Amazon Affiliate links in email

you cannot use Associate links in, emails, newsletters, RSS feeds or anything else that’s offline.

As long as it's a landing page you own, it's probably not an issue, but I'd recommend reading through Amazon's TOS carefully. I know reading through a TOS can be mind numbing lol, but better to be safe and sure.

read that TOS its very important

Yes, that is acceptable.

The issue really isn't email. the issue is control. Amazon wants to be able to protect itself by being able to connect the click to the page that generated it, and it's pretty much impossible with email.

You can always cloak the links which means you send emails with a link which redirects the visitors to Amazon but leaves your site as a referer (Amazon sees that the visitors are coming from your website).

Cheers

?_bbid=13858&tag=bookbubemailc-20 This is on the end of the actual redirect but for some reason when I posted it in WF the ending was stripped off. Not sure how Bookbub is getting away with affiliate links in emails.
If you click on the top link in the above post you will see what I am talking about.

Just make a landing page and link to it in your email. From that landing page, send visitors to Amazon. No redirect / cloaking shenaningans, that will get you banned.

i think there is no issue if you have a launding page
and like JohnMcCabe said the issue is in control not the email!
Hope it helps

Thanks John, That makes sense. Pardon my ignorance. Is that different than a redirect or is it some form of a redirect?

OK. I am feeling like I am missing something then. According to the above:

Quote:
You may purchase paid search advertisements and submit links to Search Engines to appear in response to a general Internet search query or keyword (i.e., in natural, free, organic, or unpaid search results), so long as you comply with the Operating Agreement and those paid or unpaid search results send users to your site and not directly or indirectly, via a Redirecting Link, to the Amazon Site.
SOURCE: https://affiliate-program.amazon.com...participation/

Furthermore amazon defines a redirect as

Quote:
" Redirecting Link means a link that sends users indirectly to the Amazon Site via an intermediate site or webpage and without requiring the user to click on a link or take some other affirmative action on that intermediate site or webpage.
SOURCE: https://affiliate-program.amazon.com...nk_167929822_6

1. Is the bookbub link not a redirect from their site that would be against the TOS?

2. If it is not, what is the best way to create that form of redirect?

Thanks for helping me out John and anyone else,

Buddy

BookGorilla is doing some sort of similar redirect.

Here is their link from an email.

Amazon.com: The November Man eBook: Bill Granger: Kindle Store

Also what type of redirect should I set up?
301
302
307
Meta Redirect.

Thanks

I'm not having a go at you rashell. You were just the last person to post what I considered a relevant quote.

I'm simply saying it is perfectly possible for large companies to have different agreements with different partners. I have personal experience of this myself. Assuming everyone has the same agreement is just that, an assumption.

Of course it is also possible that some partners may be breaking the agreement and haven't been caught yet, or some partnes are given more leeway, or a hundred other possibilities.

Since I'm using affiliate links to promote my books, let me throw in my 2 cents about what is allowed or not:

When you use PAID advertising you may NOT direct your clicks directly to Amazon. Not by using a direct link nor by using a redirect or cloaked link. So, in this case, you should direct clicks to a landing page on your site, and from there , hope that people click through amazon (and of course using your affiliate link in the last step).

Why this limitation? Simple. Amazon is bidding themselves for keywords and they don't want to bid up against all their own affiliates...

Now, when you advertise in any non-paid way , for example to put a post in a FB group, you may direct those clicks directly to Amazon. But... that would be a bit stupid because you're losing out an additional 4% on a sale. So what I do is : setup a tracking code on my affiliate account, and create a pretty link on my site with the affiliate code. Now, I have all the information I need. I know from my pretty link reporting how many people clicked on the ad and I know from the Amazon site, how many sales I made through this link, and therefore the conversion rate.

Now where can you use affiliate links (as long as they aren't paid ads)? Amazon themselves explains, at least for their ebooks, that you promote your book wherever you can: in groups, in forums, etc. So why not in email? I think the section above about email is some incomprehensible lawyer writing, which, according to my interpretation , only applies to offline marketing .

Anyway, that's the way I'm doing things already for the last couple of months and haven't seen any complaint/cancellation or other negative message from Azon...

source: https://affiliate-program.amazon.com...participation/

Very interesting how they would consider 'email' to be an offline communication when it's so clearly a product of the online world.

Thanks for clarification. In my previous post I wrote that I supposed that using links are ok in email, but I've never used that , simply because my email list is not big enough. But it's good to know that it is not allowed. For the rest, I seem to be ok, because I only use affiliate links from my own site and in FB groups and on twitter

There's no real money to be made with the amazon affiliate program, the percentages are too small. The people who are making a ton of money are drop shipping off amazon

Borderline blackhat in my book but a lot of people are doing it, and it can make you a ton of money

Yes, thats acceptable.

If you send people (From email) to your website, with a buy button on it. That's acceptable