Once an ecommerce gains a considerable position in a market, to what extent it needs to continue sharing revenue with affiliates?
Amazon has always been famous for its affiliate program, who has always been a reference. It seems they are now shutting down their affiliate program in North Carolina for tax reasons. This issue recalls 2 questions on ecommerce and affiliate programs:
1. It is not yet totally clear how tax will be applied when governments realize how much is not under their total control, we may well find news on this during coming years.
2. Once an ecommerce gains a considerable position in a market, to what extent it needs to continue sharing revenues with affiliates? Is performance marketing something that we can use to launch but less necessary in a maintenance period? Probably, keeping affiliate programs up would also help in keeping a barrier to entry to new players. So, what will happen now in North Carolina? will it be an opportunity for different players to increase marketshare unattended by amazon?
It will be interesting to follow what happens with amazon traffic and sales there to size the power of affiliates. If amazon made a move like this one in its affiliate strategy worldwide, performance marketing and affiliate networks could get a great impact. For the moment, we can just wait and see.
