Re: Reinvigoratoring the GNOME Amazon store

[Rosanna Yuen <zana gnome org>]

On Wed, Aug 6, 2014 at 8:38 AM, Ekaterina Gerasimova <kittykat3756 gmail com> wrote:

On 06/08/2014, Hashem Nasarat <hnasarat gmail com> wrote:
> On 08/06/2014 11:24 AM, Rosanna Yuen wrote:
>> Hi,
>> On Wed, Aug 6, 2014 at 7:16 AM, Ekaterina Gerasimova
>> <kittykat3756 gmail com <mailto:kittykat3756 gmail com>> wrote:
>>     On 06/08/2014, Bastien Nocera <hadess hadess net
>>     <mailto:hadess hadess net>> wrote:
>>     > On Tue, 2014-08-05 at 19:03 +0100, Juanjo Marín wrote:
>>     >>
>>     >>
>>     >> Hi !
>>     >>
>>     >>
>>     >> In 2009 we introduced an amazon store in the friend of gnome page
>>     [1].
>>     >> AFAIR, Jaap Haitsma was, at least, one of the person on charge of
>>     this
>>     >> and did a very good job. When you make your Amazon purchases at
>> this
>>     >> store the GNOME Foundation will receive a referral fee which
>> amounts
>>     >> to 4-6% of the total purchase you make. Depending on where you
>> live
>>     >> you can use the US, Canada, Germany, France, Japan or UK store.
>>     >
>>     > I have a couple of questions regarding the stores.
>>     >
>>     > - is the "front-end" at http://www.gnome.org/friends/amazon/ the
>> only
>>     > way for GNOME to get a referral fee, or would setting a referal
>>     "store"
>>     > as the Search plugin/Firefox add-on give you the same referral
>> fees?
>>
>>     One needs to have the referrer in the URL when one navigates to
>>     Amazon, so it is possible to have a search in Epiphany with the
>>     referrer ID without too much difficulty. It would be nice if this was
>>     something that was shipped with Epiphany by default.
>>
>>
>> I vaguely remember this was discussed in the past and we couldn't do it
>> because it was against their terms of service.  Does anyone have time to
>> look them over to make sure that that isn't the case?
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Rosanna
>>
>>
>
>
> You mean this?
> https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/agreement/
> " Qualifying Purchases exclude, and we will not pay advertising fees on
> any of, the following:
> any Product purchased by a customer who is referred to the Amazon Site
> through any of the following:
> a link to the Amazon Site, including a Redirecting Link, that is
> generated or displayed on a Search Engine in response to a general
> Internet search query or keyword (i.e., in natural, free, organic, or
> unpaid search results), whether those links appear through your
> submission of data to that site or otherwise. "

This would not apply as we would be searching Amazon directly, with
the intention of buying something from Amazon (almost same as what our
Amazon store does), and the submission of data is only to Amazon
without going through any third parties.

I think this clause is more aimed at preventing search engines having
a "featured" Amazon referral for all searches.

But if there is still doubt, we can always ask Amazon to clarify.

I know someone did ask Amazon for clarification in the backwhen about referral links and searches which resulted in a negative response.  I don't know exactly what the question was or where that email would be archived, unfortunately.  Is this conversation ringing any bells with anyone else?

Thanks,

Rosanna