.
"You shouldn't be using it anymore.
"The commission rates have dropped."
Think about how many people,
this is going to scare off
and ward off from actually making a new site.
Additionally, people who have started recently
and started to grow their site
but haven't seen it grow to big numbers,
will be more inclined to quit on that site
and put it in the past
because they have an excuse to now.
For those of you who have started
building these sites before,
you know how hard this actually is,
creating articles that are good content and relevant
is not easy work.
So, when people are given a reason to quit,
most of them will take the easy way out.
But if I can give you any advice,
it is to remember that this has happened in the past
and since then people have been making
more money on Amazon associates program.
So with that said, even though commission rates
for some categories are down,
I would not be surprised at all,
if generally, over the next couple of years,
people who are still in the Amazon associates program
are making more than they are now.
The last thing I wanna leave you guys with
is just a mantra to remember as we're going through this,
when the going gets tough, the tough get going.
I really encourage you to be
part of the tough that get going
rather than the victim that says,
"It's all over, I have to quit
"and just go back and find something different."
So guys, that's it for this video,
hopefully this has brought you
some straight value on the topic
and hopefully keeps you in an optimistic mindset
so you can continue to create
and grow your online business.
I certainly hope that sharing
my personal strategy with you guys
on this situation helps you guys.
And if you have any questions,
let me know down in the comments.
I'll link up a couple of videos for you guys
in regards to affiliate marketing
that I think will be helpful resources
at this point in time.
And as you go through those,
let me know in comments, if you have questions
on those as well.
All right, guys, that's it hope you enjoyed this one
and I will be seeing you in the next video.