Table of contents:
How the problem affects your sites
Why things aren't as bad as they look
Amazon TOS doesn't allow Amazon associates to host Amazon product images on their own sites (servers).
Technically, this has ALWAYS been the case, but Amazon was very lenient, and wasn't really enforcing this.
Recently though, things have CHANGED.
Amazon's legal department say downloading images locally violates copyright laws and Amazon's license agreements with merchants.
To cut a long story short, Amazon has started banning affiliates left and right, for hosting product images on their own server. Amazon now only allows images to be fetched via their Product Advertising API.
Amazon reps have said the penalty for hosting images locally is "immediate termination."
But, losing your Amazon account would be the least of your problems. The real threat is getting sued for hosting images on your sites (and on the Azon Profit Builder server).
Up until now, on the Azon Profit Builder sites, the product images have been generated via the Amazon Product Advertising API (as they should).
However, they have ALSO been saved "locally" as "featured images." This is in order to be able to show a grid-style homepage with different product images (This is just how WordPress works).
For the reasons mentioned above, this can no longer be the case.
The good news is most Azon Profit Builder sites receive 99% of their traffic to their "deep" product posts, and not the homepage.
When someone searches on Google for "Product XYZ", they enad up landing on a page like site.com/product-xyz - and not just site.com.
One of the main reasons many affiliate sites' homepages don't convert well, is because they offer way too many options for visitors to buy.
This can be the problem with grid-style homepages that show dozens of products (as pretty as they look).
A better option is to have a "landing page" as the homepage of your site. The homepage can do several things:
The Azon Profit Builder team brainstormed ways to address this, and turn this negative into a positive.
So, from Wednesday, April 4th, 2018, product images fetched from Amazon will no longer be added as "featured images" to the posts.
We may also consider deleting already-uploaded images from the server.
Images you have uploaded manually via the media library will not be deleted. We can distinguish between images that where added manually, and those added automatically.
The product images above the orange "view on Amazon" button, have always been generated by the API, so they will remain.
The "ecommerce-style" homepage of your sites will be replaced with a "static" page.
This static page will have some sample text on it. You will be able to edit and customize this page, to make it match your niche and site's goals.
This will boost the conversion of your site's homepage.
You can modify the new homepage by going to:
Pages ==> Welcome To My Site ==> Edit ==> (Make desired changes) ==> Update
You will still be able to switch to a grid-style homepage. However, you would need to add any featured images to your posts manually.
Some affiliates get product pictures directly from the manufacturer of the product, if they provide such images for distribution.
You can always enable the old-style homepage from:
Settings ==> Reading ==> Your homepage displays ==> Your latest posts ==> Save Changes
We apologize for any inconvenience, and remain dedicated to helping your online business.
To your success,
- The Azon Profit Builder Team