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100 Industrial-Strength Tips and Tools

This book tells you how to get information from Amazon; how to contribute reviews, recommendation lists, and product advice; how to sell stuff; how to make money as an affiliate; and how to harness the power of Amazon’s enormous database using tools they will provide – all for free! There are now lots of opportunities to sell, auction, and broker goods at Amazon. It’s like being in eCommerce with all the headaches taken out.

Paul Bausch tells you how to do it – using Amazon’s marketplace and Zshops systems. The first part is about how to use and make contributions to the ‘Amazon community’ – how to submit book reviews, make reading suggestion lists, and send gifts to your friends. All of this can be done straight away, with no waiting or steep learning curves. The second part is how to sell through Amazon – which you can do by marketing what you have, or finding out what other people want. And this is either by straight sales or by auctions.

Next comes the affiliates programme, whereby you get a commission for every customer you send to Amazon – so long as they make a purchase. Some people have established full time jobs on the strength of this scheme. It’s fairly simple, and all the steps are explained.

The last part of the book is an account of Amazon Web Services. These are free advanced tools and programs they offer for data recovery – XML, PHP, XSLT, databases, and SOAP. All the coding necessary for embracing these hacks is included.

Because Amazon lists everything about you – the books, CDs, or whatever you have bought or wish to sell – and because they allow you access to this information – you can even call up listings of products onto your own web site. This includes both what you want to sell, but it can also include lists of what other people want to buy.

Amazon are exploring innovations in eCommerce, even making their databases available to potential competitors. I suspect that anyone who follows all the opportunities offered here could make profits from these new departures.

If there is one small drawback, it’s that he doesn’t discuss the criticisms which many affiliates level against Amazon. They seem to offer more and more opportunities, yet squeeze the bonuses tighter and tighter. It’s a cat and mouse world where clever entrepreneurs have to stay one step ahead of the game. But at least you can try it all out for free!

This is a book which will appeal to Amazon users, anyone who deals in books, music, and all the other products which Amazon retails – and in particular those who would like to join Amazon affiliates and need help in getting set up.

Buy the book at Amazon UK

Buy the book at Amazon US

Paul Bausch, Amazon Hacks: 100 Industrial-Strength Tips & Tools, Sebastapol CA: O’Reilly, 2003, pp.280, ISBN: 0596005423

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practical guide to ‘making money whilst you’re asleep’

Associate and affiliate programs are a new form of e-commerce in which you don’t have to sell anything. How does it work then? Well, you put links on your website which send visitors to the site of a major player such as Amazon, Fatbrain, or CD-NOW. If the visitor buys something, you get a small percentage – between five and twenty percent. As Daniel Gray puts it in this cheap and cheerful guide to the subject – ‘Affiliate marketing is a way to be paid for wearing a T-shirt with a logo’.

But although most affiliate programs pay only a small percentage, it’s a quick and easy way to put some hard cash in your pocket with a little effort and no risk at all. Dan Gray even makes money from a site which specialises in DIY garden sheds! This quirkiness is reflected in the way he writes – jumping from one metaphor to another. But he knows his stuff on how the schemes work.

He offers sound advice on the technicalities of submitting to search engines and interpreting log files. I expected him to say a little more on the issue of how much comes in each month, but he does reveal that books are the best sellers; conversion rates of one percent are normal; and he offers an analysis of sites which have blossomed using affiliate programs – CD-NOW, Amazon, BarnesandNoble, and the BabyCenter.

The latter part of the book is devoted to what he calls the Top100 Directory. This is a very useful listing all those companies operating an affiliates program, with full details of how to contact them, what conditions apply, and how much they pay out. On some programs you can even buy through your own links. If you are going to buy that CD anyway, why not get another 20% off the discounted price? But beware! Amazon for instance don’t allow this and might kick you off its list for infringements.

This isn’t an in-depth view of associate programs, but there’s enough information here to get you started. Click through to Amazon now and order this book – then you can see how the system works 🙂

Buy the book at Amazon UK

Buy the book at Amazon US

Daniel Gray, Associate and Affiliate Programs on the Net: turning clicks into cash, New York: McGraw-Hill, 2000, pp.227, ISBN: 0071353100

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100 Industrial-Strength Tips and Tools

practical guide to ‘making money whilst you’re asleep’

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