Ages ago — pre-AdSense days — I signed up as an Amazon associate. I never
earned much despite those oh-so-carefully targeted product links once on my
Doogie Howser Meets Starship Troopers
page or a few other places where I had them. Google AdSense — without even
trying — left Amazon referral fees in the dust.
That’s why it’s so pathetic the email I get each month. It starts out
promisingly enough:
Dear Amazon.com Associate,
It’s time again for referral fee payments to our Associates! We have
reached the end of April 2007, and we have just sent payments to eligible
Associates for the referral fees earned during the past month.
This is always followed by the same depressing message:
Your earnings, including any credit balance from previous payment periods,
did not reach the minimum referral fee threshold for your payment method. We
have credited your April referral fees to your account for a future payment.
The email then goes on with all this information about getting payments,
important notices and so on. That all makes up the bulk of the email when all I
really need to know is nope, I earned nothing.
Out of curiosity, I checked to see what exactly Amazon was holding in reserve
for me. Turns out, the princely sum of $68.35 since my last payment back in
October 2000 (yes, two thousand). I earned $0.32 in April 2007, then the same
amount before that for February 2007, then amazingly the highest amount ever
from Amazon, $28.49 for the fourth quarter of 2006. Wow!
Most of that was for three separate digital picture frames that were
purchased through Amazon, from a link from my page about
digital picture frames. So, I
guess those links aren’t a complete waste of time. Still, without much work or
effort, AdSense generated about $800 for the same time period.
