[HN Gopher] Ask HN: After great HN feedback on my web page Amazo...
___________________________________________________________________
Ask HN: After great HN feedback on my web page Amazon closed my
account
Background: Two weeks ago, I submitted a Show HN which lead to a
lot of valuable and positive feedback - thank you very much for
that, HN! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30137984 A week
later I received an email from Amazon that they have now closed my
Amazon Associates account. The reason given was: "Your website/app
does not meet our content standards. The content of your website is
insufficient. Here you can find an example: https://fahrrad-
tools.de/" Do you have an idea what they might be missing? Or
could it be an automated website analyzer (AI) that expects a blog-
like website? Thanks for your ideas.
Author : moasda
Score : 105 points
Date : 2022-02-12 14:46 UTC (8 hours ago)
| pasadenasunset wrote:
| I can understand why Amazon would have strict thresholds on this
| content, as it seems like an easy target for abuse.
|
| If I'm reading you correctly, you were a bike enthusiast who made
| a helpful website for decoding tire SKUs. Does the affiliate
| program give you commissions on items that sell through your
| account webpage? Were you selling tires / an Amazon affiliate
| before?
|
| It just seems like an odd thing to monetize, but I admire your
| entrepreneurial spirit!
| moasda wrote:
| > it seems like an easy target for abuse
|
| Can you elaborate on this?
|
| > Does the affiliate program give you commissions on items that
| sell through your account webpage?
|
| Yes, that's how affiliate links work.
|
| > Were you selling tires / an Amazon affiliate before?
|
| No, that's the first time I try this.
| inetknght wrote:
| Solution: stop using Amazon. They're a complete shit company. I
| will never understand why people utilize shit companies.
| dazc wrote:
| I have unwittingly 'violated' their terms a couple of times and,
| in both cases, received an email and notice to make the necessary
| changes within x number of days. They don't specify what the
| violation is but, in my experience, they don't require 100%
| compliance either.
|
| Seems your case hasn't resulted from standard manual checks but
| some sort of automated sytem that was, maybe, triggered by a
| sudden spike in traffic?
|
| If amazon affilliation is crucial to you then I would suggest
| moving your site to another domain, take on board the comments
| about adding blog-style content, and try again with another
| account?
|
| In all honesty, all usual amazon complaints accepted, their
| affiliate program, in my experience, is actually run pretty
| fairly compared to many others. Certainly worth trying to get
| back on board.
| moasda wrote:
| Thank you for the feedback. It's not a hosting issue, my
| website is hosted at netcup and still up and running. I already
| created a new affiliate account, but if I don't change anything
| on the website I assume they will close it again after a while.
| dazc wrote:
| Which is why I suggested changing the domain name, not the
| hosting, and taking onboard other comments regarding the
| content of the site.
| moasda wrote:
| Thanks for the clarification, now I got the point.
| h2odragon wrote:
| Sounds similar to another case I'm aware of, a blog with 15+
| years of posts, author had amazon links for about 3mo and then
| got dropped. There were affiliate sales, even, but none of them
| were "qualified" and so the total payout was $0.39 as i recall.
|
| That author didn't clean out the links they had, just stopped
| putting new ones up; so amazon still "wins" a little free
| advertising.
| moasda wrote:
| Would be interesting if somebody could resolve the issue and
| find out what unwritten rules Amazon has in addition.
| datarage wrote:
| If its a small site you can deploy on google firebase pretty
| easily, and possibly cheaper than aws. You can also use the
| firebase database for smaller apps for free as well. It's been my
| go to for a couple years for small projects, never had to pay
| them a dime so far.
| giarc wrote:
| I believe OP got dropped from the Amazon affiliate program, not
| Amazon hosting.
| moasda wrote:
| Correct, the hosting is not the problem, the website is still
| up and running. I'm talking about the Amazon Associates
| account needed for affiliate links.
| MonteCarlox wrote:
| It's probably their AI just sensing an abnormal signal because of
| the huge spike in traffic your sent their way.
|
| It's safer and easier for them to just ban you rather than
| sending you an email a human has to read and evaluate your
| response.
|
| It's a brave new world.
| [deleted]
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Someone probably just reported them.
|
| All the long-standing crappy MFA sites out there make it seem
| unlikely that Amazon is doing much crawling.
| moasda wrote:
| Thanks, I will modify the page and try again, hopefully it
| works this time.
| moasda wrote:
| That would mean that you are at risk if you buy some Google ads
| to generate traffic. Why should Amazon want to avoid traffic?
| MonteCarlox wrote:
| It's avoidance of risk that the traffic is illegitimate, not
| avoidance of traffic. That much traffic with no sales stands
| out.
|
| Why would someone spend so much cash on ads to get probably
| very little sales?
|
| It's a weird egde case that is more likely as per their
| experience to result in chargebacks from the few sales they
| got. Traffic from HN is not the normal traffic the AI is
| trained on.
|
| The sad truth is when you partner with a FAANG and their
| likes you need to think about what they have optimised for,
| not what is actually good for you or them. What is the easy
| money they want and how would they calibrate they systems so
| they get more of that and less 'noisy' or even 'expensive'
| money?
|
| Go for that rather than something different that raises
| virtual eyebrows.
| moasda wrote:
| > It's a weird egde case that is more likely as per their
| experience to result in chargebacks from the few sales they
| got.
|
| Interesting thought, in that case I'll just have to keep
| trying.
| MonteCarlox wrote:
| No. What you built is awesome.
|
| It's actually much better then anything else that's
| probably out there for bike tires.
|
| Amazon was just not ready for the huge traffic spike.
| Either relaunch with a new ID or try the support.
| Whatever faces less resistance.
| moasda wrote:
| Thanks!
| gtirloni wrote:
| I can second this. The site is great.
| steve76 wrote:
| night862 wrote:
| Hi moasda,
|
| I was wondering if they did or did not pay out your affiliate
| earnings before closing the the door.
|
| Good luck in your endeavors. May I suggest also polishing your
| tool (its pretty good already. Maybe tailor it to specific use
| cases/back-end technologies) and offering it for sale/license it
| to various companies who would like to sell their tires?
|
| I'm thinking any bike shop (if they exist, that is) could slap
| this on a tablet for a buck a month.
| moasda wrote:
| Great idea for monetization, thank you!
|
| They mentioned to pay out the affiliate earnings (approx. 6,20
| EUR). I'm curious to see if that happens.
| Proven wrote:
| quacked wrote:
| Hey, I have no idea how to solve your situation but I really like
| your website.
|
| My least favorite aspect of the modern web is that all corporate
| websites have been invaded by "designers" who care about the
| "feel" of their "content". But they have forgotten that computers
| are _tools_. When I use a tool, I want clear, simple,
| predictable, obvious design, not colors and animations. Like an
| airplane cockpit or a woodshop, not a trendy coffee bistro.
|
| Your site looks and feels like a tool. I think the organization
| could be a little better, but this is the kind of website I wish
| was present all over the entire internet.
| moasda wrote:
| Thank you so much, I really appreciate it!
| petee wrote:
| https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/help/operating/policies...
| https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/help/node/topic/G8TW5AE...
|
| Quite a few spots mention "original" and "creative content" -
| because you have essentially just a database I'm betting they do
| not see it as original 'creative' content. It seems the goal of
| their program is to have bloggers write about the products being
| sold. Rather than simply decode the tire, they want you to
| upsell.
|
| Maybe if you were to include individual/separate pages or 'blog'
| posts about each facet of the tires' specs, as painful as that
| is.
| moasda wrote:
| Good point, more written text could perhaps help.
| tgflynn wrote:
| I'm surprised to see them take such a narrow view of what kind
| of sites are suitable. It seems to me that the OP is providing
| a useful tool, why wouldn't Amazon want to reward him for
| driving (probably highly motivated to buy) traffic to their
| site.
| tyingq wrote:
| It looks like you've already put in a lot of work to parse out
| individual specs and data for the tires. I bet you could inject
| a paragraph or 2 of text using that, and place that on the
| pages somewhere. Just make a few different templates with some
| random phrasing to generate variations, like:
|
| - This off-road tire features a track width of xxx mm, making
| it perfect for...
|
| - Designed for off-road use, this tire is xxx mm wide, and
| features...
|
| - Schwalbe, a German manufacturer, produces this xyz model of
| tube for...
|
| ...
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Generate filler content with GPT-3.
| moasda wrote:
| Cool idea, thanks! I will give it a try.
| tyingq wrote:
| There's also templates that can do "spintax", so you get
| more variations, like:
|
| {The|This} tire {is $width mm wide|{features|has} a {track
| |}width of $width mm}}
| moasda wrote:
| Thank you, I have not heard of Spintax before.
| Nevertheless, I will try to provide added value for
| readers in the texts.
| xgbi wrote:
| Am I the only one shocked that this is required ? This is
| essentially advocating for SERP spam, which is the bane of my
| existence.
|
| Websites with generic sentences like this make everyone lose
| their time when they are looking for tangible information.
|
| If Amazon asks for that kind of shitty content to justify the
| existence of a valuable site like yours, I'd skip them
| entirely and search elsewhere to monetize...
| tyingq wrote:
| I think you can take this to a point where it's SERP spam,
| but what I was suggesting doesn't fall into that category,
| at least to me. A paragraph or two of descriptive text with
| actual info supplied by a specs table seems reasonable to
| me. Some people may even absorb info better when done that
| way.
|
| My suggestion (as a reply) for spintax is a little closer
| to spam, especially if you get carried away. Done right,
| though, it's not very different from what a copy writer
| would do manually. Products have product descriptions, and
| they are somewhat formulaic even when a person writes them.
|
| If you poke around the site, you can see that time was
| spent parsing out various specs that aren't understood by
| other similar sites as anything other than strings of text.
| The tweaking would mostly be to get Amazon to accept it.
| ninth_ant wrote:
| From what they describe it's not "required" by Amazon --
| sounds like they don't want that sort of
| automated/database-oriented content at all.
|
| What you are reacting to is a way to trick Amazons bots and
| the underpaid bored agents looking over affiliate sites.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Now, you know why recipes all have that bullshit "story"
| above the actual recipe.
|
| Affiliate programs act like "human interest stories" are
| the only way to make people intrigued or some such horse
| shit some MBA probably came up with and we all now have to
| suffer.
| tyingq wrote:
| As you say, the sites are the way they are because that
| is what search engines and affiliate programs reward.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| Yeah, this happened to one of our sites, and we resolved it by
| making a blog we post to every couple of months. We get
| basically zero sales through the actual blog posts.
| moasda wrote:
| Thanks for sharing your experience. So it really looks like
| Amazon expects a blog-like page.
| ewuhic wrote:
| Do you host both websites (or website and whatever "web" the
| other thing is) on the same domain, or those are completely
| different entities, so you can just point amazon to the blog?
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| Same domain - we just have a /blog path. So the main site
| is www.example.com, and the blog is at www.example.com/blog
| dperfect wrote:
| I've shared this before, but this has happened to me - 3 times
| - with different sites I created. One was very similar in
| nature to OP's (essentially a specialized tool/calculator with
| affiliate links to the products), and another was a very
| detailed guide for making a DIY electronics product. It was
| "creative" enough to be featured on the front page of
| hackaday.com, but I guess not enough for Amazon's affiliate
| program.
|
| Traffic also wasn't a problem - in one case they pulled my
| program membership only _after_ I had generated hundreds of
| dollars in referred sales (of course they didn 't pay the
| commission). Needless to say, it has left a bad taste in my
| mouth ever since. In my opinion, if they have such a narrow
| interpretation of what "original" or "creative" means (applying
| only to blog-style content, or who knows what), then I frankly
| don't care to do anything more with their affiliate program or
| drive sales to them.
| amelius wrote:
| This is what you get when a company is the regulator of a
| market. I guess government regulation isn't so bad after all.
| [deleted]
| mostertoaster wrote:
| Or you could view it as the government is just the biggest
| corporation.
| lixtra wrote:
| Or just don't affiliate with amazon. Instead use an online
| service, that is dedicated to your niche and both profit.
| daveguy wrote:
| Seems like government regulation against corporate
| control of markets is still a good idea.
| [deleted]
| moasda wrote:
| Wow, thanks a lot for sharing your experience.
| nocturnial wrote:
| This isn't a dig at the submitter, far from it.
|
| When did HN became a support page for multi-billion companies?
| It's not that they can't afford to pay people to provide support.
| Or is this a sort of hidden agreement where if you make more than
| a billion, you can fire all of your support staff and hope the HN
| community fixes things for you for free.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| A lot of it is simply that many customers in many industries
| are not worth supporting. Cheaper to lose them.
|
| Tech just has a disproportionate number of low value customers,
| but you see it everywhere from flying to freelancing.
|
| Air Canada frequently neglects my queries. As my Dad has
| status, he never has to wait long to help. I can point to quite
| a few cases where as an established customer, I got excellent
| support from certain smaller businesses while my friends didn't
| even get replies.
| ronsor wrote:
| Because the companies have no (and never had any) real support
| staff, all that's left is to try to contact one of the
| engineers working there. Luckily those engineers probably
| browse HN.
| nend wrote:
| It's a hidden agreement between tech giants and their customers
| in that companies are so big and make so much money it's
| cheaper for them to lose the occasional customer than it is to
| provide adequate customer service.
|
| As to when hn became a support page for this, at a minimum it
| was several years ago, along with the rest of social media.
| [deleted]
| inetknght wrote:
| > _if you make more than a billion, you can fire all of your
| support staff_
|
| How do you think these companies make their billions?
|
| Little or no support staff = customers can't complain = you
| make profits even when your product is trash.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| If you suspect that it was an automated decision, in addition to
| any normal appeal processes, you could go through whoever their
| GDPR contact is and ask whether you were subject to automated
| decision making and if so, to please review the case manually as
| is your right under GDPR: https://gdpr-info.eu/art-22-gdpr/
|
| Another obvious solution would be to find a different affiliate
| program (or set of affiliate programs) and point to them, since
| Amazon apparently doesn't want customers from you. Maybe some
| cycling-specific online store(s), or a price comparison web site?
| Probably more work and less profitable, but a potential avenue if
| you can't make progress with Amazon or don't want to deal with
| them.
| moasda wrote:
| Thank you for the suggestions, I will check that.
| tgflynn wrote:
| I have no idea. Have you tried asking them. I know Google is
| notorious for being impossible to contact but I haven't heard the
| same about Amazon.
|
| EDIT: On further thought I wonder if it might have something to
| do with the name of your site. A person might expect fahrrad-
| tools.com to be a site where they could buy tools, but that
| doesn't seem to be the case.
| moasda wrote:
| I cannot find contact details how to ask a question. I only can
| find a FAQ but it also is very superficial about what could be
| done wrong.
| tgflynn wrote:
| So they have no appeal process for this kind of decision ?
| moasda wrote:
| I finally found a contact page where I will send my request
| to: https://partnernet.amazon.de/home/contact/
| moasda wrote:
| I cannot prove it, but it looks at least like that for me.
| I tried googling and read all the Amazon Associates pages
| again to find any hint. Maybe I just wasn't smart enough to
| find it.
| gtirloni wrote:
| Try this https://affiliate-
| program.amazon.com/help/node/topic/GACDBRF...
| moasda wrote:
| Thanks for the link. amazon.com seems to have a different
| process than amazon.de.
| mikequinlan wrote:
| https://www.amazon.com/hz/contact-us/foresight/hubgateway
| moasda wrote:
| > A person might expect fahrrad-tools.com to be a site where
| they could buy tools
|
| I can't imagine that Amazon evaluates the domain in that way,
| Amazon even accepts URL paths to a personal blog where you are
| not the owner of the domain.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-02-12 23:01 UTC)