Creating a Website: The Missing Manual, 3rd Edition

Amazon Associates

As popular as ads are with website owners, they have one serious drawback: They clutter up your pages. Once you perfect a design with carefully chosen pictures and style sheets, you might not want to insert someone else’s ad. And although Google ads aren’t as visually distracting as other ads can be, like animated banners or pop-up windows, they still chew up valuable screen space. If you can’t bear to disturb your web page masterpieces, you might be interested in a subtler option.

Amazon Associates is the Web’s longest-running affiliate program. If you have a personal site with a “favorite books” page, or if you just refer to the odd book here and there, you might be able to make some extra money by signing up as an affiliate.

The basic idea behind the Amazon Associates program is that you provide links to book and other product pages on Amazon’s website. For example, if you write a blurb about a great recipe, you could add a link to the Amazon page that sells the cookbook you’re quoting. The link itself is a nice feature for your site, since it provides visitors with more relevant information. But the best part is what happens if a visitor decides to buy the book. You wind up making a healthy commission of 4 percent of the book’s sale price.

Note

Amazon commissions aren’t just for books. You can provide links to pretty much everything for sale on Amazon (except items that other retailers, like Target and Office Depot, sell). But AdSense limits how much you can make ...