We’ve been around the block a time or two about whether twitter is an appropriate place to post affiliate links.
Most of the affiliate networks prohibit the posting of affiliate links in forums, blog comments, etc.; in other words, you cannot post (read spam) affiliate links on sites that you do not own.
As we discussed the topic of affiliate links in twitter, this issue occurred to me. Since people don’t “own” twitter, does that fall into the above categories. In my mind, it doesn’t as I consider twitter a blogging platform that’s no different from blogger or other hosted blogging solutions in this context. I even asked someone from the network quality team at one of the networks and they agreed with me on that.
However, surprisingly enough, Amazon differs on this. Amazon Associate, Joshua Odmark reported on Search Engine Journal that Amazon slashed his commissions from amazon links that he posted on his Twitter and Facebook accounts. Why? They cited their terms that links must be posted on “Your Site”.
It seems that they take the “Your Site” distinction pretty seriously.
What’s not entirely clear to me is whether it’s that they object to Twitter and Facebook specifically, or just that these links were not posted on the site that was on the application.
And would they accept these sites in an application? I guess this would also exclude sending someone a referral link in email? That’s not “Your Site” either.
Joshua hasn’t been able get any sort of explanation out of Amazon. I’ll be keeping an eye on this one.
