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My Amazon affiliate business shut down

by Btvbill
6 replies
Thanks to Vermont's tax hungry mentality and Amazon's promise to shut down affiliate programs in US states, where taxing Amazon sales is in legislation, I lost all of my Amazon affiliate links on all my websites. Bummer. Now looking for alternatives. Curious to hear about others in the forum who have been closed down by Amazon.
#affiliate #amazon #business #shut
  • Profile picture of the author yordanov
    Sorry for you! I can try other similar sites like Aliexpress for example.
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  • Profile picture of the author QueenMelanie
    [DELETED]
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    • Profile picture of the author HDRider
      Originally Posted by QueenMelanie View Post

      huh, didn't know amazon were doing that, surely they're losing out just as much by doing it..
      Yes Amazon has been doing that for a while now, states are getting dropped one by one as soon as they start taxing. They drop all the affiliates from that state. Nothing you can do about it.
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      • Profile picture of the author kindsvater
        Originally Posted by HDRider View Post

        Nothing you can do about it.
        Hardly. Your state considers and debates an Internet tax bill for a year, it is all over the news, Amazon says it will drop your affiliate account if it passes, you know from years of this happening to other states this will happen, and you sit there waiting for the train to come down the tracks?

        How about simply getting a mail forwarding service and changing your address? Or just changing your address - assuming you get paid by direct deposit.

        There's plenty of prior posts on the forum about this issue. Some of us have gone through is and are in bigger states like California with many more affiliates and we saved our accounts.

        It may be too late to do this after letting the account terminate. I really don't get it - at all - the mentality nothing can be done or making a post after an account terminates.

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  • Profile picture of the author DireStraits
    It would seem to me that you have at least two main options.

    If you're concerned about retaining full control over your Associates account, you might consider incorporating in a permissible state and starting over with a fresh one. This obviously could prove to be a bit of a headache, entailing cost and probable legal and administrative considerations to navigate, on the advice of a lawyer, to ensure you are properly insulated from whatever rules, policies or legislation exists (if any) as a deterrent from doing so.

    Perhaps only an option for the really serious, high-earning super affiliate.

    Or, like others have and will point out, an easier option would be to promote by proxy, as a sort of sub-affiliate, through a service like SkimLinks, VigLink or whatever else. Perhaps the drawbacks of doing this (the obvious one being that you won't receive 100% of any earned commissions) would be offset by the receipt of higher or top-tier commission rates on certain items by dint of the high sales volume collectively referred through that account.
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  • Profile picture of the author TheProductReviewGuy
    Banned
    That's why you shouldn't have put all your eggs into one basket. Diversify your methods and make money from all sources. My main methods that make me money are as follows:
    1. YouTube + CPA earning me $800 a month
    2. 25 niche sites earning me $900 a month
    3. Email list that earning me $1k a month on average
    4. Products being sold by affiliates earning me $2k a month
    5. Offline business selling social media/SEO/Web design services earning me $5k a month

    If one of these was to go down, I honestly wouldn't care since I have backup earnings which make up the majority of the money. That's why you should do the same. Make basic plans on different methods and implement them.
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