Tonight, Amazon sent an email to members of Amazon Associates letting them know about a new feature: Twitter integration. Basically, when you’re logged into your Associate account, you’ll see a new “Share on Twitter” button on your Site Stripe (a management toolbar along the top of the page). As you’d expect, clicking this button will prepare a tweet complete with a shortened URL to send out of all of your Twitter followers.
Here’s why this is interesting: As Amazon clearly notes at the end of its email (copied below), you will earn referral money for anyone that clicks on these links and buys a product. Obviously, links that bring in referral fees are nothing new, this has been going on with blogs for a long time. But Twitter users do love to click on links, so this feature could actually mean some real money for popular Twitter users with a massive following. And it’s yet another way that companies — and now even Twitter’s users — are making money off of Twitter, which Twitter won’t see a dime of (presumably, anyway).
Something else to think about: A lot of blogs disclose when they’re supplying you with a referral link that they will make money from (though certainly not all of them). But on Twitter, that’s going to be hard for people to do even if they wanted to because of the 140 character limit. Other social sites, like MySpace, for example, do not allow you to post affiliate links. Twitter, it would seem, has no problem with this. In fact, at least one employee tweeted that he was excited for the launch.
You can find out more about Amazon’s rules for this type of stuff on its FAQ page. Below, find the text of the email that was sent out to Associates members.
From: Amazon.com Associates Program
Date: Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 12:05 AM
Subject: Amazon Associates Now Integrates Directly with TwitterDear Associate,
Today we are excited to announce the launch of a new feature called Share on Twitter. You can access Share on Twitter from the Site Stripe and post to your Twitter account from Amazon detail pages in just two clicks.
The Share on Twitter feature is easy to use. Simply log in to your Amazon Associates account and then visit any detail page on Amazon.com. By clicking on the Share on Twitter button in the Site Stripe, a new window will open and an Amazon-generated message is pre populated in the ‘What are you doing?’ text area of your Twitter account (you may be asked to log in to your Twitter account). That message will include a shortened URL that already includes your Associates ID. You’ll have the option to edit this message or simply hit the ‘Update’ button to post to your Twitter account. When Twitter users click on the link in your post and make a qualifying sale, you’ll earn referral fees. That’s it.
For more information about how you can use social networks in connection with your Associates account, please visit our Social Media FAQ.
Also, did you know that you can stay connected with Amazon Associates by following us on Twitter, becoming a fan on Facebook and joining our group on Linkedin? We’ll post program announcements as well as top deals and promotions.
Please tell us what you think of our new Share on Twitter feature using hashtag ‘#AMZNSOT’ on Twitter or contact us via the contact form. We want to hear from you!
Sincerely,
The Amazon Associates Program
[photo: flickr/177]
I still want a kindle..
^_^
Is this not a MASSIVE U-turn by Amazon? Did they not state some months back they would not honour Twitter links for affiliates?
Yes. And this feature has been live at least a day or so – saw it before I got the email. And no one at TC has obviously tested the feature, otherwise they’d have found it interesting that Amazon is using bit.ly rather than their own preexisting shortening URL service.
I thought so! It didn’t make sense either and a lot of people were doing it anyway.
I think this is a smart move for them. However, I’m not sure why Twitter didn’t do it first.
Are there any links on the internet that aren’t affiliated? Links behaviour on Wordpress hosted blogs is broken. They’re hijacking through an affiliate.
I’m actually a tad surprised they would turn this on so blatantly… but I guess tons of people do it already so might as well ride the wave.
Just one more reason why Twitter is getting more spammy tho :-/
How much do they give?
Not that much…usually around 4%
I believe it is 4% of immediate sales. Unlike other affiliate programs, Amazon does not pay affiliates for purchases made by buyers who return later.
A twitter purchase service that allows sellers to allow a one click purchase of concert tickets (as an example) that would automatically publicize your purchase on Twitter seems like a no brainer.
U2 tix on sale! .
I need NOS.
Couldn’t twitter just change links that don’t have a referral code to include their own? This could be done for a ton of sites and I see nothing wrong with it..
Personally I think if people are going to do it, they’ll already doing it with bit.ly or tool like our Skimth.at (http://blog.ski...cing-skimth-at/), which covers 1000s of affiliate programs and not just Amazon.
Techcrunch actually had a great discussion about disclosure in Tweets and whether we need a standard, back in July – http://www.tech...ompt-standards/
One interesting point is that when we delved into this recently we realised that people don’t naturally add links to products when they are tweeting about them (e.g. “I love my new Nike+” not “I love Nike+ you can buy it at …”)
So if you are an active affiliate marketer on Twitter you’ll already be using tools to do this, if you’re a casual Amazon Associate it will be interesting to see if this takes on and people are confident/bothered enough to fill their Twitter streams with links and make decent money from it.
Perhaps this will work for the non-marketeer Tweeters who have tens or hundreds of thousands of quality followers, and use the odd AA link.
Amazon is a solid brand name advertiser that might make this offer very successful.
I hope they add a linkedin book referral option to their affiliate program.
Books read by my business contacts or vice versa would provide a great channel of marketing for amazon via their affiliate program.
My only fear is that spammy offer will dominate the twitter – affiliate marketing space and burn it before the full potential can be hit.
Mike … please keep an eye on this one
p.s
Twitter – if you guys play your cards right you may just discovered your monster revenue channel
Note: Residents of North Carolina or Rhode Island are not eligible to participate in the Associates program.
Seems like a great idea, but I wonder if the new FTC rule for blog endorsement/gift disclosures will apply here as well. It would be kind of hard to disclose your affiliation in every tweet!
http://www.nyti...dia/06adco.html
Is there any kind of disclosure in the links that are being sent out?
The only way this becomes a legitimate source of revenue for ANYONE is if there is a special assignment through the API on these calls from Amazon or anyone else promoting something they are either
a) being paid for
b) will be compensated if you buy something from the link
Does Blogger or Wordpress make money off of Amazon Affiliate links? Nope. So why should Twitter? There are tons of other things Twitter should be concentrating on, and affiliate links is not one of them.
I think this is great. Why shouldn’t people be making a little money out of the products that they are probably already promoting?
This is really cool. It’s too bad the the eBay Partner Network seems to spend all their time trying to restrain affiliates instead of actually helping them like Amazon does.
Didn’t you guys pretty much predict something like this with Amazon being the choice for twitter?
http://www.tech...ittter-why-not/
If Amazon does tie in their payments, could be a killer app.
For some of us this is just making the system easier. Ever since I joined Amazon Affiliates I’ve tweeted links, I’ve just had to go to bit.ly to shorten the links first. I’m thrilled to get the shortcut, but it was nice to be able to track on bit.ly how many people clicked that particular tweeted link…
Time will tell, but it’ll be interesting to see how successful this is for both parties. Amzn surely could get some good traffic, but how big is the spam/fraud risk? Twitter is already full of sketchy behaviors… i get at least 1 person i’ve never heard of following me every day, does this new “fuel” accelerate that bad behavior and turn people off from Twitter all together. Which, then, makes me wonder if there isn’t much more to this then is obvious? Is Twitter getting a cut in a sub-affiliate type model?
Oh does Amazon still have an affiliate program? Could have fooled me. They canceled my account because I live in Rhode Island…but they continued to make money off my links until I took them down. Unless I’m mistaken they are still paying affiliate fees to associates in New York where the Amazon tax began. It’s just those of us in NC, Delaware (?) and RI who don’t get paid…not big enough markets for Amazon to bother with I guess.
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Gee, who knew that when I tell someone “I just read a great book” I should be earning money! This kind of program is why getting a decent and honest appraisal on the web is so hard. Unless you know the person praising something and whether or not they have integrity, this is just garbage.
I wonder when people will assume they should have an affiliate program from candidates for their political opinions and their votes.