Historically I’ve counted on November being the second-biggest month of my Amazon Associates year. This year Amazon commissions fell off a cliff. Right at the start of this month.<\/p>\n
It’s not part of a trend. Generally I’ve lucked out. Amazon nerfed its commission structure<\/a> in March, but the blow didn’t hit as hard as I expected, both because an angel quietly stepped in to make up for the losses, and because even though the number of bought items dropped people chose a lot of items in the 7% or 8% categories. And some of those items were pretty big.<\/p>\n But this month? Holy cr*p. Just when sales should be picking up for the holidays, the majority of my Amazon days are either $0 or under $2. (For reference, I hope for $10 daily averages; before the nerf I was consistently doing a bit better than that.) It’s largely only a bottle of vitamins here or a USB cable there.<\/p>\n So are you all just waiting for Black Friday, or what? Have you quit buying on Amazon entirely? Are you using somebody else’s links (in which case good for you for supporting another freedomista)? <\/p>\n I’m relieved to have that quiet angel (and the other angels who made much of this year’s work possible). Thank heaven for you Patreons, too. And the good folks who’ve made donations out of the blue when I have NOT been looking for them. But my Amazon links<\/a> are still this blog’s bread and butter — and they appear to have landed sticky side down and been eaten by the dog.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Historically I’ve counted on November being the second-biggest month of my Amazon Associates year. This year Amazon commissions fell off a cliff. Right at the start of this month. It’s not part of a trend. Generally I’ve lucked out. Amazon nerfed its commission structure in March, but the blow didn’t hit as hard as I expected, both because an angel quietly stepped in to make up for the losses, and because even though the number of bought items dropped people chose a lot of items in the 7% or 8% categories. And some of those items were pretty big. But…<\/p>\n