Amazon announced this week that it will shut down its aStore feature for good on October 27. This affiliate marketing tool was used primarily by bloggers and business owners.
aStore was an Associates product that gives website owners the power to create a professional online store without the need for programming skills, that can be embedded within or linked to from your website. It allowed you to sell products that you might not necessarily have sold on your own; and in turn, receive a percentage of the sales for items purchase within it.
According to Digiday, the company is shutting down this feature to focus on its Amazon Influencer Program for YouTube celebrities.
Amazon influencers receive vanity URLs to stores they can curate within Amazon, so their followers can see what products they recommend from Amazon. This similar to the aStore concept for affiliates.
Digiday also reported that affiliates had already dropped the program because of “disappointing levels of engagement and sales.”
According to Amazon’s “retirement fact sheet, “aStore usage is very low among the associates community. Only 25% of active aStore pages actually lead to Amazon.com product sales.”
Among other reasons, the company also said that the aStore product is not being utilized by new and experienced associates alike.
Amazon still offers a host of options for website owners and bloggers hoping to gain a little extra income, though.
Through product links, you can write about and display information about a product. The handy affiliate tracking within the URL will ensure that you get a portion of the revenue for every product sold via your link.
In addition, custom Native Shopping Ads can be used to easily create a custom curated list of handpicked products without much programming effort. They look like this:
Do you use affiliate marketing in your strategy?