Using Amazon Product Images on Affiliate Site?

Darth

Darth

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I just read somewhere that if you use images from an Amazon product page in your affiliate blog post about that product (download them, upload them to your server and embed them in the page) that it violates their terms of service and you can be banned. Is this true and what do you for images on your affiliate posts?
 
I generally use a manufacturer’s official photos from their Press page or I take my own when I test the product. The official press photos are better than I can take, but they are also ubiquitous around the web.
 
Check out this whole thread, but your specific question starts here. Lots of people say it's bad, you have to use the API, etc. I actually contacted Amazon several times, and I share it all there.

The answer is: They discourage it but it's fine. They can't give you permission but if you aren't altering the images in any way, you won't have an issue from the manufacturers.

You just have to stick with the product images in the top left, you can't dig down into the reviews from customers and use their pics.
 
I recently had a review sent my way...I changed two things, I removed all amazon images i had hosted on my site and replaced them with the amazon apis images and I changed all my buttons from Check latest price to check latest price on amazon...I was reinstated in 3 days. Take that as you will.
 
I've asked Amazon Support agents this question in the past. Usually you'll get mixed answers, depends on who you talk to.

Using SiteStripe is your safest bet. I've even had a support agent straight up tell me, "Dillon, I'm not going to dance around this. Use SiteStripe, it's there for a reason." I've yet to see any negative repercussions for using SiteStripe in terms of on-page factors.

With that said, I also asked another support agent if it's okay that I nofollow the tags for the links generated by SiteStripe. She put me on hold and got back to me in 5 minutes saying it's totally fine.
 
As an Amazon FBA seller with my own product, use the damn SiteStripe or an API for images. I see so many affiliates linking to old photos that are now dead or have completely changed. I sometimes update, change my photos. You are just going to frustrate and confuse the user.
 
Thanks guys, I realised AAWP has this functionality and am replacing all the images now.
 
thisishatred said:
I've asked Amazon Support agents this question in the past. Usually you'll get mixed answers, depends on who you talk to.

Using SiteStripe is your safest bet. I've even had a support agent straight up tell me, "Dillon, I'm not going to dance around this. Use SiteStripe, it's there for a reason." I've yet to see any negative repercussions for using SiteStripe in terms of on-page factors.

With that said, I also asked another support agent if it's okay that I nofollow the tags for the links generated by SiteStripe. She put me on hold and got back to me in 5 minutes saying it's totally fine.
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Any simple way to nofollow these tags that doesent have you doing them one by one while you add them
 
backwoods said:
As an Amazon FBA seller with my own product, use the damn SiteStripe or an API for images. I see so many affiliates linking to old photos that are now dead or have completely changed. I sometimes update, change my photos. You are just going to frustrate and confuse the user.
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This was one of the main reasons support gave me.

Although, with that said, some sellers have a way of swapping the product to another offering.
So say the product I link via sitestripe was a Welder or something, it's possible for sellers to change the listing to something else like Lipstick.

I actively have sites that this happened to during 2019.

tyealia said:
Any simple way to nofollow these tags that doesent have you doing them one by one while you add them
Click to expand...

I personally do it manually because I don't trust plugins...I should say the owners of those plugins, especially ones that modify links.
 
Do I understand correctly, or are we allowed to only link to images via the API, and not actually store them on our server. Additionally we are to refresh those links every 24h?

(h) You will not store or cache Product Advertising Content consisting of an image, but you may store a link to Product Advertising Content consisting of an image for up to 24 hours.
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Taken from Associates Program Policies

I'm currently using Sitestripe because I wanted to be 100% compliant ASAP, and there was too much contradictory info online. I set it up before I found BuSo and read this thread. Thanks for the detailed info @Ryuzaki

Hope this is relevant. I didn't want to create a new thread on Amazon Images, since there seem to be quite a few already.
 
UPDATE: I contacted AAWP with regard to this because I was not sure how their plugin handles images, and I believe they confirmed that the way to go is by pulling the product image link via PA-API and renewing it every 24h.
AAWP will pull in the images from Amazon either directly or via a proxy and not cache / store them.
The API cache for product data and images is renewed every 12 or 24 hours by default and you can control the settings for the caching period within the plugin settings.

All the default settings of AAWP are within the Amazon TOS.
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Also I am not affiliated with them, but their plugin looks great and their support seems great too. So I'll probably go with them soon. (Hope this isn't considered shilling)
 
The problem with this discussion is there's no satisfying answers to everyone due to the vagueness of the multiple ToS's and agreements, due to different Associates employees giving different answers, and different interpretations.

@nicemkay, If you want to play it absolutely safe, definitely use the Sitestripe thing or the API. It's two different systems with two different ToS's. The reasons Amazon likes the API is they can get better data from affiliates and they can make sure you always have an up-to-date and preferred image from the vendors. That way there's not a bunch of stale webpages with old information pointing to Amazon all over the net.

The only way to remove all of the anxiety surrounding this issue is to play it as safe as possible. Using something like AAWP will do that for you.
 
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