Don’t put all your eggs in one basket: Amazon terminated jeviz.com account

Business model that exists at the whim of a closed platform discovers the existential risk isn't theoretical. News at eleven.

Amazon's search function sucks hard if you're looking for anything other than a top seller (aka, a cheap knockoff of something) in a common category. I'm glad to see someone tried to fix this issue, even if Amazon was too short sighted to take advantage of it.

Sorry to see jeviz go. I used the search to find good prices on items. I've had a few amazon affiliate sites before and never had any problem with the TOS though. In my "glory days", I was only making $100 a month off of amazon affiliates... so it is probably hard to compare to how much you were making I'm sure.

Relying on one system for getting revenue from your site is always risky. In my case, the problem is that Amazon was the only affiliate that would convert. People trust buying from Amazon. So essentially in my case, I only relied on one affiliate to generate revenue also. Again, sorry to see it go. :-(

I am also an Amazon affiliate. Still raking in >$10k/month even after their paycut.

Due to the revenue I generate, I take their ToS very seriously. I have studied it in detail and discussed it with people who also had their account banned.

The reason they banned you is this:

You can't use what they call 'special links'. As an example, they tell you that you can't link to the Amazon site using 'shoes'. And by Amazon site, they probably mean 'https://www.amazon.com'.

Your search tool is nice. But upon clicking the 'Search Amazon.com' button, it simply opens an Amazon search page.

And since your visitors are able to enter anything into the search boxes, you've got yourself a link saying 'Search Amazon.com' that points to the search page for every product under the sun.

This is the reason they banned you.

You were probably not aware of the fact that you violated their ToS. But Amazon doesn't care about that. With them it's "one strike and you're out".

However, people have in fact had their associates accounts reopened. These success stories are hard to find, but they are there. One guy even contacted Jeff Bezos directly.

In order to be in compliance with the ToS, you will have to modify your button so that its text reads what it is that the user is about to perform a search for.

They expect you to figure out why you were breaking the ToS and then remedy the situation. They aren't looking to wipe their associates' butts. You have to learn about their ToS yourself and make sure you apply it well.

Once you've demonstrated that, you might get back into the program.

They will not appreciate it if you post on medium that they didn't give you a valid reason.

They did. You just didn't know how to interpret it.

It's just bitching and whining and shows you haven't understood the ToS.

And that's precisely what they do want you to do.

If you can't get back in, then I recommend the following:

- forward jeviz.com to another domain which has a copy of the site, which does adhere to the ToS

- register a new business for use with a new Amazon Associates account

- use separate laptop with vpn for logging into your new account, because they'll know your old IP

- send traffic from the new domain to Amazon and keep cashing

I know people that have restored their lost incomes like this. And they didn't even forward their sites to new domains. They're still banking hard today.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

Also, I have a list of things you need to keep in mind if you want to be in compliance with the Amazon ToS:

- Incorrect product descriptions.

- Incorrect price information.

- Incorrect product image.

- Incorrect review count.

- Incorrect review rating.

- Usage of selfmade/customized Amazon buy buttons.

- Link cloaking.

- Cookie stuffing (aka session tagging).

- Lying about relationship with Amazon (no promising discounts for readers of your website, etc.).

- Leaving out the Amazon Associates disclaimer.

- Copy pasting reviews for use on own site.

- Lying about price, such as 'best price', 'discount price', 'lowest price', etc. Because this might not be true.

- Statically, hard-writing (non-API) anything about a product that might not be true at a later time, due to the changing nature of a product's related information.

- Usage of copyrighted images from Amazon.com without linking back to them.

- Use associates links in emails, books, or anywhere offline.

- Encourage people to bookmark affiliate links.

You're welcome.

And best of luck.