API stands for Application Programming Interface and is the method we use in our plugin to connect with Amazon to retrieve product information. Without a working API key that you generate from your Amazon account, our plugin cannot connect to Amazon’s servers.
Error “RequestThrottled” – What does it mean? #
Until the beginning of this year, after your account was verified, you could generate an API key and use it without any restrictions to get product details using a plugin such as ours. However, Amazon made some changes regarding their affiliate program.
Some of these new rules set by Amazon are: #
- New Affiliate accounts can only have access to API keys after their shop is verified and have generated at least 3 sales.
- New API keys start working only after 48 hours.
- If your account hasn’t generated at least 3 referring sales using Product Advertising API in the last 30 days, your account will lose access to Product Advertising API.
- If you lose access to Product Advertising API 5.0, you can continue to use other product linking tools, such as Site Stripe and generate revenue. You will regain access to Product Advertising API 5.0 within two days after your referred sales are shipped.
- Also, according to the Amazon Product Advertising API document, the allowed initial usage limit per day is 8640 requests and the limit for each account will be based on the revenue performance of your Product API during the last 30 days.
If your Amazon Affiliate account does not adhere to these new rules, you would get an error in the API settings page of our plugin called “RequestThrottled – Something went wrong. Please check your API keys”
How to check if your API keys work? #
The quickest way to test your credentials is the Amazon Creators API Scratchpad. It sends a request with your credentials directly to Amazon and shows the full response, including the exact error code if something fails. The Scratchpad runs in your browser and sends your credentials only to Amazon. If you need to contact Amazon about an API issue, you can include this response.
How to test your credentials with the Scratchpad:
- Open the Amazon Creators API Scratchpad.
- Enter your Credential ID, Credential Secret and Version, then select your marketplace and enter your partner tag (tracking ID).
- Keep “Test credentials” selected and click the “Test credentials” button. The Scratchpad checks the access token, your API access and your partner tag separately.
- To test a real product request, select “GetItems”, enter an ASIN and click “Run GetItems”. The response is shown on the same page.
Note: If Amazon returns an error, look up the code in the list of Amazon Creators API error codes. If your account does not meet the eligibility rules listed above, Amazon blocks API access until you generate enough sales again.
How to resolve the “RequestThrottled” error? #
While these points do not guarantee that it would make the API keys to work, they can help you
- For newly created API keys, wait for at least 48 hours for the keys to become active.
- Make sure you generate at least 3 referring sales every 30 day period.
- Do not use the same API keys on multiple websites unless you are generating enough sales to allow more API requests.
For API errors, there is nothing we can do from our side and for any further queries you would need get in touch with Amazon Associates team directly via https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/home/contact
If you are new to the Amazon Affiliate program and looking to generate your first 3 sales in order to get API access, then I recommend our other plugin called “Easy Amazon Links“. It does not require an active API key and helps you to place affiliate links easily.
