Amazon.com is the grandaddy of this marketing technique, since I believe they were the first to do it. Affiliate programs are offered today by approximately a zillion companies. Amazon.com offers a large number of online tools to help you find products from their catalog and embed product information in your website.
To get started with amazon.com visit here: associates.amazon.com and sign up. You will need to have an existing web site.
Before going over the full extent of using amazon.com's affiliate tools let's look at the simplest usage, listing one given product on your web site.
Every product listed by amazon.com has an identification number they call a ASIN. The ASIN for each product is shown on the product page in the Product Details stanza. There are two ASIN's, a 10-digit and 13-digit format. Then while logged into your associates.amazon.com account click on the Links and Banners tab. There are several choices but for the moment simply click on Product Links and enter the ASIN for the product you've chosen and finally click on Get Link. Note that you can also use this page to search for products.
There are three link types: a) an Enhanced Display which shows an image, text link, cost, and more, b) the product image, and c) a simple text link. For each link type they show the required HTML code which you then copy into your web page.The Associates Site Stripe is a tool you can enable which sits at the top of every page as you browse around amazon.com. It gives direct access to various amazon.com tools. Link to this page enables you to directly go from a product page to access the HTML code for the given product.
In the associates section there are the following resources
- Product links: Links to a specific product, providing a summary description
- Banner Links: Gives you a flashing banner talking about amazon.com
- A wide variety of widgets including
- Recommended Product Links: Shows a group of products. You specify a keyword, and amazon's computers selects a group of products to show. The products are changed from time to time, automatically.
- Search box links: Puts a search box on your site that lets the user search amazon.com.
The aStore is a special service offered by amazon.com. It let's you easily list a catalog of products which the aStore service generates from the information amazon.com collects for each product. All you do is list products in a given aStore and the service takes care of the rest. You can add products from an amazon category or using the site stripe tool to add individual products to an aStore.
Once you have developed an aStore there are three options for including it on your site. They provide a URL on astore.amazon.com which you can link from your site. They also provide either iframe or frameset methods to embed aStore contents on your site.
The affiliate marketing store is an example of an aStore in action.
The most interesting of widgets is this type of recommended products box.