Amazon announces a limited time increase in commission rates. How does it compare to pre-Covid commission percentages?
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.
Here are the new Amazon.com promotional 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.
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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%.
Here are the new Amazon.com promotional commission rates:
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.
Here are the new Amazon.com promotional commission rates:
- Shoes, Handbags & Accessories (old rate) 4.00% (new rate) 6.00%
- Office Products (old rate) 4.00% (new rate) 6.00%
- Kitchen (old rate) 4.50% (new rate) 5.50%
- Home (old rate) 3.00% (new rate) 5.00%
- Home Improvement (old rate) 3.00% (new rate) 5.00%
- Beauty (old rate) 3.00% (new rate) 5.00%
- Business & Industrial Supplies 3.00% (new rate) 5.00%
- Health & Personal Care 1.00% (new rate) 2.00%
Fitness Service 