"Marketing 101"-- September 24th, 2008

Make it easy for readers to locate your book on Amazon.com with the "Buy from Amazon.com" widget in your Blogger blog.

If you have a book for sale, then you are surely doing all you can to make your book not only available to the public but visible to everyone who stumbles upon your blog. It is imperative that although you work to promote your work and the work of others who helped you get where you are, that you make buying your book as easy as possible for the casual passer-by. And one handy tool available to all authors who have a book to sale, is the "Buy from Amazon.com" widget available via your Amazon Associates program. (See image example below)

*Everyone who has something for sale on Amazon can easily join the Associates program and thereby advertise for Amazon and with Amazon.com.*

BUILD AMAZON WIDGET AND COPY HTML CODE:

To add this widget you simply navigate to Amazon.com and login to your account or simply click the [Join Associates] link at the bottom of the Amazon.com homepage. There you will find a quick and easy one page synopsis and summary of the program and also the link to complete your [online application]. Here you will be promoted to logon using your Amazon.com credentials and once through their secure server logon process you will begin setting up your payment options. These options are intended to help Amazon.com determine where and whom to make checks payable to. See with the Associates program, when you allow Amazon.com to post their widgets (although you can physically post them wherever you choose on your homepage or blog site), Amazon.com will reward you with a % of earnings based on sales generated by links from your websites.

Once you have completed the application process (takes less than the amount of time it takes for you to enter your name, address, & telephone) you will be on your way.  Once in your Associates account generalization page you can then select from a wide range of available Amazon widgets to post on your site (such as the one above which is a direct reference to my book) by selecting the "Build Links/Widgets" link on the left hand sidebar.

The whole process can take less than one hour (depending on how much time you want to spend perfecting the color, size, etc.) and then it's on to the next step: Posting the widget within your Blogger blog. The final step before posting the widget to your blog will be collecting the HTML source code. Amazon.com is so gracious, the developers even put a nice easy [copy] button on the last step. Take that HTML code and paste it into a Wordpad or Notepad document for the next step.

ADD AMAZON.COM WIDGET TO YOUR BLOGGER BLOG TEMPLATE:

Login to your Blogger account and @ the dashboard, select the [layout] option. Once in the layout editing screen, select (where on your blog layout you want the widget) and select (either) ADD PAGE ELEMENT or ADD A GADGET.

*You may need to be upgraded to the latest version of Blogger for these instructions to fit exactly. But keep in mind, you essentially are trying nothing more than to add some HTML/JAVA code as a page element or gadget.*

Navigate to the option that allows for a new HTML/Java SCRIPT option. The window that pops up (blank) is now ready to paste your code from previously--that you should have saved in either Wordpad or Notepad. Paste the code within that window and select Save and you are done.


~Bobby Ozuna
Drawing Stories...With Words

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