Amazon Associates has integrated their affiliate program with Blooger, which will make it easier for bloggers to add relevant Amazon product links to their blog posts without having to interrupt the editing process on their blogs. Amazon Associates for Blogger can be found on your Associates Central web page. You will want to take advantage of this.
Sign up is quick and easy. Assuming you already have an Amazon Associate account, you can use your Associate ID. If you are new you can have your Associate ID almost instantly. For existing associates it will only take you a couple of minutes to sign up, and you will instantly have access. You will be able to turn the Amazon Product Finder on or off depending on your preference.
The new tool makes it simple to add Amazon links to your blog posts, either text or image links. There are just two steps. First type and highlight the text in your blog post that’s relevant. The Amazon Product Finder will search through the millions of products on the Amazon site and recommend those it feels are a close match with the text you highlighted. Then you can insert an image or link to that product, which will include your ID. If you are using a blog editor you might find it easier to write your entire post in the program and then post the draft on Blogger and then use the Amazon product finder.
By signing up for Amazon Associates for Blogger you will also be able to add dynamic content in the sidebar of your blog using the new sidebar gadgets that are being provided. The Amazon Deals gadget and Amazon Search box are excellent tools to help your visitors find exactly what they are looking for. If you want to add these to the sidebar just got to ‘Add a Gadget,’ and then type in Amazon to find the gadgets you want.
If there is a disadvantage to adding the gadgets to the sidebar it is that it can slow down page load times. You will have to experiment and decide for yourself whether the load times are acceptable.
The new Amazon Associates Blogger tools are going to make it a great deal handier to get your links in place and start to enjoy earning revenue. Don’t be discouraged if things start slow. It can take a bit of time to create a blogging environment that consistently makes money for you, but don’t give up.
