Many online marketers pay web sites commissions to advertise their products. The web site puts a link to the product with their unique ID code and if someone clicks on the link and buys something, the web site owner gets a piece of the action. So you would think that the online companies would want to treat their affiliates right, but some don’t get it.
Amazon is one such clueless company. Their affiliate rates are pretty low to start with but when they pay you they deduct a $15 “check processing fee”. So a commission for $102.24 becomes a check for $87.24. Pretty pathetic I think. If you screw over those who are selling your product then they are going to be less enthusiastic about giving you space.
My two cents…
I thought you could opt-in to get direct deposit and waive the fee.
Why is that every single time Perkel gets charged a little more or has a service that only 13k people across the entire globe uses has to whine a post about it?
And WHY do we have to hear about it?
I don’t email JCD to post a story about me being overcharged for TP at the store. Why should we even CARE about poor Marc Perkel being charged extra for something?
Don’t you have your own blog for your personal “oh help me some megacorp is being mean to me!”
shit?
Cursor_
It’s called a review. Sometimes I say nice things and sometimes I don’t. Get used to it.
We could hijack this post. Was Gawker out of line (well duh?) when they published their hairy story “I had a one night stand with Christine O’Donnell“? I liked their response to the criticism and their reasoning behind the story.
They were a little tasteless but not out of line. I for one am all in favor of the whole cougar-cub scene.
Once again Perkel only tells his side of the story. Amazon only charges the check processing fee if you make them send you a check instead of direct deposit. https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/help/t3/a3
I’m sure he has some reason why he doesn’t want the money to automatically be put in a bank and would rather go to the hassle of actually going to the bank to cash it.
Well Perkel?
I think you should post about whatever you find interesting/relevant and some will like it, as I do, and others wont.
“But” when direct questions/counters are posed as in the very first post YOU have an OBLIGATION to RESPOND.
If/when you don’t, you do appear to be a whiny self absorbed little twit.
So, why are you opting to cause yourself and Amazon more trouble than the issue is worth?
yeah this is lame. Just sign up for direct deposit. The problem is you make it seem like there is no other option. This means you are misleading your readers.
In related news you are only getting 100 bucks a month from amazon? Lame.
Perkel, you are clueless. I work at Amazon and this is total crap. JCD, please revoke his contributor status.
Jim, doesn’t the Amazon affiliate program work on a percentage basis? Something like a 4-8% cut?
I was going to slam Perkel for being so self-absorbed and omitting important details in his rant, but all the cyber-bullying going on in this thread has convinced me not to.
Another baseless Perkel rant.
Just about every ‘commissioned sales’ site charges a processing fee to mail you a physical check, since it costs them money to do so.
You don’t like it, arrange for direct deposit.
I have a ‘junk’ bank account that I use specifically for that purpose. Money comes in directly, and then I move it to more ‘secret’ accounts without numbers stored all over the Internet.
Of course, I don’t get any trivial $102.24 commissions to really care about a processing fee in the first place.
I think you could call Amazon a lot of things but clueless isn’t one of them.
This sounds like a great idea for the state and federal government. If you get a tax refund and want a check, they charge an extra $10 or $15 dollars to mail it to you. I’d put it up there with having to pay at the US border to get back into my OWN DAMN COUNTRY.
Why would would you choose a check?
Why would you choose a check when they a $15 for making that silly choice?
Why would you post your silly choice on here for all the world to see how stupid you are?
Did you really think people would not see through you one sided idiotic rant and rally to your side?
You should consider yourself privileged that you got that 87 dollars. You wouldn’t have been ab le to earn that without amazon. Yet you complain about having to pay 15% in taxes? You say that people might choose to guy to another site?
I removed all my Amazon links like this. They never pay. Every month I would get an email saying that I didn’t do well enough to be paid. So, after several years of just sort of forgetting I decided to go look and see how much money, if any, had gone to Amazon from links on my site.
Not so much, but they did get clicks and did get sales. It is just that Amazon only pays if you get so much in any month. Unlike Google.
With Google links I don’t get rich, maybe less than $200 a year but Google holds on to the amount until it goes over $100 and then send me a check.
If Google can do that, so can Amazon, but they don’t. So, I dropped the cheapskates from my site and I hope everyone else does too. Amazon doesn’t seem to get it. The small amounts add up – remember in Superman II and Robert Vaughn was getting the tiny parts of pennies? – that plot line was based on reality.
Mr. Marc Perkel
Your two cents require a $15 processing fee to be paid to the Human Fund.
Please send your payment here;
The Human Fund, LLC
2 Cents Blvd.
Hole in the Ass, Kansas 90210
Checks? Aren’t they those long strips of paper that acted sort of like money in the old days?
I hope Perkel doesn’t move to the UK after 2018 when they eliminate checks entirely http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8414341.stm