I think I just got busted by Amazon.
They did it very nicely in this mass automated email but I do know from this that
I am in quite a bit of trouble with Amazon. I am an Amazon affiliate, or an Amazon associate
– that's how they prefer to call us – but what that means is that I have an account where I can
put links into my YouTube channel descriptions and into blog posts, and it even means that I
can put those nice boxy Amazon product boxes… And what that means is that when you click
on one of those links I get a small very small percentage commission from what is sold.
Amazon make it very, very clear to everyone doing this that you are supposed to declare this.
I absolutely knew I’m supposed to say if you click on this link I get a bit of commission,
but I didn't know the exact wording. Well I know I haven't worded it correctly
because I got this email but it's totally clear and I completely get that I’m
supposed to declare it correctly… Because if you don't do this, Amazon can
absolutely shut you down and then I will have 100s, literally hundreds of pages and
posts with links that don't do anything. So in this video I am going to fix absolutely
everything and I’ve got to do it quickly before I get another one of these emails.
I’m going to show you how I’m fixing my Amazon associates links…
I’m probably going to go through about 200 videos. I’m going to show you the exact wording, the
exact disclaimer that you're supposed to write every time that you use one of these links…
And through all of this I’m going to show you exactly how much money I earned this month
from Amazon Associates – So you're going to see my entire revenue for how much money
being an Amazon associate brings in for me. By the way hello, I’m Neil Mossey – I’m a
development producer helping high achieving creators and performers just like
you to get ideas out of your head to make more people happy right here on YouTube
and oh my goodness do we need your ideas. Look here's some footage of me in
trouble before trying to keep up with a movie star who's well off his face in
a speeding limo that's well over the limit. Now we're going about…
About 70… 75.
What's the limit? 65.
I had hair back then. Not for much longer. So let's first look at this very friendly
reminder that I get from Amazon associates. “Hello associate”
That's nice and personal. “This is a recurring reminder that any time
you share an associate link it's important to disclose that to your audience”
Maybe I need some like more serious music under this?
[HAPPY MUSIC] You must include a legally compliant
disclosure and identify yourself on your site as an Amazon associate with the
language required by the operating agreement. I can't even say it.
So “on your site”? Does that mean in– in my channel description?
I– I guess it probably does. Now it says a clear disclosure
“could be as simple as”. So it doesn't even say that this is
the absolute wording you must use. So it could be (paid link)
or #ad or #commissionsearned It should be placed near any associate
link or product review in a location that customers will notice easily.
In some places that it says you must put this disclaimer just before the link,
never after the link – but here's where I’m going to play it really safe.
The following statement is clearly inconspicuously appearing on my site:
“As an Amazon associate I earn from qualifying purchases.”
I should put a bit of echo on that, shouldn't I. “As an Amazon associate I earn
from qualifying purchases.” I know this is me wanting too much, but
I wish that whatever link triggered this email…
I wish they could hint at which
post, which blog post, which link or which YouTube video has triggered this!
It would be so helpful. So let's go into my YouTube studio
dashboard and we're going to click on “videos” to see how much damage there is. I’m not looking forward to this at all.
I’m going to do a search on the word “Amazon” and if you click on this upside
down triangle it brings up this menu. We'll go down to “description” and then we want
the description to contain the word “Amazon” Let's see how many there are — oh it's 117.
117 videos to check and change. The other cool thing that we can do is to click
on date – if you click on this arrow it rearranges this list to bring the earliest videos first.
Let's dive into this first one just to see what's here.
This is from my video of how to remove marker pen but if I go into
the description: I’ve already done this one. I’ve got to go through every single video
to check that it's got this wording: As an Amazon associate I earn
from qualifying purchases. Let's run some music and speed this up a bit.
[MUSIC] Okay so it's 191 videos.
Let me show you how to put this onto your channel level.
I’ve gone into customization in my YouTube studio and then “basic info”
This is the channel description. Maybe I’ll just put it here: “As an Amazon
associate I earn from qualifying purchases”. I just changed 191 YouTube videos.
It took well over two hours. I’m really glad though because at
least I know that those are finished, so now I’ve got to check all the other
places where I might have put these links. This is my blog.
I don't think the instructions are that clear because if you have
these boxes surely those are clear ads for Amazon? But just to be safe I’ve put the declaration
that Amazon associates want me to put there. I just need to do that about 200 times now.
Don't worry I won't make you watch that but I have put this disclaimer on my actual website itself
– so I’ve put the “as an Amazon associate I earn from qualifying purchases”
I’ve put that onto my website so that the website itself is super clear
but I know what you want to see next! It's this!
This is the hallowed dashboard of Amazon associates.
I’m going to show you how much I earn in a month with Amazon associates as an Amazon affiliate
– like there aren't enough a's in those words. This is the…
The cause of all my
worry right now, and oh my goodness I’ve just sold something quite big!
So on the on the main dashboard I’m showing my earnings overview for the last 30
days – a little bit similar to YouTube except on this graph the green line that doesn't go
up very much that's where the money is… And if I hover my cursor over this
one – this looks nice and juicy. £14.70.
Now I get a quite a small percentage so that must have been quite a large item.
The other thing to bear in mind is that Amazon associates has an Amazon
associates in every single marketplace. So for every pretty much every country that
you want to provide links for, has its own Amazon associates site, and you have to
be approved by each territory one by one. But let's go to my earnings report…
So in the last seven days I’ve earned 18 pounds. What is good is they've just introduced a
thing so that you can see all your accounts in one place – so in the United Kingdom
I earned £15 in the last seven days and in the US I earned four dollars.
What's not to like about that! I wonder if I can change that to last 30 days?
Right, wow that's good…
So in the last month on the US Amazon associates site I
earned $72. And here in the UK I earned £22. I’m glad I’ve captured it on video with you.
You can see more detailed reports give you a summary at the top and fees.
It's a really misleading word “fees” because it implies that I owe them some money but
I believe these are the fees that will come to me. If I don't get banned and
kicked off and busted by Amazon! So I think we're good right Amazon?
You and me? The squiggly graphs show the
clicks, so the red line shows the number of times my links have been clicked on.
For instance on the 13th of September my links were clicked on 35 times and one item was ordered
from which I earned one dollar and one cent. Let's go to this big one up here.
My links were clicked on 18 times, 12 items were ordered from that.
That's quite a high ratio for which I earn and it sort of adds it all up
and gives you these figures. It's not something I’m glued to – it's probably
something I only check every couple of months. My link clicks have been responsible for
2020 dollars worth of items being shipped and that was on 461 clicks of my links and
50 items were ordered so that conversion rate I believe is 10.85 percent.
What I love just browsing through is this table here because it actually lists
every single item that has been bought. Some strange stuff there which I haven't put links
to, but what happens is if someone goes to Amazon using one of my links and they don't buy the
item…
But they then go on to buy something else I believe I earn a commission on that instead.
If I click on this button here “earnings” – this one's a bit more understandable for me
because it's in order of total items shipped. I can reorder this list to see what brought in
the most revenue so if I click on total revenue – look at that – I sold a camera!
Oh my goodness and for that one camera I picked up 29.92 so I’m – I’m really pleased
with that and I also sold an air purifier, so you know the goodness just doesn't
stop on this channel does it! These are my squiggly lines
for the United Kingdom sales. On the 5th of October I earned 14 pounds 70
on two ordered items which came from 18 clicks of my links but what could it be?
Let's click on the earnings button and order it by total revenue.
My link was responsible for the sale of one dehumidifier at £174.99
which meant that I received £12.25. I sold seven spool lines!
If you've seen any of my videos about how much I earn on YouTube my biggest problem right
now is that I am “garden tools guy” because my most popular videos aren't about helping creators
and performers just like you here on YouTube. They're there to help you how to change a
trimmer line for cutting down the weeds in the garden and that brought in £2.85.
This is probably why I really need to wind that down and if you subscribe to
this channel you will see my ongoing story with how I am niching this channel.
I think the next video is going to be about me deleting videos and removing videos so if
you want to come along for the ride for that click on the subscribe button before – every
subscription is really truly appreciated. I can't imagine anyone did but if you
reach this point of the video please hit that thumbs up button just to let me know
that somebody reached this point of the video and if you have any questions I’m sure other people
out there will be able to answer them for you. Leave a comment below – it'd be lovely to hear
from you, just say hi and right here is what YouTube thinks you should be watching next!
Wow that was an abrupt ending.
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