Make Your Site a Portal to the Best Tech Info
As a Safari Affiliate, You Can Earn Money for Referrals

Appealing to geeks of any stripe, whether they're programmers or IT managers, requires something of real value. Consider your web site: What if you could serve content from the best tech and business books out there, and do it at no cost or obligation to you?

We don't mean a link to the O'Reilly catalog. We're talking about access to complete sections of electronic versions of books from a dozen publishers including O'Reilly, Addison-Wesley, New Riders, Sams, and even Microsoft Press. Thousands of titles, all in a fully searchable database.

Did we mention that you could earn money doing this, and that you can do it with little fuss? It's all through the vast e-reference library called the O'Reilly Network Safari Bookshelf. Our new Affiliate Program lets you provide content to site visitors and collect a stipend from everyone who clicks through and subscribes to Safari. But you don't even have to subscribe yourself to become an affiliate.

In fact, there's very little you need to do. Just register at safari.oreilly.com/affiliates and tell us about your web site. Then you can choose one of several ways to make Safari content available to your visitors, such as our plug-and-play banners and buttons, or pre-programmed boxes that display Safari search results on topics that your site ties into. You can also provide Safari as a web service by using our API to offer visitors access to the entire Safari catalog.

What and who is Safari?

Safari Books Online is a joint venture between O'Reilly Media and the Pearson Technology Group, whose imprints include Addison-Wesley Professional, Adobe Press, Cisco Press, Macromedia Press, New Riders, Peachpit Press, Prentice Hall PTR, Sun Microsystems Press, Que, and Sams. A growing number of titles from other publishers such as Microsoft Press, Thomson Crisp Learning, and IBM Redbooks are also available. So far, the Safari technical library holds more than 2,000 titles.

Unlike an online bookstore, Safari is a repository that allows you to search multiple programming and IT books simultaneously to find and extract information. You can read books cover-to-cover online or, more likely, jump to the exact page you need. You can also cut and paste code directly to save time and eliminate programming errors, browse books by category, and find specific books quickly by searching by the ISBN, author, title, publisher, or publication date.

As long as you have an Internet connection, you can search, read, annotate, bookmark, and download content from over 2,000 technical books. If you haven't tried out Safari yet, get a free trial.

It's a lot easier and more reliable than trolling through message boards, news groups, trade publications, or the web at large. And a lot quicker. Subscribers can do a full content search onscreen, or download PDF copies of selected chapters.

Direct them to more details

Once you become an affiliate, Safari makes it easy to start referring subscribers. Our QuickLinks plug-and-play solutions offer promotional banners and buttons in several sizes, including topic-specific messages for Open Source, Java, .NET, and Graphic Design, which you simply cut and paste. QuickLinks automatically embed affiliate information so we can track the subscribers referred through your site.

Our pre-programmed SafariBoxes allow you to direct visitors to Safari for specific information mentioned on your site. For example, if you want a way for them to learn more about a term like "xpath", a SafariPreviewBox will provide short book content with an explanation of that term. Your visitors can click through to read more, or type a new search term into the SafariPreview Box. Or, a SafariSearchBox will display the term in the search window and list the best books on Safari to use; visitors can then click through to seek more details. They can also type in a different term, and get another book list. If your site mentions a particular book in our library, you can use a SafariBookBox to show the book's description with a link to the table of contents.

You can use multiple SafariBoxes throughout the site to add value to your existing content. Each one, of course, provides a link for visitors to subscribe to Safari.

Several ways to use a web service

To really harness the power of Safari's content, we have detailed instructions for using the library as a web service. The Safari API provides access to the entire Safari catalog, including information about books (title, author, publisher, etc.) and access to some book content including section previews and tables of contents. If your site permits users to search for a function, like localtime, a Safari sidebar could offer several books that contain specific code examples using that function, with click-through direct to the code.

Using this powerful API, Cignex Technologies, Inc. created a plugin that allows programmers to search the Safari library while working in the Eclipse environment. Someone building a J2EE project can execute a Safari search related to "threading" in Java without leaving the IDE. He can then drill down into a particular search result to view more details, and, once convinced he has the right information, he can navigate to the Safari portal to access the premium content.

Paul Bausch, a self-proclaimed information junkie, takes a look at the new API and shows how to code a working RSS application so you never have to worry about missing critical information again: Hacking Books with Safari Web Services.

These are just a few implementation examples. There's also a way to add chapter previews to book reviews, and ways to improve productivity by integrating Safari searches into your browsers. All you need to begin a Safari web service is a developer token, and that's free when you register as a Safari affiliate.

The value in being an affiliate

Whatever method you choose to become a Safari affiliate, you'll receive $5 for every qualified subscriber referred through your web site. Reports on our affiliate site will monitor your referrals and track your earnings, and you can also track the number of API calls to see how close you are getting to the maximum allowed. Users outside the U.S. can sign up for the program and serve Safari content on their sites, but can only join as non-paid affiliates at this time.

Aside from the earnings, though, the real value of the program is the opportunity to provide visitors with a genuine resource. And there is no doubt, given the powerful titles we have in our library and the rate at which we add new ones, that Safari holds a tremendous wealth of technical and business information. We offer several e-reference libraries to accommodate different subscribers: Safari Bookshelf for the individual technologist, Safari HelpDesk Online for enterprise knowledge workers, Safari Business Books Online for business professionals, and the Safari Enterprise Library. Find out more by visiting safari.oreilly.com.

"We worked hard to make the Affiliate Program accessible to users at all technical levels, and we're particularly excited about opening up the API to developers," explains Sean Devine, Safari's managing director. "Sites that serve as resources for developers have already expressed considerable interest in integrating content from books in Safari as an additional resource for their visitors."

Check out the Affiliate Program today at safari.oreilly.com/affiliates, or contact us by email, or by calling 800-775-7330. Your site has everything to gain.