Featuring an enormous variety of products, an extremely high conversion rate, and a powerful shared cart commission feature, we widely recommend them to those getting started with affiliate marketing.
That being said…
They’re not afraid to ban you over the smallest terms of service breaks, without even giving you a second chance.
Below, we’ll cover seven common mistakes that will get you banned from Amazon Associates and some ways to avoid doing them.
Funny enough, #7 was actually what got my Amazon Associates account banned many years back.
Let’s get right into it!
Table of Contents
Amazon Associates Disclosure
Amazon, and many other affiliate programs, will require you to disclose to your audience that you’re a part of their affiliate program.
We recommend something like:
“[Site Name] is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.”
This is due to the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) ruling in September of 2017. If you’re not inside the United States then you may not need to worry about this part.
Every single page with an Amazon affiliate link must contain this disclaimer. We recommend keeping this in the footer of your website, to make sure you don’t forget it.
Link Cloaking
Unfortunately, link cloaking is not allowed as part of the Amazon affiliate program. Cloaking is when you use a tool to change the appearance of your links. Amazon wants it to be obvious to your audience that you are sending traffic to Amazon.
According to their Operating Agreements:
“(v) You will not cloak, hide, spoof, or otherwise obscure the URL of your Site containing Special Links (including by use of Redirecting Links) or the user agent of the application in which Program Content is displayed or used such that we cannot reasonably determine the site or application from which a customer clicks through such Special Link to an Amazon Site.”
This SearchEngineLand article makes some great points about why Amazon may want to not allow their associates to cloak their links.
Static Use Of Amazon Images & Prices & Review Stars
This is another strange one, but Amazon does not allow you to use their official images, mention prices, or official Amazon reviews when listing their products. Likely due to the poor user experience that occurs on Amazon’s end when a price or image doesn’t match a current listing.
“Because prices for and availability of Products that you have listed on your Site may change, your Site may only show prices and availability if: (a) we serve the link in which that price and availability data are displayed, or (b) you obtain Product pricing and availability data via PA API and you comply with the requirements regarding use of PA API in the License.”
There is one exception to this rule, using Amazon’s Product Advertising API. With this, you’re able to pull things in real-time from Amazon ensuring they are always the most up to date information.
For a tutorial on this, check out our guide on
On the same note, Amazon is not a fan of you using any information from product listings like Amazon review stars.
“(t) You will not display or otherwise use any of our customer reviews or star ratings, in part or in whole, on your Site unless you have obtained a link to that customer review or star rating through PA API and you comply with the requirements for PA API described in the License.”
Using Affiliate Links in Email
If some of these reasons haven’t surprised you, then this one definitely will.
You are not allowed to send Amazon affiliate links through email.
You read that correctly.
According to Amazon Associates Operating Policies, you’re not allowed to use their links:
“in offline material or email (e.g., in any printed material, mailing, SMS, MMS, attachment to email, or other document, or any oral solicitation)”.
If you want to send an Amazon affiliate link to your email list or inside of something like an eBook, send them to a blog post first, then the Amazon product listing.
Affiliate Link Fraud
Affiliate link fraud can be a variety of things, but all of them fall under the same category. Something like using your own affiliate link or having a family or friend do this would certainly count.
Doing something like this, especially when you have extremely low sales volume is a sure-fire way to get banned.
Just like Google, Amazon is smarter than you know.
Links from External Sites
This reason was actually how my Amazon Associates account got banned back in 2016. My brother who had been banned from Amazon used my Associate’s account to generate links to his account.
I was promptly banned.
If the website you are about to post affiliate links on wasn’t included in your application, be sure to add that now or just not add them at all.
Conclusion
Overall, all of these actions have a pretty high chance to get you banned if your site is sending any decent amount of conversions Amazon’s way, so we highly recommend getting these patched up if you have them.
If you’re reading this post after your accounts already banned, feel free to read our guide on how to get unbanned from Amazon Associates program.
