I spent quite a bit of time last week working on my already published Homeschooling with Cozy Books posts in anticipation of adding a few dozen more books that I have in a pile on my desk next to me. My goal is to add simple and enjoyable learning idea suggestions to each post. I’m a big believer in the relaxed homeschooling approach that includes using lots of picture books when children are younger.
So just as I was picking up momentum, Amazon sends out an email to their affiliates earlier this week announcing that all of the image-based affiliate links are going away by the end of the year. So you need to change all of your links because they will all be broken in a few weeks.
They sent this out the week before Thanksgiving week.
Out of the blue.
You have got to be kidding me.
To show you what I mean, take a look at these posts. All of these little individual products will now be broken because Amazon will only be supporting linking text moving forward.
- From My Book Pile – Emilie Barnes Edition
- 100 Art Supplies For Creative Girls
- Which Children’s Bible Is Best For Your Child?
- 100 Wholesome Books For Girls And Tweens
- Baby Einstein Alphabooks & Board Book Sets
- 100+ Free Old-Fashioned Cozy Books for Kindle
That’s just a handful of them. I have many, many posts that have varying degrees of Amazon products inserted.
So now I have to decide what to do with the probably dozens and dozens of posts that are ruined or will be missing important information. Many to most of them can’t simply be changed over to lists of words hyperlinked. People want to see the image, not just a list of craft supplies.
On top of that, I’m not even sure it is worth it to take the time to replace all of the Emilie Barnes books (for example) with a list of linked titles. It might make more sense to just get rid of the links and list the books. It takes time to get the link for each one and Amazon has reduced their affiliate percentages so much it’s not even worth the time to add the links at this point.
If you haven’t been following the news, Amazon is eliminating employees DURING THE HOLIDAY SEASON. They are apparently getting rid of Alexa. They are losing tons of money on all the distribution centers they have built. I’ve heard so many people on blogs, websites, and YouTube say that their Amazon affiliate sales are down 50-75% this year. So if everyone’s affiliate sales are down, you can imagine how much Amazon itself is down. Now they are getting into cars?
So I’m at the point where I think it is better to just ditch all of the Amazon links on my website. I think they are moving away from affiliates and will be going all-in on their “Influencer” program. (I hate that term.) They want influencers to point followers to their individual storefronts ON Amazon (like this) rather than promoting products on the influencer’s own platform (website, TikTok, Instagram, etc.). I’m sure this gives way more control to Amazon. WHY would I do this on my website given what they are doing to affiliates now? I guess if you are dropping links on social media then that’s one thing. But not on a website where posts integrate affiliate links.
And this all messes with my plans on For the Love of Pansies. For example, the post I did about Pansy Puzzles for Pansy Lovers will no longer work. None of the pretty items in the sidebar will work. It’s such a shame because the site looks so lovely with all of the pansy images, but what’s the point? I’m glad I didn’t invest any more time in that website than I have to this point. I could find other affiliate programs with lots of pansy thing (like Etsy), but then it’s just setting myself up for more problems down the line with another platform and/or individual sellers.
So I took a few days to not do anything with anything here. I had a whole bunch of books about Thanksgiving and winter I wanted to add this week, but this development took the wind right out of my sails. I didn’t want to do anything in anger or haste. But I also didn’t want to keep adding new posts with links if I decide I’ve had enough of Amazon and it is better to start methodically deleting all of them.
No matter what I do, it will take many days of work at a minimum to simply undo what I have to do – find all the impacted posts and either unpublish them or radically change them.
There are some people whose situation is far worse than mine so I’m thankful mine is only this bad.
In the end, I don’t trust Amazon and so it is probably easier to simply get rid of it all. For the mere pittance they now pay out in affiliate sales, it’s just not worth it.
So that was part of my week.
Fireside Chat No. 4
Wow! What a mess! I don’t know anything about running an online business, but I certainly do enjoy the beauty and sensibility of both of your websites. I will be praying for you as you sort this out. Thank you for all you do. ❤️
Cheryl,
Thank you for your kind words. Prayers are definitely appreciated. ♥
Sallie
This is the first time I’m reading about these Amazon changes. Thank you for the info! I’d actually been considering starting with Amazon affiliates, with books, on my new website/business, but this info is giving me huge cause to reconsider.
It seems to me that Amazon is looking for more control with this new model. The storefront model looks a lot like a social media profile page. It reminds me of TPTs model with its ‘stores’, when in fact you’re actually shopping on the host site, not at an individual store. Also, do you know happen to how Amazon plans to deal with cookies? Would storefronts still get a cookie for bringing people over, and if so, how long is the cookie valid?
All in all, Amazon affiliates isn’t looking like a good option for small businesses.
Thank you again, Sallie, for this timely info.
Hi Renee,
Good to see you!
I would need to dig more into the Amazon influencer thing. I set it up when it first rolled out and I received an invitation to apply, but I haven’t paid much attention to it until I added the pansy section last month. I honestly couldn’t even tell you what the cookie time is or anything.
Ironically, I wouldn’t even qualify for it now. My social media numbers are way too small, especially after Pinterest (I suspect) blacklisted me in some way when I put political-related pins on there. I think I’ve been blacklisted in some form pretty much across the board (Google, etc.) because of my political posting that started here around the time of the Kavanaugh hearings. My other site (the political one) was just obliterated during the recent Google Search update. Completely obliterated in search. The traffic to even a few posts I had that were very popular just completely dried up. But my understanding is Amazon especially wants influencers with TikTok and Instagram numbers.
That’s an interesting comparison to the TPT set-up and we both know how that has gone. I don’t know if you have any friendly birdies over there who share updates with you, but apparently things are rapidly declining since the buyout by iXL (or whatever the parent company name is). Sales are down this year another 40-75% for most sellers over last year. This is ON TOP OF the fact that sales were already down that much LAST year. So the bottom has completely fallen out for a lot of sellers to the point where even the big sellers and biggest TPT cheerleaders are openly discussing how bad it is and whether there is any future. I was told some larger sellers have opened subscription options on their own websites. I was also told that many TPTers who buy ads are no longer sending buyers to TPT, but to their own website shops. That will, of course, impact many more people as traffic drops on TPT. TPT also introduced some “you may also be interested in” feature at checkout, but the products suggested come from different shops. So someone might be buying my pumpkin unit and be offered four other pumpkin units from other sellers. You can imagine how well that has gone over.
I suspect many of the big sellers can’t bring themselves to pull the plug and move to their own website shops because it will be such a HUGE undertaking. Even if you pay a team to do it for you, that’s a crazy amount of work to add hundreds or thousands of products to a WooCommerce or Shopify shop. And then there is the whole question of whether or not printables have peaked and/or are saturated beyond viability for most sellers. That’s a whole different post and discussion.
You and I were right about the future of TPT. We were early and didn’t know how every detail would unfold, but we were right. Kudos to you because you saw things that I didn’t and that really helped me piece it all together in the big picture.
Have you heard or observed anything beyond this?
Sallie
If you aren’t clear what I’m discussing with Renee, you can see these two posts from a few years ago.
https://sallieborrink.com/i-removed-my-products-from-teachers-pay-teachers-due-to-their-anti-racist-agenda/
https://sallieborrink.com/teachers-pay-teachers-and-equity-funding/
Hi Sallie!
Thank you for the great reply and the link to our earlier collaboration.
It sounds like things have really changed at Amazon. I applied about 6 or 7 years ago, and social media numbers weren’t even a thing then, so I hadn’t even considered them this time around. If that’s one of Amazon’s criteria, I wouldn’t qualify either. So cookies are less than moot. I had no idea you’d been blacklisted, but I’m not surprised give the scope of online censorship, especially these days.
Nope, no little birdies at TPT, so it’s fresh news to me that they’ve been bought by iXL. I just had a quick look and it seems that Spectrum Equity ‘divested’ TPT with iXL’s acquistion of it. Since the venture outfits got involved around 2014, I’m guessing they had a 10-year plan in place. I tried to find out how much iXL paid, but the amount is ‘undisclosed’. Had a quick look at iXL, too, and they’re high-octane ed-tech. I’ll go that most of their stuff is AI generated and who knows where they get their data from. They have 14 people on their leadership team, which includes 4 Asians, all of whom seem to be Chinese. No other Asians. Maybe not odd, but given the days we’re in, maybe so.
I can’t imagine TPT getting much better for teachers. As soon as AI databases are filled with enough data, teacher-produced materials on sites like TPT are done. It will all be AI generated and so-called personalized. I don’t think printables have peaked, but I do think the days of humans making them are numbered. We’ll have to make things that machines can’t generate, which is sort of the opposite of what a lot of big TPT sellers were doing, especially in primary, making really fast, really easy-to-produce materials. High school might do better than primary, at least for a while, because high school resources can’t be as quickly simplified into code.
I’m on the fence about how much I sympathize with sellers still on TPT. The writing’s been on the wall a while, you even spelled it out for them in forum posts. More importantly, most sellers were fully aware of the CRT evil that was being injected into TPT, it was openly discussed in TPT forums, yet most still stayed on the site. I get it that people have mouths to feed, but this had a long telegraph. Long enough to do something.
Yes, we were right about TPT, weren’t we? At first, I’d felt I was being a bit excessive with the idea of closing my store, so I found a lot of value in our email conversations. It was really a blessing to find another seller to talk about it all with. Thank you.
My business should be up and running, finally. It’s taken a year or so longer than expected, what with bumps along the way, but my daughter and I actually finished the landing page today. It will be a membership site for adults learning English. Fluency-focused and full of great English. And not a woke word to be found 🙂
Renee
“And not a woke word to be found.”
Renee, this made me smile. May the Lord bless your efforts and new website!
-Lauren