Amazon commission rate vs Viglink

As you know, as an Amazon Affiliate, there are Fixed Advertising Fee Rates for Specific Product Categories, and Volume-Based Advertising Fee Rates for General Products.

The Volume-Based Advertising Fee Rates for General Products range from 4% for selling 1-6 products, to 8.5% for selling 3131+ products shipped in a given month.

With Viglink on Wizzley, VigLink takes 20% and we get 80% . If you use VigLink on your own site, VigLink takes a 25% cut, and you get 75%.

My question is, If I sell 6 amazon products per month through viglink, and other viglink users on other sites sell over 3131+ products, does viglink then give us the 75/80 from 8.5% (combining rates for all sellers) or from 4% (based only on what i sold)?

75% of 8.5%= 6.375%

80% of 8.5%= 6.8%

Using our own amazon affiliate code, we need to sell the following amount of general products that are shipped per month, in order to earn the following percentage:

7-30 products for 6%

31-110 products for 6.50%

111-320 products for 7%

If in fact they pay us based on combining rates for all sellers, then if you sell less than 110 products per month, it is more worthwhile for you to use the viglink on wizzley (get 6.8%) rather than your own affiliate code (get 6.5% or less, for less than 110 products). (technically, if you use your own affiliate code, it will stay there on your impressions, but will over ride on wizzley's impressions.) from my understanding.

I would appreciate if someone could confirm that my above understanding is correct.

bhthanks: 18. Apr 2012, 11:45

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My question is, If I sell 6 amazon products per month through viglink, and other viglink users on other sites sell over 3131+ products, does viglink then give us the 75/80 from 8.5% (combining rates for all sellers) or from 4% (based only on what i sold)?

Me also wants to know!

This would be a good question to ask the VigLink support, as their answer would surely not be specific to Wizzley sub-accounts.

It is my understanding, that VigLink gives us a share of their commissions, and that those are often higher due to volume than what an individual might be able to get directly from a merchant. So my interpretation would be that we indeed benefit from the higher rate tier, but of course I cannot speak on behalf of VigLink.

Nightowl and Chef,

Could you please clear that with Viglinks as your opinions about this seem to differ quite a bit -)

Chef's answer has disappeared as I responded to this thread ... now I look silly ;-(

Currently, when using the Amazon module, it only works with our personal affiliate code, and not with VigLink.

If we had the option to choose to tie our Amazon modules to our viglink accounts instead of our personal amazon account, then for those of us that sell less than 110 products per month, we would earn a higher commission rate if we had the option to use our viglink account instead of our amazon affiliate code in the amazon module.

For Wizzley, if on the average month, there are less than 110 products sold through the amazon module, then it would be more worthwhile to link the amazon module to the viglink account than to a separate amazon affiliate program.

If we take out our Amazon affiliate ID from our Wizzley settings, then can our Amazon modules be linked to our viglink account?

Just like people have an option between Google and Chitika, I think it would help people if we can have this option. I wonder if this option already exists and I don't know about it?

Since VigLink can be set to automatically affiliate or over ride links on the page that are not affiliated, if we take our amazon id out of our settings, then will the links in our amazon modules automatically be affiliated with VigLink?

Another work-around for those of us that sell less than 110 products per month, we can avoid the module and instead use text links with pictures from amazon, I guess we can try to customize our own module.  This would go through VigLink and be beneficial for many.

Just a thought.

Haha...apparently posting simultaneously, we had different opinions and I didn't want to confuse the issue even further. That's why I deleted my post. Don't worry about looking silly, Sam. You don't. 

On a side note, I wish I had the option to delete some of my old posts that had different opinions, and may have caused misunderstandings and/or confused issues for some people.

chefkeem: 18. Apr 2012, 16:26

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Haha...apparently posting simultaneously, we had different opinions and I didn't want to confuse the issue even further. That's why I deleted my post. Don't worry about looking silly, Sam. You don't. 

As far as I remember, VigLink cannot link through our Amazon module for technical reasons. We've discussed all these different scenarios, at the beginning of our VL adventure.

We will go over all this one more time, during our team conference on Friday.

Meanwhile, why don't you send a support mail to VigLink with your questions, and then let us know what they said. I'm trying to juggle 10 different things today, every one of them more important than the other.  

 I think I'll wait to hear what happens at the conference.

Thanks for your response.

Another side issue to this: Are we allowed to not use the Amazon module on Wizzley when we offer products from Amazon? I thought we were always supposed to link Amazon products through the A. module to ensure Wizzley got some of the impressions. Has this changed since we went VigLink?

For those of you waiting for an official answer from VigLink, here is what they just said with regards to the volume tiers:

"Yes, VigLink users definitely benefit from our volume and get the top-tier Amazon volume-based rate which is 8.5%. They then receive 75% (80%) of 8.5%."

We will discuss the viability of making the Amazon module flexible for the author, but if your individual tier volume is favoring the viglinks model your certainly welcome to make your own links outside the module.

sheilamarie: 19. Apr 2012, 19:40

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Another side issue to this: Are we allowed to not use the Amazon module on Wizzley when we offer products from Amazon? I thought we were always supposed to link Amazon products through the A. module to ensure Wizzley got some of the impressions. Has this changed since we went VigLink?

Yes, flexibility for authors to use text links was one of the benefits when VigLink came aboard.

Although I am not in the viglink program, can I enable viglinks and then have text affiliate links outside of the Amazon capsule. Wizzley would still get the benefit on their impression right?

Digby_Adams: 19. Apr 2012, 22:38

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Although I am not in the viglink program, can I enable viglinks and then have text affiliate links outside of the Amazon capsule. Wizzley would still get the benefit on their impression right?

 

If you don't register a VigLink account through Wizzley then you wouldn't benefit from Amazon links outside of the module. The only way to use your own Amazon affiliate links is through our module.

Ok, so we calculated a few different sales scenarios. In the majority of cases, the actual increase in total earnings would be no more than around $5 per month.

Although it would be technically possible to implement, there are some serious drawbacks to consider:

• we would lose the module click stats, which currently help us optimize non- or under-performing modules
• users have yet to make another choice; this adds more complexity to an already complex module 
• slight impact on page load speed; not significant by itself, but it all adds up

Considering furthermore that authors currently do have the option to use Amazon Viglinks outside the module if they wish, the team decided not to change the Amazon module functionality at this time.

However, if a number of authors can demonstrate with actual figures that there is a consistent, significant monetary gain by using VigLink in our module, we're willing to reconsider.

I think you made the right choice.

Hi Anne,

Thank you for answering my questions and looking into this.

nightowl: 04/19/2012 - 09:23 PM

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For those of you waiting for an official answer from VigLink, here is what they just said with regards to the volume tiers:

 

"Yes, VigLink users definitely benefit from our volume and get the top-tier Amazon volume-based rate which is 8.5%. They then receive 75% (80%) of 8.5%."

 

We will discuss the viability of making the Amazon module flexible for the author, but if your individual tier volume is favoring the viglinks model your certainly welcome to make your own links outside the module.

 

I know this is old news, but I recently noticed a dip in my VigLink Amazon commission.  I've sat here with an online percentage calculator, and I'm getting between 3.8% and 4.4% for my sales there.  They're not items from the categories with a built in 4%.  The merchant explorer says that, in general terms, I should now be getting 5% for this.

I'm crap at maths though.  So I'm here mostly for people to confirm, looking at their own figures.  I'm wondering if it's worth switching back to monetizing with Amazon directly.  There's a chance there I'll get more commission over the Christmas period.