Amazon associate account termination - Is it possible to overturn the decision?

Sorry this happened to you, but it sound like their decision is final. I've never heard of a successful appeal for an associate to get their account back.

If I were you I'd move on and spread my business out a little so I'm not dependent one stream of income.

Just my two cents.

Here's a story that might help you out > https://digitalreadymarketing.com/am...-shut-recover/

Try to get as much details from them as possible, fix the problem and then request the account to be re-instated after making the changes on your website.

Neat timing!

This JUST happened to me yesterday P.

Got an email after I could not log in. Told me I was shut down. Did not give a reason. I emailed back asking if I could get my account back up, if I remove 1 widget with a custom-made Amazon icon/ad. Then a few hours later, I could log in no problems.

No idea if I'll earn or not but at least I can use short links and awesome Buy widgets for my 150 plus products on the site.

I'd shoot them an email, review your promo pages/blog/anywhere you're selling, and see what changes you can make.

All the best!

Ryan

Honestly the only way to find out is to try. If you were making a fair bit with them then it's likely worth the time to at least ask.

I know Amazon is pretty strict. I have heard of this happening to people. I also heard it took a lot to get their account back. Keep after them. Be diligent and let them know you are not going away. Fight for yourself and your income. Good luck and keep us posted.

What was the wording that initiated the ban. Sometimes if it is a minor mistake you can plead your case, but if it is a blatant violation of their rules then you might be done

al

What can I say on amazon. There are a very BLEEP company.

Here is evidence. They are selling counterfeit apple products - 90% fake and only 10% genuine. I rest my case.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...mazon-are-fake

Amazon sucks anyway. They did you a favor.

Find a good niche and promote products that pay 50%+ commission instead of Amazon's little 5%-6%.

Amazon is like Google and Facebook.

Loaded with stuffy, paper pushing assholes who think they own the internet. I've never used Amazon, Google, or Facebook for any of my businesses and I have been making great money online since 2007.

Stay away from huge companies. You are just a number to them and they treat you as such.

They don't need you and they let it be known.

Screw 'em.

I am a bit confused right now. In your original post you said your associates account was banned, but in posts 13 and 14 you say you are selling physical products. So, what is it? Are you an affiliate or a vendor.

One thing to remember, if you are an affiliate then you can not offer anything exclusive as it is not your product.

and, if you are a seller then you better be the only person selling this product or products or they are not exclusive.

al

No matter what you may think, as an affiliate, you are not offering anything exclusive. Almost all products on amazon can be purchased elsewhere on the net so they are not exclusive. You should really try to understand this.

If you want to have any chance of saving your amazon account then go to your site and remove any and all references to products being exclusive and any other terminology that might be misleading to a potential customer. Then contact amazon and get right to the point that you have removed all potential violations and assure them that you have re-read the TOS and have a better understanding of the rules. Then hope for the best.

al

@piperp In the most part I AGREE with nicheblogger75. Personally I would ditch trying to make those small percentages with Amazon and go for higher percentage commissions even if that means you exit physical product promotion (do you actually have to do this?) and switch to intangibles.

There's no point in living at the mercy of one platform when they are effectively controlling your income stream. The problem with this approach is it works great until that 3rd party no longer wishes to do business with you.

At that point you effectively no longer have a business and really, when you bottom line it, unless you are building an asset at the same time (a list, ecommerce site or brand, for example) you actually only had a cashflow which has been effectively terminated by one *insert swear word here* 3rd party who does not care one jot about you or all the hours/days/weeks/months/years you have put into building sites and driving sales in return for a small percentage overall commission which they are now denying you.

It is a really bitter pill to swallow, but it's a learning curve a lot of us go through. If I can give any one a lesson in my reply here it is to build an asset at the same time you control (and if that happens to be a list make sure you back it up). The more control you give up, the more damage these 3rd parties can incur if they cut ties with you (for WHATEVER reason).

@piperp - Did your years of being an affiliate (to date) mean you built a lot of sites that acted as a conduit to a physical product sale? The problem is the whole conduit was/is routing through to Amazon. Remove Amazon from the equation and your income goes back down to nothing. There's the rub - no leverage. Compare that with being an affiliate where you are building a list at the same time in a niche that lends itself to it.... or running an ecommerce store where you have a database of customers and potential customers. It then goes from being a cashflow model (that works until something happens that circumvents it. i.e Amazon no longer wishing to continue its association with your web properties) to a leverage model where you have much more control of where the traffic is flowing and to whom.

As an affiliate if you look for programs in the niche that you are in that have an element of continuity this stabilises your income. You can also diversify across different platforms and at that point you will never again be at the mercy of one company dictating your livelihood.

Could you sell off your network of websites? As oppose to garnering favor back with Amazon you are *probably* better served moving quickly as a damage limitation exercise and recouping what you can then re-deploy what you still have away from one entity.

Just as an observer (Minnesota kicked Amazon to the curb) I believe this is part of a concerted effort to get rid of "less desirable" affiliates.

Look at the Internet's track record of sites who at first welcome all, and at some point when they no longer need them they come up with ways to get rid of them.

It happened to me on Squidoo and Adwords.

Excellent advice!

In this case it seems the OP's initial response to Amazon was "you're wrong". It's the only thing that makes sense given the timeline in this thread.

On Oct 21 Amazon had already declined his request for reinstatement. But he says the changes were made "yesterday" - which was Oct 26.

That may be the case - but I don't see you have a choice.

No way they'll let you back on there ever. You have to use your wife's name or something.

What niche are you in?

Look to utilize that traffic you are bringing in on a higher paying product on an affiliate network.