I love Amazon Associates, and being Amazon Affiliate partly enabled me to leave my 9-5 job, but what happened on February 13th was like from a horror movie. It’s not my only income source, but it’s still a good portion. And in addition to that, I’m setting first steps in running service for investing in content websites and managing them for a new owner/investor.
I’m from Slovenia, Europe, and most of my sales happen overnight as I target mostly Amazon.com visitors. I woke up on the 13th and as every morning because I wanted to check my commission stats only to find out that this wasn’t possible.
I went to my email to find a surprise email from Amazon Associates.
Table of Contents
Amazon Associates Account Closed
Hello,
Effective today, Amazon is terminating your Associates account as well as the Operating Agreement that governs it (link below).
Why?
We reviewed your account as part of our ongoing monitoring of the Amazon Associates Program. During our review, we determined that you are not in compliance with the Operating Agreement, found here: <https://affiliate-program.ama
-The sources of your traffic are obscured in such a way that we cannot reasonably determine on what Site(s) your Special Links are displayed.
What’s next?
You must stop using the Content and Amazon Marks and promptly remove all links to the Amazon site.
Because you are not in compliance with the Operating Agreement, Amazon will not pay you any outstanding advertising fees. Please be aware that any other related accounts may be closed without payment of any fees. Amazon reserves all other rights and claims.
In limited cases this closure may be appealable. See Appeals help for more information, found here: <https://affiliate-program.ama
Amazon.com
Warmest Regards,
So I can forget about a commission from December, January, and the first 10 days of February? A bit more than $5k?!
Ok, I’m banned from amazon. How to get back on?
Here is a summary of a few actions I undertook since my account was terminated:
13.2.2020: email from Amazon that my account was terminated. Reason: -The sources of your traffic are obscured in such a way that we cannot reasonably determine on what Site(s) your Special Links are displayed.
13.2.2020: my first email to associates@amazon.com with the list of my affiliate ids and websites where I’m using them plus my findings of noreferrer attribute.
13.2.2020: my second email to associates@amazon.com with two screen recordings showing my two biggest websites and data of clicks/traffic from Google Analytics plus how I’ve fixed noreferrer attribute.
13.2.2020: combined these two emails in an appeal through Associates Customer Service Support page
17.2.2020: got an email from Amazon: We received your appeal regarding the termination of your Associates account. A specialist has reviewed your account, and the decision to terminate your account was found to be correct. As stated previously, under the terms of the Operating Agreement (https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/help/operating/agreement), we may terminate your account at any time, with or without cause. This termination is final and not subject to appeal.
17.2.2020: been on the phone with Amazon Customer Support regarding my problem. No help at all. We don’t have details, and the team that does works only through email. Write to them or appeal again.
17.2.2020: tried to send an appeal through Associates Customer Service Support page only to find out that the Subject option of “Associates account terminated option” now returns not valid or something similar when you want to submit the form
17.2.2020: wrote my combined two emails to the boss himself 🙂 jeff@amazon.com … with the subject “Not an appeal, but additional information, please read”
18.2.2020: reapplied to Amazon associates with the same email and data as before, fixed links to new affiliate ids on my biggest website only to find my account closed with no email a few hours later
18.2.2020: wrote my combined two emails to the boss again 🙂
19.2.2020: got a reply with the subject “Your E-mail to Jeff Bezos BC – Re: Not an appeal, but additional information, please read” and message: Thank you for reaching out regarding your concern. We’re currently looking into this issue to make sure the matter is taken care of properly. Please expect a response within two business days.
19.2.2020: got an email from Amazon Associates 1 hour later: This message is to advise you that your Associate account and your previous Advertising Fees have been reinstated. Please accept our apologies for the closure error. We appreciate your patience and understanding in this matter.
Amazon Account Banned and Details of my Actions
Ok, I understood from the reason “-The sources of your traffic are obscured in such a way that we cannot reasonably determine on what Site(s) your Special Links are displayed.” that Amazon can’t figure out how or from where I’m sending traffic to them.
I’ve all my websites listed on Website and mobile app list on Amazon Associates, so I think to my self that this clearly can’t be the reason for this email.
So lets Google “-The sources of your traffic are obscured in such a way that we cannot reasonably determine on what Site(s) your Special Links are displayed.”
All of the results regarding this reason were of people posting their affiliate links on Facebook, YouTube, emails, etc. and not declaring that to Amazon.
All but one: https://wpbloggerassist.com/remove-noreferrer-in-gutenberg-from-the-latest-wordpress-update/ …
Lets first clear what is noreferrer attribute. It’s a small snippet of HTML code that was appearing on my Affiliate links to Amazon on almost all of my websites made with WordPress. It turns out that WordPress reenabled this feature after 4.7.4 version somewhere back in 2017.
So why can this be a problem? Noreferrer attribute is automatically added if you are using target=” _blank” to open Amazon Affiliate links in a new tab. And what this does is removes referral information from where this new tab was opened at the browser level from the HTTP header. So this could be a plausible cause for Amazon to have problems of not knowing from where my clicks come.
13.2.2020: so my first reply email to associates@amazon.com was with a list of my affiliate ids and websites where I’m using them plus my findings of noreferrer attribute.
13.2.2020: from reading a bunch of these horror scripts of Amazon Affiliate accounts getting shut, and I know that it can take a while before you get your first reply. Up to five days or more, and because of that, I can’t just sit and wait to get a reply. I quickly find a fix for the noreferrer attribute in the form of remove-noreferrer plugin for WordPress. It’s doing the trick for now, and I apply it on all of my websites.
I also go and create two screen recording showing my two biggest websites and data of clicks/traffic from Google Analytics. My every click on outgoing links is tracked through GA, so there was no problem showing that.
So my second email to associates@amazon.com was two links of screen recordings plus an explanation of how I’ve fixed noreferrer attribute.
13.2.2020: I’ve also combined these two emails in an appeal through a form at Associates Customer Service Support page
Now the waiting game begins.
In my mind, I did all I could from my end. Now it’s theirs turn to act.
17.2.2020: I get an email from Amazon :
We received your appeal regarding the termination of your Associates account. A specialist has reviewed your account, and the decision to terminate your account was found to be correct. As stated previously, under the terms of the Operating Agreement (https://affiliate-program.ama Because you are not in compliance with the Operating Agreement, Amazon will not pay you any outstanding fees related to your account. Amazon exercises its right under the terms of the Operating Agreement to withhold fees based on violations, which include the following: -The sources of your traffic are obscured in such a way that we cannot reasonably determine on what Site(s) your Special Links are displayed. It is important that you immediately stop using the Content and Amazon Marks and promptly remove from your Site(s) and delete or otherwise destroy all links to the Amazon site, all Amazon Marks and all other and any other materials provided or made available by or on behalf of us to you under this Operating Agreement or otherwise in connection with the Program. Please be aware that any other accounts you have or may open in the future, maybe closed without payment of any fees pursuant to our rights under the Operating Agreement. Amazon reserves all other rights and claims. Warmest Regards,
No details regarding anything I’ve sent to them. Just a copy-paste of a template I’ve found already a bunch of times regarding appeal results.
So in my mind, it’s time to be more proactive.
17.2.2020: I get on the phone with Amazon Customer Support regarding my problem. No help at all. We don’t have details, and the team that does works only through email. Write to them or appeal again.
I’ve tried with three different support employees. All very kind but useless.
17.2.2020: So as instructed, I try to send an appeal through Associates Customer Service Support page again only to find out that the Subject option of “Associates account terminated option” now returns not valid or something similar when you want to submit the form.
Well, I guess they mean that when they put “This termination is final and not subject to appeal.” in the email.
17.2.2020: It’s time to get creative. Like the long waiting time, I also remembered from reading somewhere that one affiliate got his or her account reinstated because of an email he wrote to the Amazon owner Jeff Bezos. I’ve read somewhere that Jeff still personally reads all of the customer’s complaint emails. I find this unbelievable, but ok. It doesn’t cost me anything to try this.
I write my combined two emails to the boss himself 🙂 jeff@amazon.com … with the subject “Not an appeal, but additional information, please read”. Idea from here where blogger who was in a similar situation was advised to use this subject in the email from Amazon Customer Support.
I also wrote from my other email to Amazon Associates Support and got a response back almost instantly:
This is X from the Amazon Affiliate Team. I hope you are having a good Monday! I’ll be happy to help you, however we don’t currently have an Associates account linked to the email address you wrote from. For security reasons, we can only send account information when the request comes from the email address that is linked with the account. We feel that this is the best way to ensure that any changes or requests are authorized by you, the account holder. Please send us an email using the email address that is attached to your Associate Store ID. Have a great day, we look forward to hearing from you again! Best regards,
X Y
18.2.2020: At this point, I wasn’t very hopeful and annoyed with the whole situation, so I reapplied to Amazon associates with the same email and data as before, fixed links to new affiliate ids on my biggest website (with search and replace) only to find my account closed with no email a few hours later. In the end, this resulted only in two days of commission lost for this website. Big L from my side.
18.2.2020: wrote my combined two emails to the boss again 🙂
19.2.2020: got a reply
Thank you for reaching out regarding your concern. We’re currently looking into this issue to make sure the matter is taken care of properly. Please expect a response within two business days. Thanks for your patience. Best regards,
X Y
Executive Customer Relations
19.2.2020: I get an email from Amazon Associates 1 hour later:
This message is to advise you that your Associate account and your previous Advertising Fees have been reinstated. Please accept our apologies for the closure error. We appreciate your patience and understanding in this matter. If you would like to review the complete Operating Agreement, you can do so by following this link: <https://affiliate-program.ama Thank you again for your cooperation and for your participation in the Associates Program. Warmest Regards, Amazon.com Now I don’t know why but after receiving this email my first association was this 😀 So that’s it?! I have no clear idea of how to get back on amazon after being banned… In the end, I don’t know if I should be happy, sad, angry, or annoyed about the whole matter. Did I do anything against the TOS or not? I’m for sure happy to get my Amazon Associates Account and all of my earnings reinstated. Sad about the whole templated responses and answers I’ve received. All emails except the one from the Executive Customer Relations team weren’t signed with name as usual support emails are (the ones you get when you send from secondary emails). Angry that there are no warnings in place. Just first strike ban approach. Even “we may terminate your account at any time, with or without cause”. Without cause?! I was annoyed that this whole process was, in the end, labeled as closure error. So did someone pressed the wrong button or what? I’ve been searching for good Amazon Affiliate Alternatives and, in the end, find only Skimlinks as a viable option for my situation. With Skimlinks, I would be able to link to the same products on Amazon, but they would take 25% off my earnings. Not the best, but still useful if you can’t get your account reinstated. Will do a test with Skimlinks in near future to get more details about the numbers. So let me know your thoughts about the whole story in the comments below. Did anything similar happen to you or anyone you know? What did you do about your termination? Did you find any good alternative? I hope this helps anyone who will find a similar email in his/her inbox with the reason for closure like mine. https://www.authorityhacker.com/amazon-associates/
http://www.amazon.com/associatHow to Get Unbanned From Amazon?
Best Amazon Affiliate Program Alternatives
Conclusion
Resources:
https://authoritywebsiteincome.com/amazon-associate-account-closed/
https://geekynerdytechy.com/amazon-associate-program/
https://wpbloggerassist.com/remove-noreferrer-in-gutenberg-from-the-latest-wordpress-update/
https://digitalreadymarketing.com/amazon-affiliate-account-shut-recover/
https://www.quora.com/How-can-I-contact-Amazon-CEO-Jeff-Bezos
https://nichesiteproject.com/amazon-affiliate/audit/
Great content! Super high-quality! Keep it up! 🙂
For sure 😉