A couple of days ago Amazon sent a very bland email to all its affiliates announcing a reduction in commissions across several of its departments. Not giving any reason whatsoever, it simply stated that the commission structure had been revised and that the new rates will go into effect from April 21, 2020.

Not that Amazon hasn’t sent emails announcing reductions in payouts but this must have been the worst time ever to announce something like this. People have started considering Amazon(and its owner Jeff Bezos) heartless to be doing such a thing while a pandemic rages across the world taking away jobs and livelihoods.

Why The Drastic Amazon Associates Commission Cuts?

The reasons could have been many, most probably because many products are not moving except groceries and essentials like medicines. Amazon may not like to give out money when most of their inventory is locked up in warehouses. They obviously would like to save money at this time, even though they seem to be doing well due to the pandemic.

Why pay commissions on groceries when people are going to buying them anyway as part of their daily needs, and there may be no need for Amazon Associates to be promoting such items that people will definitely buy. Hence the slide from 5% to a paltry 1% commission on groceries.

Amazon Affiliate Commission Rates 2020

If you look at the changed percentages below you’ll notice that most rates are now at 1%. Any furniture or home improvement products are down from a high 8% to just 3 %.

So if an affiliate was earning $80 on any of these products that were sold now the payout is going to be only $30, much less than half of what was being earned earlier.

Is It Worth Being An Amazon Associate in 2020?

Let’s first look at what affiliate programs are and how they work. A company decides to engage online affiliates when they feel that they would like an additional promotion for their products.

This is ideal for new companies and new products who receive the benefit of affiliate-driven warm traffic from blogs that presell the products to the prospective customer. When they land on Amazon, for example, a customer is most probably wanting to buy something he read about on the blog.

Even if a large company like Amazon has customers landing directly on their site, it could always do with additional sales with the help of affiliates. How much a company is willing to pay for promotion by websites, is something that is decided according to need and sales volumes among other factors.

For those who are promoting Amazon products, it has been a very high converting experience because Amazon does excellent selling to anyone who lands on their sites. From highly visible deals on their pages to product recommendations, everything seems to be geared for persuading a customer to purchase something, if not the product that he intended to when he came to the site.

The great thing about being an Associate for the company is that even if the customer buys anything within 24 hours the affiliate gets rewarded for the sale. This is especially lucrative during festive seasons like Christmas when people go on online shopping sprees.

In fact, it compensates for the comparatively shorter cookie which entails that a customer should buy within 24 hours for any credit to the affiliate. Amazon has the largest variety of goods on any online website and most people end up buying something or the other once they land on the site.

Imagine a 30-day cookie during Christmas time, by which an affiliate could end up making millions!

It’s not the first time that affiliate rewards have been adjusted, and it may not be the last time. It’s surely not wise to be dependant on such earnings or make a full-time living off of it.

Why Commission Reducing Could Be Good

This could be a black cloud with a silver lining because the first thing that will happen is that there will be many deserters. Quite a few might switch to other programs, of which there is no dearth at all, and others may just give up.

Truth is, nothing converts better than Amazon and if you manage to drive shoppers to their site, they will do the rest. Almost every customer buys at least something. Every single report that I have generated has had sales of products that I have never promoted.

It is not so with other affiliate programs. True, they could be paying a higher rate of commission, but they may not convert as well either because they have a limited number of items on offer or because their site may not be able to retain the customer long enough to make a sale.

AAWP Plugin:

Besides, there are a plethora of plugins that can help you with earning more on Amazon. The biggest example is AAWP the amazing plugin that creates geo-targeted text links automatically, along with boxes to display products, bestseller lists and so much more.

My favorite is the comparison feature where it creates a table to compare products side-by-side which is a very high-converting feature. All its features are geared to increase conversions and sales and most top earners use it.

So if you might like to continue, which could be beneficial to you in the long term for the reasons I have explained above. Remember, you’re leaving may be more your loss than that of Amazon’s no matter what YouTubers and bloggers say.

What Should Amazon Affiliates Do In 2020

Whether you do stay on as an Amazon Associate or not there are a few things that you must keep in mind.

It is your blog traffic that you are sending to Amazon and what you do with it is up to you. The best thing that you could do is to diversify and not depend totally on one platform.

Contextual Ads:

The best form of ad earnings is through contextual ads especially ones that blend in with the content of the site. Google Adsense ads are the most common. You can also try Ezoic and Mediavine for higher earnings.

Another good way to diversify is by renting out banners on your site for promoting related products. BuySellAds is a good platform that connects advertisers and publishers. Although BuySellAds takes a cut you will be able to sell ad space on your side with minimal effort.

Course Creation:

If you are an authority in your niche or very familiar with the how-tos and other information, you could create an ebook or course. There are many bloggers whos ell ebooks using Gumroad. If you sell through their platform they charge a fee per sale or you can also sign up for a monthly subscription to avail of all their benefits.

If you would like to create a video course and have extensive content to cover, you can use Thinkific, which has a free plan to start with. Selling a course on Thinkific is very easy and it has a variety of features to increase sales e.g. issuing coupons, drip-feeding content to prevent students from being overwhelmed, etc.

By far the best way to make the most out of your content and that too effortlessly is by using Skimlinks. You can passively monetize your content and is even better than Amazon because it offers a larger variety of fo options.

In fact, it also includes Amazon products and works on relating your content with matching products. When you mention a product or brand it instantly turns it into an affiliate link. If a site visitor clicks on the link you get paid for it.

The best part is that you don’t have to deal with affiliate links at all. When you join Skimlinks you get a code that you insert into your blog and from then on, you don’t have to worry about affiliate links.

They also provide detailed reports so that you can track how you are doing.

Other than Amazon there are many affiliate platforms that you can use. These include Shareasale, Awin, Flexoffers, and Clickbank. Some like Clickbank is meant mainly for digital products.

Conclusion

It’s not the end of the world, at least not yet. There are many options out there, and you can act on the suggestions given above. In any case, it was good to have a wake up call so that you can use it as a trigger to diversify your business.