Insight on Amazon Affiliates Program
This is a program I’m using myself on two of my blogs. While it doesn’t add as near revenue as, say, AdSense blocks, it can be an interesting feature to peruse—with the added bonus that, when used properly, it can actually enhance your posts through clever use of images (book covers…), rather than just look like “some other kind of ugly banners”.
On this matter, Darren Rowse at ProBlogger has put up an interesting entry a few days ago, detailing the pros and cons of the affiliates system:
Amazon’s Associate Program is perhaps one of the most popular ones for bloggers because it is pretty simple to use and has such a wide range of products in their system ranging from books, to electronics, to jewelry, to CDs and DVDs etc. It’s also great because there are many tools that can be used to integrate it into your blog including WordPress Plug ins. Some bloggers even integrate Amazon stores into their blogs (something I need to get set up).
Another beauty of the Amazon program is the variety of ways that they give you to link to their products. Even using just their basic tools on the Associates page you have the option to link to products using text links, pictures, buttons and a variety of keyword triggered techniques.
WordPress users, I would also highly advise to have a look at the WP plugins allowing you to insert affiliate links into your posts (Darren links to wp-amazon, and one of his commenters mentioned another one: AMM).
I’ve tried the wp-amazon one so far, and I have to say, it’s been a real lifesaver, compared to the (long) process of logging into Amazon and setting up the link you want for one item. it includes easy switching from Amazon.com to Amazon.fr or Amazon.co.uk products: this will avoid you even more hassle if, like me, your audience is based in one of these countries, and you want to make it easier on them by not “only” offering links to the US version of the service. However, if you decide to use it, don’t forget to edit both .php files in order to replace the associate ID by your own (the default ID being the one from the person who coded the plugin), else you”ll have to replace it yourself in the generated links.
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