The Official Amazon Associates Blog

Featured Associate - BrowseGoods

Search and Browse have completely different applications when it comes to looking for products in the e-commerce world. Search is extremely useful when you know what you want. However, browsing is used when you're not quite sure what you want or as a fall back to when search does not return the right results. While the internet world has done a good job of cracking search, browse has not been explored as much.

As such I firmly believe that Browse is a whole new area that is waiting to explode with newer and more intuitive visual interfaces.  One example of a new approach to browsing is Endless.com, Amazon's new shoe and handbag site.

I recently came across another example during one of my bouts of "extreme surfing."  BrowseGoods.com, an Amazon Associate, has provided an innovative way to shop visually.  Their site gives the shopper a visual map of all goods in a department, and then one can zoom into specific categories, brands, etc.  The power of the interface is that it lets the visitor surf many items at the same time and make quick decisions. This is important for categories such as Shoes, Jewelry, and Apparel where the browsing experience really does matter.  BrowseGoods currently offers the ability to browse Amazon.com products in the categories of Shoes, Sports, Toys, and Watches, and the site indicates that more categories are on the way.

We wish the best of luck to BrowseGoods and look forward to seeing what else they have in store!

- Anubhav, Amazon Associates Technical Program Manager

Featured Associate - PodshowCreator

PodshowCreator.com today launched ContentPay, a new service that provides podcastors a way to monetize their podcasts.  ContentPay was built using the Amazon E-Commerce Service (ECS), part of Amazon Web Services, and PodShowCreator has done a wonderful job of taking advantage of the different capabilities of ECS.

ContentPay provides the podcastor a "Shop" tab on his/her personal page to showcase products related to the content of the podcasts.  They've also created a feature called "Content-based Product Lists" that allows the podcaster to display relevant products next to the podcast subscription link. 

Current Associates can use their existing Associate IDs with PodshowCreator.  Feel free to check out an example PodShop.

-Sean, Amazon Associates Product Marketing Manager

Featured Associate - BlueDonut.com

Happy New Year and we hope you had a safe and successful holiday season!  And a big thank you all for a great 2006!  After launching aStore, Omakase Links, and Product Previews last year the Associates team is again hard at work planning and developing more exciting new products for 2007.  We look forward to sharing the details of them with you, as well as providing information on improvements to tools such as aStore and Associates Central that you already know and use.

As we mentioned when we first launched this blog, one of our goals is to feature more Associates and the creative ways they're using our tools.  In the spirit of that goal, check out blue donut where Don, an Amazon Associate, composed a poem of Amazon product links.  That's definitely one of the most creative uses of Product Links that we've seen!

If you've done something unique with some of our other tools, drop us an email.  If you have questions about the program or something related to your existing Associates account, your best bet is to use our contact form as we can't provide support through our blog address.

We look forward to hearing from you all!

VarsityWorld.com Launches VStore

VarsityWorld.com on Tuesday announced the launch of “VStore”, a full service online store featuring products exclusively from Amazon.com. As a new member of the Amazon Associates program and the Amazon Web Services developer community, VarsityWorld.com will be offerings its users the chance to select from millions of Amazon.com products in dozens of categories, complete their transactions on the trusted and secure Amazon.com website, and have their orders fulfilled by Amazon.com.  VarsityWorld.com built its new store using the Amazon E-Commerce Service from Amazon Web Services.

VarsityWorld.com, a division of Varsity Media Group, Inc., offers teenagers and young adults worldwide a safe, clean and interactive online environment where they can interact with friends, download the hottest music, play video games, create personalized pages and more.

We'd like to welcome them to the Associates program and wish them well with VStore!