Alternatives to Amazon Associates Program
You may or may not have heard that on April 21, 2020 Amazon will drastically reduce its commissions in several of their product categories in the US market.
- Furniture, Home, Home Improvement, Lawn & Garden, Pets Products, Pantry
8.00%3.00% - Headphones, Beauty, Musical Instruments, Business & Industrial Supplies
6.00%3.00% - Outdoors, Tools
5.50%3.00% - Grocery
5.00%1.00% - Sports
4.50%3.00% - Baby Products
4.50%3.00% - Health & Personal Care
4.50%1.00% - Amazon Fresh
3.00%1.00%
Below you see a table of the current fee rates and a table with the upcoming changes.
As you can see commission rates for popular categories such as home improvement, furniture, lawn and garden, and pet products will see a commission rate of 8 percent per sale drop down to just 3 percent! For headphones, beauty products, and musical instruments, commission rates will go from 6 percent down to 3 percent. Some other categories even drop down to a measly 1 percent. You can always check out Amazon’s latest fees here.
If you are currently promoting products from the affected categories you will notice a decline in your commissions. If Amazon is your most important source of internet income, now is the time to evaluate and diversify your income stream for your website or blog. Don’t make Amazon the ONLY way that you earn from your site. Find and test other affiliate programs in your niche. Experiment with display advertising on your affiliate pages.
Alternatives to the Amazon USA Associates Program
Amazon’s announcement seems to only apply to their USA program. As far as we know, these changes do not affect other locales and each locale has its own commission structure. If you are promoting products in the US market and your niche is affected by these new commission structures, the following affiliate networks might be worth looking into as alternatives:
Datafeedr does support all these affiliate networks (and many others). You can browse a full list of all of the 17,000+ merchants we support.
Many large retailers often run their own in-house affiliate program, too. These are programs where you create a direct relationship with the merchant/retailer instead of going through an affiliate network.
If you think a specific retailer would be a good alternative to the Amazon Associates Program, just Google the retailer’s name along with the phrase “Affiliate Program”.
While it might take some time to replace your Amazon affiliate links with other competing offers, it could pay off… especially if you are in some of those product categories taking the biggest hit.
What do you think of Amazon’s new changes? Let us know in the comments below.