I run a few small web sites that use the Amazon API (www.soccerminutes.com & www.shanganagh.com). The code I use is an off-the-shelf product called Associate-O-Matic. This code allows me to easily hook up with the Amazon API without having to touch a single line of code. It allows you to create an eCommerce website based on a particular topic such as soccer, star wars or even iPods, whatever you like really! With your Amazon associates ID you earn a referral fee for anything that is sold through the website you have created.
Recently Amazon have created their own tool that allows you to create miniature sites through their associates members area.
After logging in, you can easily create mini sites on any topic through a simple, easy to use control panel. Here are some examples of sites I’ve played with.
http://astore.amazon.co.uk/man-united-21/
http://astore.amazon.co.uk/nintendo-wii2006-21/
http://astore.amazon.co.uk/james-bond06-21/
These sites were created in minutes. My main concern so far about these sites is the search engines. A search on google shows 384,000 of these sites listed from the astore.amazon.co.uk domain name and 502,000 from the astore.amazon.com domain
However, inner pages of these domains do not seem to be indexed at all. It remains to be seen if anyone can make a success out of these stores, if they do, I would imagine it’s not from search engine traffic.
I started using Associate-O-Matic a couple of months ago and it is a great system. astore does not give you half the control.
Tom
I think you’re missing the point of Astores completely.
They’re not really aimed at you or me. I can configure a PHP script or a Perl script without any major issue and get it to play nice with the search engines. However a lot of your clients (and mine) wouldn’t be able to do that. They might be comfortable using Blogger, so why not get them to promote a few Amazon products as well?
Michele
I see you point, but try sign up for an affiliates account.
I don’t think the affiliates sign up as aimed at anyone but those that know what they are doing.
The sign up requires you to input details such as “your website profile”, wich requires a website name and website address.
If they are targetting a different market, they should make it a LOT easier.
Tom
I don’t know what the signup process is like these days, as I’ve had my Amazon affiliate accounts for about 7 years
However ALL affiliate programs need to get some basic information from people. If you look at ours you’ll see that we ask for some basic info as well
Michele
Tom, Michele and Alan,
Do you know if masked URL’s that have some title, keywords and descriptions have any weight/presence/priority in the search engines?
Thanks for your help if you know.
Tom, I especially liked your Amazon API example sites!
-Steven
When you say masked URL’s what do you mean?
Title, Keywords and description still have some weight with most search engines. But I’m not sure that that is your question???
Thanks, Tom.
I should have clarified better. You know when a domain company gives the option to redirect&mask the domain to a different URL…
So, for example http://thesecretextendededition.com/
is redirected&masks an astore. If you view the source you can see the description/keywords used.
Will this eventually make it onto the radar of search engines toward the early results when people search the secret extended edition , etc…? Or does it have to be fully hosted like http://www.buythesecretdvdonline.com
?!
Thank you!
-Steven
Hi Steven,
The first website you show is using a Frame to pull in the aStore, so this will not be of much benefit to them in relation to search engines. Google would only pick up the frame code e.g.:
There are no links from this page to the aStore itself, so Google will not follow it through.
To be honest, aStores are not the way to go if you are creating a store that you are hoping to appear on search engines for. You should try and get to grips with a program like http://www.associate-o-matic.com/ if you really want a chance of getting a good listing on the search engines.
Tom
Thanks, Tom!
-Steven