Why is Amazon Limited?

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   brediesposted 10 years ago

   I have a question for the Chief Hub.
   
   Why do you limit the Amazon program to amazon.com?
   
   What if i want to promote in UK and Australia as well? 
   
   Can this be accommodated and if so how?
   
   Turns out it was 3 questions. 

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      IzzyMposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      You can place an intext link to the Amazon of your choice.
      
      1. Open text capsule.
      2. Click on 'html' top left.
      3. Go to your Amazon of choice and copy the required html link from the product page.
      4. Place in text box and click on 'clean up html'.
      
      I don't find it converts terribly well.
      On the plus side, any conversions are yours and you don't have to share them with Hubpages.

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         Matthew Meyerposted 10 years agoin reply to this

         That really is not an advised process and could risk your Hub being moderated.

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   2. 71

      Matthew Meyerposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      @bredies The short answer is that the system was designed to work only with products in the US Amazon catalog available via Amazon's API.
      Adding support for another region, currency, etc. would entail some non-trivial engineering work and we have not historically had many requests to add additional support for other Amazon regions.
      
      That being said, we have a forum where users can request new features for the site.
      You can find that forum here.
      http://hubpages.com/forum/category/6634

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         brediesposted 10 years agoin reply to this

         Matthew can you enlighten us please?
         If my current level on Amazon (in my personal account) is 4% and I sell a product through HP, how much will I get?

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            Matthew Meyerposted 10 years agoin reply to this

            You do not receive a percentage of a sale on Amazon per se.
            
            From the Learning Center.
            http://hubpages.com/learningcenter/maki … y-HubPages
            
            "To earn, Amazon must be active in your Earnings Settings and you must feature Amazon products in your Hubs through the use of Amazon Capsules, or direct links in Text Capsules.
            
            If a clicking visitor purchases qualifying products on your share of the impressions you make 100% of the commission."

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               brediesposted 10 years agoin reply to this

               So what does the sentence "You earn a percentage of the revenue generated by those ads (and HubPages earns some to keep the site running)" in the following mean? I copied this straight off  the link you gave me above.
               Written with a blue background at the very top of the page you sent me to.
               
               "How it Works in a Nutshell
               
               You sign up with our monetization partners
               You publish high quality Hubs
               People view those Hubs and occasionally click on ads
               You earn a percentage of the revenue generated by those ads (and HubPages earns some to keep the site running)
               Your earnings accrue until you reach HubPages' and or affiliate programs' payout thresholds
               You receive your earnings"
               
               Clearly (sic) it is not very clear!! 
               Seems very few people answering this question know what is going on.
               
               Is my question misleading?
               
               Let's try again.
               I already have an account with Amazon and links on several websites.  If I sell only one product of Amazons I get 4% of the sale price.
               
               if I sell only 1 Amazon product through my Hubpage how much will I get?
               
               i don't know how to put it any simpler than that.

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                  lovebuglenaposted 10 years agoin reply to this

                  You should get 4% regardless if people buy that product from your special link on another site or from a special link on your hub or from amazon capsule on your hub.

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                  lovebuglenaposted 10 years agoin reply to this

                  If you sell an amazon product you are the only one that gets paid the 4% earnings for that sale. Hub Pages doesn't get any of that 4%. It goes to you only.

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                     brediesposted 10 years agoin reply to this

                     Well that is not what they say on the link Matthew sent me to.
                     http://hubpages.com/learningcenter/maki … y-HubPages
                     And what does he mean by "If a clicking visitor purchases qualifying products on your share of the impressions you make 100% of the commission."?
                     Share of impressions?  What is my share? How do I work it out?

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                  Marisa Wrightposted 10 years agoin reply to this

                  You earn from Amazon the same way you earn from Adsense.   When a reader visits a Hub, sometimes the ads have your affiliate code embedded in them, and sometimes the ads have HubPages' code embedded in them.   If they buy something which had HubPages' code embedded, then HubPages gets the whole commission.   If they buy something with your code embedded, you get the whole commission.   The share is worked out automatically so the 60/40 split is achieved.

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                     brediesposted 10 years agoin reply to this

                     marisa I think you are beginning to make things a bit clearer.
                     Sounds to me like the links used in the Amazon capsule are interchanged each time the hub is viewed.  60% of the links are my personal code and 40% are hub pages code.
                     If someone buys a product off my code I get 100% and if they buy off HP's code I get nothing as you said above.
                     So there is a net loss to me except that I am piggybacking on hub pages popularity and google rank.
                     Thanks for clarifying.

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                        Marisa Wrightposted 10 years agoin reply to this

                        You've got it.

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      Marisa Wrightposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      It's a bit misleading to call it "limited".  Each Amazon is a completely separate business, so HubPages has not chosen to "limit" its use of Amazon to the US branch.  it's simply that they would have to apply to each of the other Amazon companies individually, and (being American) they either feel that's not worthwhile, or they haven't been able to  negotiate a good enough deal.

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         brediesposted 10 years agoin reply to this

         Not entirely true Marisa.  I joined Amazon.com and acceptance to .co.uk was automatic.  I must admit though that it was a few years ago and things might be different today but I doubt it.
         I have a few Kindle books out and they sell in US, UK, Canada, Germany, Spain, Italy, Br (Brunei I think) and even Japan and I have never opened accounts in those.

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            Marisa Wrightposted 10 years agoin reply to this

            Things have changed.   I had to apply for Amazon UK separately.

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   brediesposted 10 years ago

   Thanks for the short answer Matthew.
   
   I guess not everything can be catered for.  But it would be good to have at least the UK added as an option.
   
   @izzyM As for sharing the revenue with Hubpages … my situation is that my % payout with Amazon in my own right is at the minimum and I am assuming that HP gets a much higher percentage (maybe Matthew can confirm this) so my 60% (is that what it is?) with HP is probably better than the 100% I get on my own.
   
   Or in other words 60% of $100.00 is more than 100% of $10.00

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      Jean Bakulaposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      Amazon doesn't give you 60% or 40% of $100.00. It pays you 60% percent of the time or 40%, alternating with Hubpages.  I misunderstood it in the beginning. It only pays something like 4-6%. So unless you have expensive products on your hubs, it's almost not worth the trouble.

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         brediesposted 10 years agoin reply to this

         Jean you misinterpret my statement.  Amazon give me 4% for the first 'x' number of sales.  That 4% goes up the more I sell.
         I get 100% of the 4% in my personal account.
         I assume that HP sells a lot more so would be at the top tier - i.e. earning in excess of the 4%
         So if I get 60% of this great amount I should be better off but … not sure if they are on the higher tier or if they are simply taking 40% of my 4%.
         That would burn my butt. 

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            wildernessposted 10 years agoin reply to this

            Neither one is true.  HP gets any income (sales) from 40% of the views.  Their Amazon code will be attached when the viewer clicks through to Amazon - add up their entire sales for the whole site and HP will be in top tier.
            
            Your code gets attached for 60% of the readers.  If they click through you get credit for any sale, and adding up the sales with YOUR code will tell you what tier you are in. 
            
            It is highly unlikely that you will ever see top tier, while HP gets it every month.  There was talk at one time of making Amazon a part of HPads, similar to eBay, and that would give us all top tier but that seems to have died months ago.  Not surprising - it would cost Amazon a good deal of money if they approved it.

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            lovebuglenaposted 10 years agoin reply to this

            You start out with 4% on amazon and then after you sell 7 items in a given month it will go up to 6%. If you sell 7 items within a few months that doesn't count. At least that's how it is on my amazon account.

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      wildernessposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      Doesn't work that way - for my 60% I'm on my own, nothing to do with HP.  I'm sure HP is at the top tier, but I do well to reach the 6 1/2% tier.

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         lovebuglenaposted 10 years agoin reply to this

         So for amazon it is also 60/40? I thought amazon doesn't get split with hubpages.

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            wildernessposted 10 years agoin reply to this

            HP receives credit for 40% of all your visitors, along with any income those visitors produce.  Every time someone comes to one of your hubs, that visit is assigned to either you or HP on a random basis, with 60% of the visits being assigned to you.  Once a visit is "yours" any income generated, whether from adsense, HPads, eBay or Amazon is also credited to you.

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      IzzyMposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      I quite agree it would be good to have Amazon UK as an option with a proper ad capsule, and have suggested it before - a long time ago.
      I know there are ways of putting Amazon capsules on your own sites so that they show products and prices in the local Amazon of the viewer. Downside is of course that you have to individually sign up as affiliates to them all!
      
      Matthew seems to have said above that it would be too big a problem for their engineers to arrange, but this is the first time I have been notified that adding an AmazonUK link to a hub is possibly against TOS.
      I could understand it if the link was to Amazon.com,  but to AmazonUK?
      
      We can't even buy from Amazon.com. The postage is prohibitive even if you found a seller willing to ship.

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         bac2basicsposted 10 years agoin reply to this

         Hi IzzyM. I would also like to add Amazon UK products for all the reasons you have mentioned. After saying that though I think most traffic comes from the US anyway, so are we really missing out so much?

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            IzzyMposted 10 years agoin reply to this

            No we are not missing out on much.
            When I did have a lot of traffic to this subdomain, I added intext links to Amazon review products so that UK viewers could buy them too.
            I could see a lot of traffic came from the UK, but it really didn't convert well at all.
            While it might be that intext links are not so good for sales, I think it's cultural as much as anything.
            UK searchers go straight to Amazon if they want to buy, not to a 'best of' review site.

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         Marisa Wrightposted 10 years agoin reply to this

         I think it might be because of the way you're doing it.  You are allowed to put affiliate links in your Hubs (a maximum of two, like any other domain), however most companies give you a simple affiliate link - i.e. just their website name with your affiliate code embedded in it.  You use those simply by creating a normal hyperlink.  Those are the ones allowed by HubPages.
         
         Amazon insists on giving you these fancy HTML links.  I have a suspicion they don't even work properly on HP and I don't think they're allowed.   What I do is search through the HTML and find the straight link with my affiliate code in it, and create an ordinary hyperlink using that.

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            IzzyMposted 10 years agoin reply to this

            This has been  an interesting thread.
            
            I really didn't know to just take the link out of the html, but I guess that it what the 'clean up html' button does, so the end result is identical.
            
            It can't be against TOS to do it this way, or Hubpages would not have an 'html' edit button.

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   brediesposted 10 years ago

   That's my point IzzyM - we are losing out on half our sales or more.
   
   I also cannot buy some items from .com because of postage or they simply don't ship to this end of the world.
   
   As far as TOS goes what do HP lose if they don't sell there anyway.  Its almost like saying:
   "If we (HP) find out that you are also making Squidoo lenses we will be deeply hurt/offended/sulk and close your hub pages as it is in breach of our TOS."
   
   That is just crazy.
   
   The people who do these things are clever and I am pretty sure it wouldn't be too difficult a task to add a "foreign" country capsule.
   
   C'mon HP the world is a small village.

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   delleaposted 10 years ago

   Being that HubPages is primarily a U.S.-based site, it seems that it is designed around that fact and it makes the most sense for them to do so... the less integrated programming that the HP staff has to worry about, the less that can go wrong, etc. Since you're obviously outside of the U.S., maybe consider using HubPages to target U.S. customers, and create a blog in your own country on your own business site (and advertise the blog in your own country). This way you'll be targeting both audiences, and you can also cross-link your hubs here with your posts in your own blog for increased cross-traffic, etc.

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      brediesposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      Thanks for that dellea.  I have a number of sites all of which are successful in the USA simply because of volume and education (US aren't afraid of using the Internet to buy) and making individual sites for a number of different countries is less economical.  One site can cover the world as far as sales go.
      But the UK has a big well educated population with great buying potential.
      Anyway HP don't do it so there you are.

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   lovebuglenaposted 10 years ago

   You can utilize the UK amazon associates program on Hub Pages . Instead of using the amazon capsule simply create links to UK amazon products yourself. But don't simply paste in the link into the text or link capsule. First write a title (product name for example) and then use that to create the link.

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      lovebuglenaposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      I forgot to add that you have to login to your UK amazon associates account and generate the link to the products first before placing them in your hub.

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         brediesposted 10 years agoin reply to this

         Thats what IzzyM suggested and was slapped on the wrist for it.  Can't understand why but there you go.

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            lovebuglenaposted 10 years agoin reply to this

            No. She was saying something about editing HTML. I wasn't referring to editing HTML...

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               brediesposted 10 years agoin reply to this

               The Amazon links are in HTML so how do you create a link with  your code in it without using html?

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                  lovebuglenaposted 10 years agoin reply to this

                  First you have to login to your UK amazon, search for the product you want and click on there to get link. Once you get the link from amazon go to edit your hub then in a text capsule edit mode select a word or phrase you want to use as a link and then click on the link icon and where it asks you for the website paste in the link from UK amazon which will have your amazon id in it. This will create the link. If you don't want to use any of the text in the text capsule as the link you can write your own words like name of product then select it do the same as above.

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                     brediesposted 10 years agoin reply to this

                     I know how to create links as you have just described and that is using/editing HTML from Amazon.
                     Apparently HP frown on this if it isn't from amazon.com and within an amazon capsule.

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                        lovebuglenaposted 10 years agoin reply to this

                        You don't need to use an amazon capsule. And you don't need to use any HTML. When you are in your UK amazon account and you click to get the link you get the a href=" " and inside the " " is the actual URL that has your ID in it. Only copy the actual URL, leaving out the html code and use that in the hub. Unless Hub Pages doesn't allow you to do that either.

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                        lovebuglenaposted 10 years agoin reply to this

                        I would assume direct product links to products on UK amazon can be used...

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   lovebuglenaposted 10 years ago

   "If a clicking visitor purchases qualifying products on your share of the impressions you make 100% of the commission."? - I think by that that means you get the entire 4% and that it's not split with Hub Pages

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      brediesposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      Thanks lovebuglena.
      I find the wording a bit confusing.
      But the mud is a bit clearer now.

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         lovebuglenaposted 10 years agoin reply to this

         Hope I helped. After checking out the link you posted it seems that the amazon program is also split between hubpages and hubbers just like adsense is. I can't find out though how it is split though.

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         lovebuglenaposted 10 years agoin reply to this

         Is it 60% of the time our amazon ID and 40% Hub Pages amazon ID?

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            brediesposted 10 years agoin reply to this

            I think that is right but as it was just a point of interest for me I am not too concerned.
            $0.14 in 2 weeks is certainly not going to pay the bills.
            I just like to know how things work.

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               IzzyMposted 10 years agoin reply to this

               You have to write sales hubs to get sales traffic. It just doesn't work if you stick random (but related) Amazon ads in an otherwise informative hub.
               Product reviews and the like work best, and do convert to sales.
               I regularly reach 6.5% commission levels, mainly through HP, and occasionally even 7%. All on Amazon.com, I might add. On the other Amazons you start again at the bottom tier and I never get above that.

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