Another way to get suspended from Amazon affiliate

[blackwar85]

Hey guys,

Just wanted to give all heads up about how a past buyer of one of my websites got his amazon account closed.

When site was under my control I added author section to site to make the site look more legit. Some author bios were real, some made up with random person images from free stock photo sites. It is quite common thing among Amazon affiliate sites, but turns out if, for some reason, Amazon decides to investigate specifically your site the fake author profile could get you banned.

Here is the excerpt from the message the buyer sent me:

"Your Associates account has come up for review in connection with our ongoing monitoring of the Amazon Associates Program. During our review, we have determined that you are not in compliance with the Operating Agreement that governs your participation in the Associates Program and your Associates Program account has been closed. You will not receive further payment of advertising fees.

You are in violation of Section 5 of the Operating Agreement, specifically points 3 and 4:

"creating and posting, and ensuring the accuracy, completeness, and appropriateness of, materials posted on your site (including all Product descriptions and other Product-related materials and any information you include within or associate with Special Links);
using the Content, your site, and the materials on or within your site in a manner that does not infringe, violate, or misappropriate any of our rights or those of any other person or entity (including copyrights, trademarks, privacy, publicity or other intellectual property or proprietary rights); "

After reviewing your site there are inaccurate statements about the authors listed on your site and about the source of your content.

You can find the complete terms of the Operating Agreement, including the Participation Requirements and Linking Requirements, via this link:
https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/agreement.

We ask that you immediately remove all Amazon Content from your site(s). Any other accounts you have or may open in the future may be closed and you will not receive any advertising fees. We reserve all other rights and claims we may have.

We appreciate your understanding in this matter."


I have never heard about someone getting banned from Amazon affiliate for these reasons so I imagine it must have been bad luck, especially considering how many use fake authors on their site.

 

[Steve Brownlie]

A lot of writers, especially ones hired to do things like 'write 100 random product reviews' aren't super interested in having it associated with their real name since they (obviously) want to associate themselves with/be found for their higher end work too so ask for you to use a pen name/or nothing etc. With how common that is in the writing world you'd think Amazon would give you a chance to respond in those circumstances not just insta-close. But I guess insta closures and censorship without discussion is the way of the world in tech at the moment.

 

[Nat]

How exactly does Amazon know the accuracy of the statements made about the authors on the site? Besides a reverse image search?

 

[blackwar85]

How exactly does Amazon know the accuracy of the statements made about the authors on the site? Besides a reverse image search?

I agree, it is overall very weird reason to suspend someone from the program, that is why I posted it here. But I guess, reverse image search yes. I tried it with tineye.com and the profile picture came up in multiple sites and pixabay stock photo site.

However, it is still odd that someone from Amazon would take time to even visit the author page, decide author may not be real and then do reverse image search for it.

In addition, there is no 100% certain proof that the man in the picture does not match with bio or name.

The buyer tried to dispute the decision, opened new accounts, but no luck.

 

[Tucky]

Perhaps a competitor dobbed them in to Amazon?

 

[miketpowell]

That's probably the justification but not the reason he got banned, the 2 usually are not the same.

Bottom line was Amazon was losing money on the deal for some reason, perhaps with something blackhat your buyer did. But they don't come out and tell you the real thing they caught you for so you cannot figure out how they caught you, instead you get BS like this.

All I can say is I'm 100% certain Amazon would not be using this rule on a site that is sending them good profitable traffic. It's not something they'd actually care about.

 

[Potatoe]

What sort of things were you saying in these author bios?

 

[blackwar85]

What sort of things were you saying in these author bios?

Checking archive, it was like the usual stuff: Author has been involved in that niche from childhood. He loves doing it, but lacks time due to work and family. He has previously wrote about that niche for other websites, magazines etc.

Either way it does not really matter. I think miketpowell is right on this one, the ban was probably for something else, the author thing was just excuse.