The program reviews your initial period
Once your application is accepted, an Associates account is not yet permanent. The program runs a review: within an initial period you have to generate a minimum number of qualifying sales, or the account can be closed. This is where many people stop without understanding what happened.
The length of the period and the number of sales required are not fixed forever and can differ between marketplaces. Do not trust a figure read in an article or repeated in a group: open the official conditions for the marketplace you joined and read the values that apply to your account before building a plan on them.
The review is not a punishment. It is how Amazon separates active accounts from ones that were opened and never used. Treat it as a deadline to know, not an obstacle to work around.
Official source: Amazon: application review
Which sale actually counts
Not every sale counts towards the review. In general it takes a purchase made by someone other than you, reaching the product through one of your tracked links, and recorded as qualifying under the program conditions. A click, a product added to a basket, or an order later cancelled or returned are not the same thing.
Purchases you make yourself, or ones made for you by family and friends at your request, are not the way. The operating agreement forbids generating sales through your own links to earn commissions, and it is one of the most direct reasons for closure. You risk losing the account exactly while you think you are saving it.
Some product categories and some purchase methods are excluded too. Check the current conditions before betting everything on one category: you could bring in real sales that never enter the count.
Official source: Amazon: operating agreement
Getting to real sales in the time you have
The initial period runs down while you are still preparing the project. It is better to apply once you already have published content and an audience, however small, that reads it. If you have already signed up and the clock is running, focus on a few recommendations someone can genuinely follow through to a purchase.
- Pick two or three products you know well and can explain: who they are for and what their limits are.
- Write something that answers a precise question: which model to choose, which accessory is compatible, which difference matters between two variants.
- Add the affiliate link to the exact variant you are describing, and open it to check where it lands.
- Publish where you already have readers, using only the distribution methods allowed for your account.
- Check the Amazon reports keeping clicks, items ordered and commissions credited apart: only the last column describes a completed sale.
- Fix the content that gets clicks but no orders: usually the problem is the wrong product, or a description that promised something else.
The mistakes that burn the initial period
Publishing a lot of links with no context is the fastest way to sell nothing. Someone receiving a list of products has no reason to buy through you in particular. One well-argued recommendation is worth more than fifty anonymous posts.
Another mistake is distributing links on presences you did not declare in your application, or that Amazon has not confirmed. Sales from them may not qualify, and meanwhile you are putting the account at risk. If you change channel, update the list of your presences in the portal first.
Finally, do not confuse automation with the problem you have. A tool that publishes faster does not create the audience you are missing: if you have no readers yet, frequency changes nothing.
Official source: Amazon: program policies
If your audience is on Telegram
On the Associates application page, Telegram does not appear among the social networks Amazon lists as accepted. That does not automatically mean it is forbidden, but you cannot assume sales coming from a channel qualify for the initial review.
Ask Amazon support to confirm your case explicitly: which presences you declared, where you will publish the links, how the reader reaches Amazon. Keep the answer. If the method is not confirmed, prepare an eligible presence to carry the recommendations and use the channel for the rest of your editorial work.
Official source: Amazon: application review
If the account is closed
Closure for missing qualifying sales is communicated by Amazon. Read the message in full: it states the reason and, where applicable, whether and how you can submit a new application. Do not open a second account in parallel to get around the closure: undeclared multiple accounts are a problem with the program in their own right.
In many cases you can reapply later. The new application is judged like the first, so coming back with the same empty presence leads to the same outcome. Use the time to publish content, grow the audience and clarify the distribution methods you intend to use.
What you built stays yours: articles, channel, subscribers. Only the monetisation tool changes. In the meantime you can keep writing and measuring what interests the people who follow you, so the next application starts from a project already in motion.
What to write down while the clock runs
Keep a simple record: the date your application was accepted, the deadline stated in the conditions for your marketplace, the content you published and the sales credited in the reports. It tells you where you stand without relying on memory.
Check the reports at regular intervals, not every day. Commissions can be adjusted for returns and cancellations: a number you see today is not final. Compare whole periods, not single days.
If you decide to automate the repetitive part of the work, do it after you understand which recommendations work. Scontino’s guides cover the manual path before the automatic one for exactly that reason.