Amazon affiliate program question

Separate accounts for customers vs. associates?

[farmboy]

I'm a customer of Amazon and they have my email address 1.

If I sign up to become an Associate, can I use email address 2 and establish a new account or do they connect the two accounts - the customer account and the Associate account?

If I can establish two different accounts with them, a customer account and an Associates account, does their cookie recognize me as the customer or as the Associate when I visit Amazon in the future?

FarmBoy

[ergophobe]

I don't know - I have one account. In my experience, though, if I log in through affiliates central, it treats me as an affiliate. If I log in through the front page, it treats me as a customer, even though it's the same account.

I don't know if that helps, but there it is.

[purplecape]

In my experience if you use the same email address they do link them. What is it you need to do?

[rajatgarg]

Amazon is a bit weird about account management - you can even have 2 accounts with same email but if you have 2 different passwords. Email + password forms a unique user :-0

So, yes, you can use 2nd email address and they will not try to collapse your two accounts (as long as there is no shady stuff going)

[CWebguy]

It would be hard to be shady with amazon, unless you really knew what you were doing.

[Israel]

It would be hard to be shady with amazon, unless you really knew what you were doing.

That is very true. Early on they had Associates who would, in effect, buy items for themselves or for resale at a discount. They are very hip to that now.

They look at methods of payment, addresses shipped to and perhaps more in order to prevent that. Amazon will certainly grab back the commissions and perhaps kick a person out if the violations are persistent.

It seems to be okay to set up an informal reciprocal agreement with a fellow Associate where s/he buys from your site and vice versa. Or find a charity you admire with an Amazon link....

Israel