Amazon Affiliates and the Case of the Disappearing Cookies

(wikimedia commons archival photo)

I used to love cookies. I was the kind of mom who had a fresh plate of cookies when the kids came in from school. Homemade. Always.

Now, cookies are my enemy. They cut into the profits. The technical cookies, left behind like Hansel and Gretal leaving a trail of cookie crumbs to find thier way back home.

Cookies are bad. People have installed so many security devices that my cookie trails are eaten up by Adaware and Spybot like hungry birds. It sounds like life in the Jetsons only less fun.

I am an Amazon Affiliate marketing toad. If you read one of my articles and clikc on an Amazon ad because you are interested in one of the fine products offered there, you need to buy something right away. Hurry!

If you decide to think about it, maybe come back the next day and actually make a purchase, too bad for me. Tough darts. The security devices that protect you from pop-up ads (Hot Barnyard Babes!) have swooped down to gobble up the crumbs. And I don't get my cut.

So, you say, forget about it. Ditch Amazon. Quit. Sayonara, baby! But, see, Amazon does not pay me until my commisions have reached $100.00. If I quit now, I will lose the pittance that I have made - enough for a dinner for three at a roadside diner.

I must keep selling, hoping the ad clickers are impulse buyers, the kind that drove the economy in the last decade. Maybe, at the end of the day, I am like Jack Lemmon in Glengarry Glenn Ross, a wrinkled pork-pie hat on the seat beside me, some blue-eyed young turk mouthing off in the background - he's going to get the leads, he's going to play Jackson Pollack and get himself nominated for best actor at the Academy Awards.

It's like indentured servitude. If I work hard enough, churn out articles fast enough and often enough, articles that entice people to buy, buy, buy, I'll earn my freedom. I will recieve my $100.00. I'll be free!

But, maybe, I'll forget to check my earnings. Maybe by the time I look at my Amazon account, I will have that $100.00 and another $15.00, starting the whole crazy cycle up again. That $15.00 is enough for two lunches at the roadside diner.