Just to present a little balance, the books I recommend on my page (http://www.guitar9.com/labelres.html) have gotten less than 10% of Mr. Greenspuns 'hits', but generated over 10 times the income. It would be folly to generalize that all book-recommendation pages will get the same results, something amazon.com tries to drill into all of it's associates.
-- Dan McAvinchey, March 17, 1997
Last week I put up a page with a half dozen real estate related books on it through Amazon.com. I must say I didn't think about people "clicking through" my commissions until I got my first statement and out of 5 visitors only one bought in spite of the of the fact the link connecting clearly state "order here". I consoled myself with the fact that I was giving a future real estate client information at a nice discount and I should be content with that. Now I'm not so sure. I wish I knew how many of the remaning 4 bought something for which I got nothing. I do feel cheated and I've only been an associate for 2 weeks. Thanks to Mark Welch I found your site and a number of other book associate programs that don't pay the now "15%" commission (you don't get anyway) they do pay 8% for every book purchased from you link. My only problem now is that I don't write pearl script, but I guess it isn't that tough to change half a dozen reviews anyway!
-- Michael Warner, September 13, 1997
Amazon has updated their program since this was published. If someone goes to amazon.com through your site and purchases the book/cd/video you recommend, you get the full percentage commission. If they purchase a different book/cd/video, you get a lower percentage commission.
-- Andy Hughes, July 1, 1999
Just wondering: What happens if instead of just linking to the book (Kodak Photoguide, say) from Amazon.com each time, you put something like "the [Kodak Photoguide or whatever] book at Amazon.com"? I only ask because earlier I clicked on one of your links to Amazon.com thinking it would take me to another site with some free online content, rather than one that was trying to sell me a book. (I didn't stay at Amazon.com long after that...) I guess you could get some idea how much this was happening by looking at your access logs. Of the 2000-and-some people you sent to Amazon.com, what proportion came back to your site a second or two later?
-- Ed Edgar, January 31, 2001
I was about to write this comment when I read a posting of Ed Edgar, January 31, 2001 that essentially sais what I was going to say.Clicking first time on a reference to some book on photo.net, I did not expect to be thrown to amazon.com. I suspect that quite common expectation among people clicking on those links (first time at least) is to get some more information on the subject, but not to be offered to *buy* the book. The text of those links to the books on amazon.com seems to be off-harmony with the nice non-commercial environment they are in. The same thing would *not* be confusing if there were ads/offers/sales all around on a page.
-- Boris Vilkoff, August 10, 2001