Apparently, Amazon has closed our Associate account without notification, or any reason given. Which means that if you’re buying items from us in order to help us pay for the costs of this site, we’d appreciate it if you could defer your purchases for a few days while we get this sorted out with Amazon, on the off chance that Amazon doesn’t credit us for the amount of time the site is down.
We’ll put up a notification when this is resolved. Thank you.
UPDATE: All better now. Feel free to click and buy.
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Has NY recently passed a law that would make Amazon Associates count as local businesses, obligating Amazon to collect sales tax? Roger Ebert had the same thing happen to him: http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2011/03/my_career_in_retailing.html
Yeah – i figure that Georgia is gonna do that sometime soon, and then the teeny-tiny amount of money i get from Amazon (maybe $50/year) will end.
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Technically, BTW, states are within their rights to demand the taxes; they have always been allowed to collect “use” tax on purchases made out-of-state by their residents. What’s at issue is whether they can compel a firm that doesn’t have a brick-and-mortar presence in their state to do so. (Which has been the norm for as long as i can recall – “TX and ME residents pay sales tax” {or whatever states} on ads or catalog pages…)
No, but CT did, and that’s where the account had been going to. Resolved now.
I will appreciate it if somebody could explain the details of how this works. I though this site only received a commission if I clicked and bought one of the 6 items in the site’s list. Does this site receive support if I click on the amazon logo link and then buy anything from Amazon even if it is not on the list?
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I believe so, yes. Several other sites I frequent do just that and explain it in better detail. You click on the link to Amazon and a portion of the profits from anything you buy is given to the host site as a sort of referral fee.
Yes. If you come to Amazon via a link that contains an Amaon Associate site’s ID, then anything you buy at Amazon during that session pays a (lesser) commission to that site.
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It’s generally four percent if you buy what you clicked to, two percent for any other purchases in the same session.
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So if you click on a link that has Glenn’s ID (or mine) in it to a used paperback that’s priced at one cent – and they’re there; i guess the sellers make it up on the “shipping and handling” scam – and buy it, we’d get nothing for the sale.
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But if you were to go from there in the same session over to a Nikon D700 Digital SLR that Amazon is selling for $2439 (for the body also) and then to a Nikon 18-200mm Nikkor Telephoto Zoom Lens at just over $800 and bought them for $3239, the associate whose ID was on the cookie in your browser for that session would get about $65…
Pooh. Only the words “during that session” were supposed to be in tals.
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Please imagine that that is how it is when you read it.
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Thank you.
Thanks for the explanation. I wish I had know this sooner. I buy a lot from amazon. I’ll make an effort to remember going through here from now on. Two percent is not much but at least is something.