Great news for Amazon Associate members or bad news !? Today Amazon just announced that payments will be monthly instead of quarterly beginning January 1, 2007. Payments will be approximately 60 days after the end of each month, which mean that January earning will be paid at the end of March. If you are still using the flat referral fees this will reflect nothing on your earning, but for performance structure this will have a big change. The reason is that you could easily reach the gate of 6% with 21 orders in a quarter, while in one month your website should be really strong in referral sales.

This is not all, because Amazon will be extending the 6% referral fees on Amazon.com Gift Certificates through March 31, 2007. And the last news which concern US-based Associates, Check Processing Fee will be increasing from $8 to $15, almost 200% ! In the other side Amazon are encouraging US-based publishers to choose direct deposit (EFT) or Amazon.com Gift Certificates as their payment method to avoid this fee.