SEO

Amazon Raises Affiliate Commission Rates

Published

3 years ago

April 13, 2022

Amazon Raises Affiliate Commission Rates

Amazon announced that they are raising commissions on a small group of product categories for a limited time. The new higher payout rates arrives two years after Amazon lowered fees during the Covid pandemic as consumers switched to buying more items online.

Although the new rates are higher, some of the product categories are still several percentage points below pre-Covid affiliate commission rates.

Below is a list of how the new rates compare.

Amazon Affiliate Program

Amazon pays commissions to affiliate publishers who refer visitors that convert into sales.

Amazon is a trusted brand name and that (in the past) made Amazon a good affiliate partner to work with because a motivated referral had a higher rate of conversion at Amazon than it did being referred to a brand that is less well known and trusted.

That popularity changed in April 2020 as the pandemic changed how consumers purchased products and began buying directly from Amazon in order to comply with a lockdown and to avoid venturing out of the home, catching Covid and perishing.

Because of the huge supply of consumers, the need to pay affiliates became less urgent and Amazon did the commonsense thing and reduced the affiliate commission rate.

The luxury and beauty products categories saw affiliate commission rates collapsed by a total of 6 percentage point, falling from a 10% commission rate to only 4%.

Furniture commission rates also collapsed from 8% to 3%, while grocery commissions dropped four percentage points from 5% to 1%.

Amazon Raises Commission Rates

An email went out to Amazon associates (Amazon’s affiliate partners) announcing a limited time promotional commission rates that expire on May 4th, 2022.

The email states:

“This is a great opportunity to take advantage of increased commissions in popular categories. The more your audience shops, the more you earn.
Promotional rates effective until May 4th.”

Modest Increase in Amazon Affiliate Commission Rates

The increase in commissions is not across the board.

Amazon has raised the commission rates on the following categories:

- Shoes, Handbags & Accessories
- Office Products
- Kitchen
- Home
- Home Improvement
- Beauty
- Business & Industrial Supplies
- Health & Personal Care

Although the commission rates have increased the new higher rates still hover one to three percentage pages lower than pre-Covid commission rates.

For example, the Home and Home Improvement affiliate rates were raised from 3% to 5%, but that is still three percentage points below the 8% commission rate that products in those categories used to command.

Business & Industrial Supplies commission rates rise from 3% to 5%, which is just under the 6% pre-Covid commission rate.

Similarly, the Health & Personal Care commission rates goes up from 1% to 2%, but that’s still significantly lower than the pre-Covid commission rate of 4.5%.