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Amazon Affiliate Links On Twitter: To Tweet Or Not To Tweet

By Tim_Jones On November 5, 2009 Under Affiliate Marketing, Social Media

Welcome to The Real Tim Jones. If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed or for more frequent, informal updates, you can follow me on Twitter. Thanks for visiting!

So, back in July, Amazon says no affiliate links to be used on Twitter.

Now, there’s a handy-dandy button at the top of your Amazon page to “Share on Twitter.”

Amazon Twitter Share

I think it’s great that Amazon has added this feature and moved past their aversion to affiliate links on Twitter.  The really cool thing about Twitter: if I get tired of your Amazon affiliate links, I’ll just unfollow you! And, I would expect the same in return.

You must use your head when marketing on Twitter.  It’s a SOCIAL media site.

It’s not a continual sales pitch to your followers.  That’s not to say don’t tweet affiliate links.  As Chris Brogan says, “Baby gotta eat.” :)

Just use some common sense (which doesn’t seem so common, anymore) and make sure your providing value to your followers and that you care.  Seems pretty simple.  Unfortunately, I’m still being told I can make $486 per day, can get 1000’s of followers every day (from people that have 2 followers), and to please join my mafia family.

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  • So that "Share on Twitter" button creates a short URL and allows you to tweet it? Does it add some kind of disclosure link/hashtag?
  • Thanks for the question, Geno! I guess I should have been more specific about what the button actually does. It automatically shortens the affiliate link to a bit.ly link, but there is no disclosure. Amazon leaves that up to you. I pretty much take responsibility for that, anyway.
  • If I'm reading everything that the FTC says correctly, merchants/advertisers will have as much (if not more) responsibility for monitoring affiliate compliance as affiliates/publishers will have for disclosing the material relationships with the "sponsors". So, any advertiser that makes a tool like this available wants to make sure they're doing everything possible not only to (a) educate/warn/advice, and but also to (b) keep those affiliates compliant (not to be accused of lousy monitoring/enforcing).

    I had a Twitter conversation with LinkShare on the same topic -- http://www.amnavigator.com/blog/2009/10/27/link...
  • It's a good start, but there's still room for improvement. I wrote about this yesterday at http://www.ericnagel.com/2009/11/amazon-affilia... - does every Tweet really need to start with, "Great deal on Amazon" ? That default should be customizable; and as Geno says, where's the #ad?
  • I agree with Geno -- the way I understand the FTC, the advertiser/merchant does bear responsibility, also. I'm leaving that to Amazon -- I know I disclose when I post the links.

    You can customize the tweet, Eric. -- I've changed it every time I've done it and added a disclosure statement of some kind.
  • Yeah, you can customize it before you hit the "update" button on Twitter, but I'm talking about the default text - what Amazon sends to Twitter & pre-fills in the status box.
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