In (reluctant) admiration of Amazon

Like many people, I suspect, I have a rather vague and amorphous dislike of Amazon. It is too big, it doesn’t pay its taxes, its website looks horrible, it is pushing small bookshops out of business… But I do admit that when I can’t find what I am looking for somewhere else, Amazon usually comes up with the goods. And not only comes up with the goods, but does so very quickly and at a good price. None the less, it remains for me a destination of last resort. However…

To encourge our websites to make some meaningful contribution to their running costs, we have been investigating affiliate links. These are links from your website to ‘x’ product, for which ‘x’ does not pay, but, instead, gives you a percentage of any sale made as a result of your referral. This percentage counts as part of ‘x”s marketing costs so the product does not cost the buyer any more than it would anywhere else. They are widely used on websites these days and, provided you only link to products that are appropriate for your site and/or that you approve of, then I am not sure that anyone could take issue with the practice.

Inevitably, there are many different schemes offered by individual retailers, groups, consortiums etc and, in our quest to make some money, Hannah, our new marketing director, has been investigating a number of them. But, as she has worked her way through the major retailers, wholesalers, affiliate organisations etc, it has become increasingly clear how it is that Amazon has grown to the size that it is – and has become to ‘go to’ outlet for everything from lawn mowers to out-of-print copies of Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia.

It is not that the percentages that Amazon offers its affiliates are that much greater than other operator, or that they make the whole business of setting up the affiliation very simple – which they do. The secret ingredient is that Amazon offers that percentage not just on the product that your website directed your visitor to buy, but on anything and everything else that your visitor might buy on that visit. And such is the range of products sold on Amazon, and the convenience of buying them from just one site, that a very significant number of ‘your’ visitors may spend quite large sums on products that Amazon stock once you have directed them into the site.

We have no idea who buys products via our links but we can find out what they have bought. At the moment we have links to DAOsin supplements (widely used by those with histamine intolerance), a range of freefrom cookery and other allergy books and some freefrom skincare products. But customers visiting Amazon as a result of those links have also bought skateboards, shower heads, eyelash curler pads, hoodies, crucifixes, a 48 inch stainless steel table – and a whole-house water softener and cartridges. On all of these items we have earned our percentage – $32 on the water softener and cartridges!! OK, so giving away these percentages on all products sold must be costing Amazon a mint of money – but then they really do not need to do any significant marketing as all of their affiliates are doing their marketing for them. If an affiliate is going to be earning a percentage on everything that their ‘customer’ buys on Amazon, why would they not be sending everyone they can to the Amazon site?…

So, while I still do not like the Amazon website, and I still object to their failure to pay a reasonable amount of UK tax, and I still buy my books from my local bookshop whenever I can, I do have to admire their business model. The question is, are my objections strong enough to resist the lure of those juicy percentages on other peoples’ water softeners!