Comment by fpgaminer | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fpgaminer | Hacker News Reader

Doesn't seem like a terrible deal for Amazon. Amazon effectively paid $0.036 per click, which in the grand scheme of things is not that much. It's a premium on top of what Reddit charged ($0.02/click), but then Amazon didn't have to pay any humans to write and set up those ads, nor research where to put the ads. Basically they paid a premium to have a third-party figure out the advertising for them.

Plus, the associates program has other benefits for Amazon. As the article points out, authors use affiliate links to promote their books for sale on Amazon so they can get a higher cut of the profits. Seems like that scheme, not even limited to books, would motiviate a lot of people to sell their wares on Amazon.

And then there's the benefit of squeezing out other affiliate link programs. An ad can only have one affiliate link, so by making the Amazon program attractive they out-compete other stores in the ads with affiliate links marketplace.

It's a bad deal for Amazon if, as the author assumes, the people aren't buying the product featured in the ad, but rather just happen to buy something else from Amazon within the 24 hour window without any connection to having seen the ad.

I wouldn't be surprised if in future amazon changes the system so that it only pays the fees when the original product from the link is purchased (or perhaps switches to this only for prime users.)

It is likely Amazon advertised several other products on the landing page for that Zimbabwe currency, so that no doubt increased the effectiveness of these ads for Amazon and might have made that referer fee worth it.

I disagree.

I've been in the Amazon Associates program for several years - at one point, I had an LLC set up specifically for it, because my state at that time was having a bit of a legal battle with them.

My job is to get people on Amazon's site. Why they're on the site almost doesn't matter, because my job ends when the user's eyeballs hit Amazon's page.

Amazon's job is to convert eyeballs on their pages into sales - and they're really good at their job, as is evidenced by their position in the market.

If you add an item to a wishlist or Amazon adds you to a retargeting list, they can still get a sale at a much later time. Most affiliate programs are much stingier in this regard, and it makes it harder to justify participating.

Great point regarding providing motivation for people to sell their wares on Amazon. I did not think about that.

This especially makes sense to me because the majority of Amazon's sales are filled by third-party merchants, including nearly 100% of their sales when they launch new product categories.

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