The Official Amazon Associates Blog

Earn 10% on Amazon Kindle Referrals

The Associates program is excited to announce that Associates can now earn 10% in referral fees on the Amazon Kindle wireless reading device and Kindle Edition books.

What is Amazon Kindle?

Amazon Kindle (http://amazon.com/kindle) is a revolutionary portable reader that wirelessly downloads books, newspapers, magazines and blogs to a crisp, high-resolution electronic paper display that looks and reads like real paper, even in bright sunlight.

Kindle customers, no matter where they are in the U.S., can wirelessly shop the Kindle Store and download new content — all without a PC or a WiFi hot spot. Amazon pays for Kindle’s wireless connectivity so there are no monthly wireless bills and no service commitments for customers. The Kindle Store contains over 90,000 books that can be purchased and delivered wirelessly to Kindle, each in less than a minute. Customers can choose from hundreds of top newspapers, magazines and blogs and have their subscriptions auto-delivered wirelessly. All New York Times Best Sellers and New Releases are $9.99, unless marked otherwise.

At 10.3 ounces, Kindle is lighter and thinner than a paperback book, carries two hundred books, and includes built-in access to The New Oxford American Dictionary and wireless access to the Earth’s biggest encyclopedia, Wikipedia.org.

Earnings

Associates are eligible to earn 10% in referral fees on both the Kindle device and content. With Kindle priced at $359 you can earn $35.99 on each Kindle purchase you refer. We do not yet pay referral fees on subscription content such as Kindle newspapers, blogs, or magazines, but we will be announcing that support in the near future.

Building Links

Building links to Amazon Kindle is no different than other products on Amazon.com. To build a Product Link, simply visit the Product Links page in Associates Central and select "Kindle Store" in the search menu. You can find the Kindle device itself under the "Electronics" search menu. You can also build a Slideshow or My Favorites widget to showcase your favorite Kindle titles.

We have also made Amazon Kindle banner graphics available to you in Associates Central.

To link directly to the Kindle device, simply substitute your Associates ID in the link format below:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000FI73MA/?tag=YourIDHere-20

Learning More

To learn more about Amazon Kindle, please visit the the Kindle detail page on Amazon.com where you will find a wealth of information including video demonstrations, product specifications, and more. As always, please contact us if you have any questions or feedback, and thanks for your continued support of the Amazon Associates program.

Deals Widget Update

So far we've seen great interest in the Deals Widget that we launched last week and we're pleased to announce some updates and improvements to this widget.

Our development team have been beavering away and have added another format for the widget as well some extra details for some of the existing widget sizes.

The new format option is a larger format available in three different sizes- a 250 x 250 square format, a 300 x 250 format, and the standard large rectangle format of 336 x 280 pixels. You can check out a sample of this larger format at the bottom of this post.

We've also included more information about the pricing of the deals as a pop-up on the new large formats and, where space permits, on the existing banner and sidebar formats. Hovering your mouse over the icon beside the price will show the list price, yesterdays price, the amount the item is being discounted by, and the resulting price of the item.

If you're already using the Deals Widget, then the updates to the look of the widget will automatically be applied when the widget is loaded. You won't have to change a thing.

We hope you find this useful during the holiday shopping season, and as always, we're interested in hearing in any comments or suggestions you may have.

Woody - Amazon Associates Program

Amazon Deals Widget

Now you can display the hottest deals from Amazon on your web page with the Deals Widget. Every day, Amazon makes a great deal available as Deal of the Day. Amazon also regularly runs short-term deals known as Lightning Deals, and there’s always a stack more interesting deals and discounts being made available daily.  All these deals are viewable on Amazon’s Goldbox page, but The Deals Widget lets you select the best Gold Box deals to showcase – updated in real time - on your website. Delight your viewers by showing them the Deal of the Day, Lightning Deals or Our Best Deals from across Amazon.com.

As shown below we have two formats, sidebar and banner, available for the Deals Widget.  You also have the ability to select a size and which types of deals you would like to display within the widget.

This comes just in time for the holiday shopping season, so try the Deals Widget and see how it works for you on Black Friday – the busiest shopping day of the year, and through the rest of the holiday season.  In fact, on Black Friday from 6am to 6pm PST the Deals Widget will show a different deal every hour.

The widget is available at: http://widgets.amazon.com/Amazon-Deals-Widget.

Earn 20% on Unbox Referrals in November

In January we posted that Associates could earn 10% by promoting Unbox Video Downloads. We're excited to announce that during the month of November Associates can earn 20% (up to $3.00 per item) on Unbox items.

To make it more fun for your site visitors to discover Unbox titles we last month launched the Unbox Video Player Widget (login required) for Amazon Associates, which means that you can now show, directly on your site, movie and TV trailers and previews for a huge range of recent and classic titles from Unbox. If you’re looking to earn money using online video and increase stickiness on your site, this widget delivers streaming video directly to your site, allows you to customize and choose what you want to show, and includes Buy and Rent buttons. There are also purchase links to the corresponding DVD and CD, if they are available. Here is a live widget that showcases the latest and greatest from Unbox:

The Amazon Unbox selection has grown significantly over the past several months, with top TV shows from NBC, CBS, Fox, Showtime, Starz, the WB, and more. Our movie downloads are released at the same time as DVD, so you can offer hits like Spider-Man 3 or Fantastic Four: Silver Surfer as soon as they are available on Amazon.com. In addition, the Unbox 2.0 client is now available with reduced download times and increased performance. You and your site visitors will see a whole new look and feel to Unbox.

Build your links to Amazon Unbox videos today to take full advantage of the 20% promotion, and this is a great reason to join the Associates program if you have not already done so.