Related to class...

In class, we recently were asked to subscribe to either Amazon's Associate program or googles affiliates as part of our blogging assignment. I opted to go with Amazon's simply because I thought it looked cool and official. Although I have an account with Amazon it was neccesary for me to sign up for their associate program separately, which was surprising, they even needed my social security number which I was slightly nervous about. However, once I convinced myself that Alex would not give us an assignment where someone could steal our identity I decided to go for it and sign up, it was easy. In fact, the whole process was painless and took me about 5 minutes to figure out how to get the links and attach them into my blog. Since the template is so advanced and knows from experience the type of links people put into their blogs they have specific template formats specifically for additions such as links to the Amazon affiliates program.

The books that I chose to post on my blog were the two required readings for the course, The Search and Naked Conversations as well as two books that I have read recently. The books are The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nightime and Bringing Down the House. Both of these books are quick reads and ones that I would recomend for pleasure reading.

The great thing about this associate program is that it is like the concept of Digg. If you like something, promotote it to others right? These are all books that I enjoyed so I might as well pass on my opinion to others and if they are interested then I am helping them (while possibly getting paid). On the other hand, if I think a book was horrible, I would not provide a link to it on my page, but perhaps I would instead blog about how much I disliked it. The bottom line is that I get to choose which books (or music and any other items Amazon sells) on my site, which I think is pretty cool!

To think that I will make money off this is not very realistic because this is a class blog and not many random people will come across it, see the link and purchase the book. But if they do, yay for me! In the meantime, I am certainly not going to hold my breath waiting for a check from Amazon to pay me for all the business I supplied them with...