Become an Amazon Associate - it is Free to Join

Amazon Shop Software - free version available

Join Amazon and Make Money from your website or blog

You do not need money, or at least you do not need a lot of money to sell Amazon products, you need a website or a blog and Internet Access. You do need a lot of time, ideas on creating an interesting website ... and patience. You also need to realise that you will probably not make a lot of money unless you are willing to put a considerable amount of time and effort into it, have some luck and use other advertising on your website as well. Please remember "There is no such thing as a free lunch". If something seems too good to be true, such as unlimited wealth for NO EFFORT, then you are getting scammed. Below I offer a few free ideas on making money from your website, these ideas are not perfect, they are free!

You can get free copy of the Amazon associate shop software from Justin's website ( Associate-O-Matic Lite) - and for every 10th sale the sales commission goes to the hard working developer. The paid version is around about $100 or £50 approx with an annual payment of $20 / £10 for product upgrades after the first year.

If you prefer to do it on your own then you can create product links galore for free using the free tools provided by Amazon including the new aShop - an Amazon Shop on your own website. I personally love the new feature on Amazon.com for Amazon Product reviews and you can see it used on our website on Wildlife.

Amazon Associate sign up pages

To become an Amazon Associate you need to have a website or blog which is deemed suitable by Amazon, in other words it should be a website of reasonable quality, it does not however need to be flashy or created by professional web designers, it can easily be a hobby website where you create your website using low cost website design software, or where you have created a free blog account with Google's Blogger.com - the choice and range of how you deliver web content is up to you, ideally though it should be a website which attracts a daily number of visitors who will be interested in what you are "selling"

We Use Google AdSense and find it the easiest way to make money from a website or blog

If you want to have a more professional approach to offering your websites a shopping experience then using software to create an Amazon Shop is one of the better ways of helping create a good shopping experience. One of the best of these scripts is advertised above, and the shops advertised on this site have been created using this software. It is low cost, easy to use and creates web shops promoting Amazon products from the UK, US and Canada.

I recently purchased a book (from Amazon needless to say) on web development for Amazon. You can of course use the online resources provided by Amazon on their website - check out the Amazon Web Services page, I personally find it easier to use pre-written software using developers who are far smarter than I.

Amazon is one of the largest and most successful online companies in the world. I buy my books and cameras through them and I honestly can say I like the prices and the huge range of products they have on offer. Amazon also market and sell other online traders products and this is known as the Marketplace. Amazon was one of the first, if not the first company to offer a unique partnership where they allow you to display their products on your website or blog and where you earn commission on any sales made by people buying through your Amazon advert. To become an Amazon Associates is very straightforward you go to the country based Amazon site and follow the Associates link at the bottom of the page. I have added a few links to the different Amazon websites at the bottom of this article to help you.

Some basic rules to remember is that you are not allowed to buy through your own Amazon Associate links / adverts, you must not use the name “Amazon” within your domain name. Again you should read the rules as they may change over time.

Now you can set-up Amazon Adverts very easily for free and there is a huge range of different advert styles available … more about this soon. So you can start promoting products on your website at no cost to you and make up to 10% of the sale from books, music, toys, games, kitchen and many more categories. There is a certain limit set on electrical sales.

The rule of any advertising is to sell in context – in other words promote items that your web visitors will be interested in. If your website is on Sailing and Boats then advertise books and films on this subject. If it is on teaching English then you are more likely to have people buy books on Phonetics that they are on scuba diving! Although this is not always the case and sometime cross selling or having different adverts for a range of products works better. You just need to experiment to find the correct mix for your website or individual web pages.

So how about that! You can now start earning money without spending a single penny on stock or materials. Great when money is tight, and even better when you have money as there is better ways of selling Amazon products and that is by having your own Amazon Shop. I personally use associate-o-matic as Jason has created a very powerful Amazon shop software that is easy to set-up and can be made to look how you want it.

You do not need programming experience, you just need to be willing to experiment and create the look and feel of the shop to suit you. The Amazon shop software from associate-o-matic does what is says on the box – it lets you easily set-up a shop on your website. I have set-up a site in under an hour, from scratch. You can see adverts at the top and bottom of this site to this excellent software. The software is not expensive and there is even a free version to try out.

To be able to create an Amazon shop you do need a website. The associate-o-matic software does not use a database; however you do need a website and a domain name. If you want to give me some karma back (money) then have a look at the 1&1 Advert (below) for web hosting and buying your domain name. I use 1&1 web hosting and find them excellent.

Domain Names or what to call your website

Before you go buy a domain name, think carefully about what you what to build your website for and remember not to use “Amazon” within the domain name, nor should you use a name similar to a registered company. You could spend a lot of time developing a website and then be told to stop using it as it breaks copyright / trademark.

Another thing to remember with your domain name is that is should be easy to spell, ok my Zeugma.co.uk website is not that easy spell or remember. As mentioned elsewhere I did have a couple of glasses of red wine too many when I thought that one up – well I opened the dictionary and saw the word zeugma, not a good way of choosing a web name believe me.

Something very important to remember is that certain search engines place a fair amount of importance on your domain name especially when it then matches what is written on your website site. Another thing is, make sure you choose a domain name that is about something you are really interested in; there is no point in trying to create a website that is just regurgitated from somewhere else. If you are fascinated in a subject and can use your enthusiasm to let other people see how interesting your subject is then you are more likely to get repeat visitors and most importantly people spreading the word about your website to other people and friends, or linking to your site from theirs.

Another way of identifying what makes a good website name is to have a look at what people use to search for information around your subject. I use a free online tool for this by Overture. Again please take my advice and do not try and use the words that come up as very popular search terms. For example if you want to sell books on your website then have a domain that is called buy-books.com may sound cool however you are up against 269 million other web pages with this combination of Buy Books according to Google. It is better to select a 2 or 3 keyword domain name that people will remember and use in their search for a website.

As an example if your site is about travelling around Scotland then a domain name similar to scotlandtravelguide.co.uk (except that this site is already taken) however scotland-travel-guide.co.uk or .com is still (or was tonight) available. If your website is about the area you live in then try and incorporate the name of the place within the domain name. Try and keep the domain name short and easily remembered. As an idea write down a number of possible web names and then ask a friend what they like most. With certain 1&1 web hosting you get a number of free domain names along with the web hosting, so choose one name and then leave the rest till later.

Want a cool way to advertise your site, then I think the Clock site is a real bargain, it can advertise your site and encourages people to visit.

Hints and tips: Create a content based site, build up visitors to your site by adding fresh content daily (or at least weekly) and make it interesting. Add your amazon shop to the site and theme it based on the interests of your visitors.

Another way to do it is to create themed shops i.e. specialise in electrical and then use Google Adwords to drive traffic to your site. You have to be careful not to spend more money advertising, so set a budget and keep an eye on the income.

Making money when you have no money to start with

Ah this is the real way to make money, start with nothing and what can you lose, well you can lose a lot of time trying to make money on the Internet. To be perfectly honest it is probably far easier to make money from other methods, such as taking on a part-time job in a pub, or offering to do a bit of odd job work. Many individuals make good money selling online through eBay and even through the Amazon Marketplace. You do however need things to sell. You can of course just sell your old stuff, books, music to name a few things. We can see from the success of eBay that many people just love this way of making money. Many people are natural traders and we have been doing this trading for thousands of years, it makes up the basis of most societies.

So what can you do if you don't have anything worthwhile to sell and you have no money, well you could blog. Blogging is an online journal where you can write about anything and you can also have adverts and sell books using Amazon adverts. There is a number of free blogging sites including blogger which is run by Google. The great thing about Google's blogger is that you can modify the layout of your page to include adverts. So you have a website (ok a blog) that is hosted for free all you now need to do is come up with some ideas. Try looking around at what other people have done to and make a list of sites you like (and why) and then think up a topic. If you write about something specific then it is more likely to come up in search engines when people search for a related term.

Writing a blog to make money is not easy, it can and should be fun and if you do it correctly you probably can earn enough money to buy yourself and your friends a few pints at the weekend. Some people make a significant amount of money from blogging, it does take time and planning. It also involves getting placed into a number of popular search engines such as google, msn, yahoo. It also involves being highly placed in search engines for keywords, words or terms used by people to search for websites. The process of doing this is called Search Engine Optimisation (Optimization in the US) or SEO.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Believe it or not there are many people who make a good living out of helping people get there websites organised in such a way to be attractive to search engines. It is now a business. You can also spend a lot of money on paying people to do this for you and if you are running a business website and your lively hood is based on your website being in the first page or two for certain keywords then you probably should hire someone. At the very least this will or should stop you making mistakes ... if you get the correct company or person to do this for you. You can of course learn to do it yourself.

At this point professional SEO people will fall off their chairs .... as I am going to recommend a book. The book is called Search Engine Optimization for Dummies by Peter Kent. I think the book is full of brilliant and straightforward advice that will also give you ideas on where and how to create content for your website. And yes content is king, if people do not find it interesting then it will be a 6 second visit, never to visit again.

... and yes if you are one of the people falling off your chairs laughing at this recommendation, just think how did you find this site?

Give your site a Relevant Title Page

Give your site and each web page a relevant TITLE, the title should relate to the content you write about. Many sites I see have poorly written titles or none and search engines will not be able to place these websites easily. So go on give your friendly search engine a hand and write a cool Title for your website. Your title should contain 2 to 3 keywords that people use when searching for websites (such as yours). So how do we find what keywords to use. Well I have just used Wordtracker for the first time, in that this is the first time I have paid for the service. You can use the free trial and this may be enough for your purposes. So what does wordtracker do, it uses a record of the terms used in certain search engines to compile a database (a huge list) of these words and phrases. So if you then use one of the wordtracker tools it will give you a list of the associated words or phrases used. You can also use online tools for free including Overture and Google, they are fine. The thing is I have found that the Overture tool gives very strange results sometimes, and yes I have went and bought stupidly names domains based these results.

Links from other websites / blogs

A number of other things you can do to help search engine optimization involves getting other webmasters (or bloggers) to link to your site or blog. Be careful with this, a few good links is worth a thousand rubbish ones. Infact some people will offer to sell you links on thousands of sites and after you part with your money you may get your moment of glory with your website being first in Google. It will not last and your site will be dumped to page 1000 in Google (if you are lucky) or dropped from the search engines database as they will classify your site as a spam site.

It is easier to simply write a few e-mails to other webmaster asking for a reciprocal link. And if your site is of a reasonable standard you will get a link or two. When asking for a reciprocal link realise that webmasters get a number of requests for links each week and most are from sites you would not want to link to. Before you ask make sure your website is complete, or at least well developed. You also need to have patience. In many cases you will need to send out 10 e-mails for 1 reciprocal link.

Another way to bring visitors to your website is to advertise and Google Adwords is one economical way of doing this. You set the price you are willing to pay for the keywords. So if you are operating a bed and breakfast accommodation in Edinburgh for example it is far easier to pay for advertising. This means that it will come up on Google own search engine results as paid links. You also find them on many other websites where webmasters are willing to try and earn some money from people visiting their websites.

How to get your site "listed"

Anyone who is new to website development or blogging will know the frustration of working out the idea on what to write about or all the effort in creative a brilliant website design - and then nobody visits the website. Yes until people know your website or blog exists they can't easily find you can they? So we need to have our websites listed in a search engine and that for someone with a new website can take ages.

As mentioned earlier by exchanging links with another website you help search engines find your site. It is not that search engines deliberately hate you or don't want to list your site, it is simply that they don't know you exist. This is getting even more difficult as the net gets bigger. Just image what is going to happen in the near future. Take China for example, as this country becomes more liberal then more people there will be allow to blog, create websites and sell stuff online, so take 1.3 billion plus people and say only 20 percent do this, they all create a website, a blog and say an online shop. We then have over 700 million new websites. Get the idea? Search engines do their best, just sometimes they find it hard to find your website so we need to help them sometimes.

One way is to make sure you have a blog on your website. You can use free blogging software to do this, and then create content. The content can be simple, just a few short articles. Then add your blog site to blog feed sites such as Feedburner (there are more) and off you go to the pub. You also need to make sure that your blog has links back to your main site. The more you blog, the more visible your site will become to search engines and more importantly people. Remember search engines do not buy from you, people do. So make your blog and website useful and interesting to people and you are half way there.

To see this idea in action I have a few examples that I have set up with Feedburner. The Feed link for my site on Scotland, Blog on this site (affiliate and make money) and one I set up for a new website I developed in June for a lady called Sandra. Finally I also added my original blog to this feedlink. So there you are an easy way to get listed, to get visitors in one easy step. To learn more then visit the feedburner forums.

Other useful resources on Search engines is the Phil Bradley website, this site is excellent at demonstrating the good use of Google Adsense to add content to your site. The best set of online meta tag tools must by Any Browser, check it out. By reading more on how Adsense works then you can definately learn more about making money, read more on the Inside AdSense blog, written by the people who should know. If you use Adwords to increase visitor traffic to your website then the Inside AdWords should be on your daily blog read. Finally but not least we should stop off at Inside Google Sitemaps to learn how to tell Google where your pages are and a lot more.

One of the most difficult aspects of any business development is keeping within the law. For most website developers this means keeping an eye on the copyright laws. Personally I like a more flexible approach to copyright and while I respect everyone's right to being paid for their ideas, products and creative processes.

Of course there is many different types of copyright and I personally like the use of Creative Commons licence for use where the author, inventor, artist or whatever can licence the use and distribution of their works within the limits set by the licence. For example I love taking photographs, yet I know most of my pictures will be simply amateur. Yet I am happy for others to get some pleasure out of these.

So on my photo gallery you can use any of my pictures of Scotland site (and wildife, ducks, horses etc) on your own website as long as you provide a reference back to my photo gallery. This works in allowing others to use my images and I benefit as they send me visitors to my site. It is a win win situation. I use the Creative Commons 2.5 Scotland Licence for my photographic works, which means you can use the pictures, change them for personal use. This only covers my photographs - not what I write! Other copyright laws are US Copyright Office and the UK Copyright Office.

In the UK and in the United States there is also Public Domain which means you can use the products (usually pictures, writing, sounds, music and video) without restriction. The laws covering Public Domain varies with each country so remember to check it out first before using any "Public Domain" materials on your website. A good reference to Public Domain in the US is the Cornell Copyright PD page on this topic. You can see how a photo site uses Public Domain to "market" the website.

Viral Marketing

What is Viral Marketing I thought it was something to do with viruses at some point in the past!, no it is to do with marketing using existing social connections that exist. I have incorporated the article from wikipedia on Viral Marketing for your interest:

Viral marketing and viral advertising refer to marketing techniques that seek to exploit pre-existing social networks to produce exponential increases in brand awareness, through viral processes similar to the spread of an epidemic. It is word-of-mouth delivered and enhanced online; it harnesses the network effect of the Internet and can be very useful in reaching a large number of people rapidly.

Viral marketing is sometimes used to describe some sorts of Internet-based stealth marketing campaigns, including the use of blogs, seemingly amateur web sites, and other forms of astroturfing to create word of mouth for a new product or service. Often the ultimate goal of viral marketing campaigns is to generate media coverage via "offbeat" stories worth many times more than the campaigning company's advertising budget.

The term "viral advertising" refers to the idea that people will pass on and share interesting and entertaining content; this is often sponsored by a brand, which is looking to build awareness of a product or service. These viral commercials often take the form of funny video clips, or interactive Flash games, images, and even text.

Viral marketing is popular because of the ease of executing the marketing campaign, relative low-cost (compared to direct mail), good targeting, and the high and rapid response rate. The main strength of viral marketing is its ability to obtain a large number of interested people at a low cost. The main weakness is that sometimes messages can look like e-mail spam and this creates the risk of damaging the brand. The 'from' and 'subject' lines then become very important in order to remedy this problem (Tell-A-Friend principle); for example, when sending a link or webpage, sometimes the subject line is "(Name of person here) thought you would like this page". The receiver will then recognize the name and know that it is not unsolicited.

The most difficult task for any company is to acquire and retain a large customer base. Through the use of the internet and the effects of e-mail advertising, the business-to-consumer (B2C) efforts have a greater impact than many other tools of marketing. Viral marketing is a technique that avoids the annoyance of spam mail; it encourages users of a specific product or service to tell a friend. This would be a positive word-of-mouth recommendation. One of the most successful perspectives found to achieve this customer base is the integrated marketing communication IMC perspective.

So why have I mentioned this, well I was trying to come up with something where I could create a viral marketing effect, I do need the ripple of people telling others about my site, search engine positioning is one thing, being told by a person about a great site is worth a lot more. So my idea has always to try and give something away for nothing, in many cases it is my photographs, however only a relatively small number of people are interested in the things I am able to or like photographing. So the next thing is to try and use these images to create a product that I hope people will enjoy and also find good enough to tell their friends. Jigsaws are one such thing, for a small investment in software you can create professional, downloadable jigsaws that are fun to do and also provide a marketing function for the website.

The site I have started using this on is called Pictures of Scotland.org and if you take the time to visit this site you will find examples of online jigsaws using jigzone, and downloadable Jigsaw Puzzle Games that you can use, share and give to the kids to play on wet rainly days. I created this using one of the best Jigsaw Puzzle software that I could find called Tibo Software.

On Zeugma I am working on my viral marketing, remember that is where people tell others about a website. My latest sub-domain is on Swans - so why not check out my Swan Pictures and tell me and others if you like it.

Sites that sell, I came across Live Science, a site that is heavily into using Google sponsor links and other advertising media. It is a very good site to look at if you want to see how it is done by the professionals.

aStore from Amazon is a new Amazon Associate tool that allows you to create a web based shop in about 4 clicks, simply amazing. It allows you to select a number of items that are then displayed on the web page. It also incorporates a shopping basket so your customers can shop for several items before checking out at Amazon for final payment. This is an excellent tool for everyone who has a website and would like to make sales commission from promoting and selling books, music, toys, software, infact everything on offer on the main Amazon websites. This is available on the Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk associate sites.

Google search on your website

I have been in two minds about using Google Search on my website, why? well it tends to bring in low results for the Adsense clicks, I am not able to tell you how much I make on these clicks or I could lose my Google Adsense account and that would put an end to my websites as it pays for the hosting and domain name costs. I can say that to buy me a Scottish Pint it would take in the region of about 15 clicks!, not an easy way to become an Internet millionare! Yet Google have as usual come up with a new way of delivering Google Search results, that is to open the results of the search within your own website, now that is cool. Why is it cool, well you have the ability to place some content on this page as well as having a more prominent link back to your own site. I am currently experimenting with this on one of my websites. It does look better and if I make a little money using the search facility I will start using it on this site. Sign up with Google Adsense and try experimenting yourself.

Ideas on Making Money with Amazon Stores & other Affiliate (advertising) programmes

Amazon has an Associate, or affiliate programme where you can earn money from any sales made from your website or blog. You can do this by adding text, graphic or other links to Amazon Stores relevant to your own website visitors. So if your website mainly attracts visitors from the United Kingdom then you would advertise products available on Amazon.co.uk, while for US websites then Amazon.com would be your natural choice.

YouTube is a great way of broadcasting your videos, similiar to Google Video and it allows you to create a You Tube developer account where you can then integrate videos into your website. You can see how I have used some of the media on YouTube on one of my new (under development) website about Dogs with Dog Videos I like from YouTube.

Giving Free Stuff away is always a great methods of generating visitor loyalty and Google provide you the tools to do this as well through their collection of free software. Not everyone uses Firefox as a browser yet I have it on my desktop as an alternative to Microsoft Explorer and use it on a regular basis. Using two browsers, I must be mad! not really it is simply that they are both excellent browsers, Firefox is at the moment a bit faster than Microsoft, and using both helps expand your knowledge of using different software, try it I am sure you will love it.

One of the easiest methods of making money from your website or blog is by Google AdSense Sign up now using the link below.

Free Software for website development

Nvu - Web development application that lets you create websites as you would with Dreamweaver and Frontpage - except it is Open Source and Free.

Online Shops

Other commercial solutions include Yahoo who offer a range of online shopping solutions. Another solution is provided by 1Shoppingcart.com and I recently came across this on another site and it appears to work well. I am currently looking at Click Cart Pro a UK site selling a shopping cart solution at a reasonable price. I am not sure how good the script it for SEO purposes however you can see a rear shop using the Click Cart pro for Solar Panels including garden water ornaments as well as more serious power saving kit.

Ideas to copy

Well sometimes one has to look around the net to see how other people are making money, classroomclipart is one such blatant site, with pop-ups and other in your face advert, they do have a product people want and therefore are popular.

Online Shopping cart software.

Another way to make money is of course to start your own business and sell online, for that you need either an online shop software or a shopping cart. One of the most popular is Agoracart which is free with a paid support version. Of course with Google getting into the act with Google Checkout we pay find that Paypal will be in for a serious competition as a payment gateway.

Great online resources

The Colors on the Web to help you see the different colours you can use and the codes for each "color mix". If you need to buy Pantone colour kits for commercial design purposes then this link may help. Matt's Script Archive always seems to pop up on other websites, especially when they use forms instead of e-mail addresses.

Want to make money with a dating site? then check out BoonEx for some free scripts and a paid version of Shark!

Reference sites

Ghostscripter software was one of my first paid scripts I used for selling Amazon products and it is very powerful. I still have licences to run this software and I may use it again one day. I did find that if you do not control the number of cached pages it can lead to a situation where Google can treat your site as a spam site, due simply to the number of cached pages. Another solution is found on Incutio PHP Amazon Search

Amazon.co.uk site directory - reference

Advantage - A way to sell your items on online with Amazon UK. Amazon Advantage is a powerful way for authors, publishers, labels, and studios of all sizes to promote and sell their items on Amazon.co.uk

Amazon UK Auctions (US) it does what it says on the tin, you bid for books, art and more, not yet as popular as ebay.co.uk however it may one day, and until then you could get a bargain.

Want as job as a developer with Amazon, then the Amazon India site may be for you. You can also read what the developers are reading as well as their blog. The faq is a useful start point for information on this hot dev team. You can learn more about Amazon development services on the Amazon developer website.

I mentioned earlier that you need content on your website to attract and bring back visitors, you can get ideas on how to do this as well as sharing ideas on forums and other discussion groups - just don't spam them, that is put on comments just to give links to your site. That is frowned on and you will get some hurtful comments made in return if you do it.

Forums to help you make money (why should I tell you, well I am a nice person) WebProWorld and Websites on web development including UKOLN Metadata and the Dublin Core metadata editor. I am personally not that sure that meta tags make much of a difference to Google, it can help with other search engines. Useful resources for software developers who want to sell online include SWREG

Remember content is king and people love pictures. I have been adding a number of pictures to my Zeugma website, and recently came across a flash photo gallery that I actually like and it is free, it is called simpleviewer and it is way cool. I bought the paid version of it for under $50 so that I could modify the gallery to suit my requirements.

Check out our UK Based Amazon Associate Shops for ideas on how to use Amazon shop software on your website

Picture Broadband for pictures & more

Shop for Sexy Lingerie

Pulse Perfumes in association with Amazon.com for perfumes Cool Fresh Beans for coffee and more

Amazon Books - Amazon Shops - Shopping

Shop for Books - Toys - Maps - Travel - Scotland Books - Computers

UK Amazon Shopping

US Amazon Shopping

Buy A Computer

Amazon Associate Shops

Our new "fun" website on Dogs