The whole of amazon.com is down........

never seen that before

[Kerrin]

Main amazon.com page: "We're sorry, but the store you are currently trying to access is temporarily closed. Please try back soon. Your Friends at Amazon.com"

[Kerrin]

It's back up now, I wonder what was up.

[musicales]

perhaps they went for a quick ciggy...

[Iguana]

Yes, Amazon was "closed" this morning for some time. The changes in the site I've spotted aren't really that big but they follow a changing pattern in the way Amazon does business (talking Amazon.com here - the country specific sites seem to lag behind by about 6 months)

The actual changes I have picked up in the music section are small - instead of "Our Price" we now have "Buy New" and "marketplace" has just been replaced with "Used & New". The bigger change appears to me to be that almost every CD for sale has a "used & new" link against it. I can't remember so many marketplace items before. this is just a small change in emphasis but it seems to follow the trend of selling other companies products indicated by the fact that they now pay affiliate fees on "marketplace" items (admittedly 2.5%)

It seems to me that Amazon is changing its business model from a seller and shipper of goods to a marketplace or mall for other sellers and shippers. I noticed that the recent Office Supplies store is just a front for another companies products (Office Depot) that already has an ecommerce site.

This has implications for us affiliates since we receive a much lower percentage fee. At the same time my stats indicate that yesterday my customers bought 3 Amazon and 16 marketplace products - so perhaps if Amazon is successful then we will all benefit