Dear Amazon.com Associate, Would you like to display an Amazon.com search box on your web site, provide a link to our home page, or earn a percentage of every book your visitors order? Would you like to participate in the program even without recommending specific books? If so you're not alone - many of you have written to explain how these enhancements would help you sell more and serve your visitors better. We've been listening, and today we're very pleased to announce that we've added EVERY ONE of these features to our program. Starting this week, including all orders placed since Sunday April 26: * You'll earn a percentage of every qualifying item that your visitors order as a direct result of your links. In addition to the 5% - 15% you've always earned on recommended titles, we'll also pay you 5% on any additional qualifying items that your visitors order while they're here. * You can link directly to our home page, and earn 5% on every qualifying item ordered as a direct result of following those links - even without recommending any individual titles! * You can add a search box to your web site, allowing customers to search our entire catalog from your web site. You'll earn 5% of every qualifying item ordered as a direct result of following those links, whether you recommend books or not. * You'll continue to earn up to 15% on recommended books just as you have before. * We've added lots of new graphics for you to use, including several that are designed just for these new linking options. You can find them at: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/subst/partners/associates/assoc-art.html Qualifying items are all 1.5 million in-print books and books on tape (audio books) as well as any non-book item in our catalog like music CDs, DVDs, videos and Amazon.com merchandise. At this time, only out of print books and gift certificates are considered non-qualifying items. HOW TO ADD A HOME PAGE LINK: First, visit this page to find a new logo to use when linking to our home page. Some of them are specially designed just for this purpose and there are lots of new book images as well. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/subst/partners/associates/assoc-art.html Once you have a new image on your site, have it link to this URL: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect-home/benofbensskaandf HOW TO ADD A SEARCH BOX: Here's a small block of HTML you can cut and paste directly onto your web site. This will display a search box that lets your visitors type an author's name, title or subject words and go directly to that search result at Amazon.com. IMPORTANT NOTE: This HTML refers to the logo image called "logo-plain.gif" - one of the new images you can copy from our site. For this to work properly, you MUST copy this logo onto your web site and change the HTML below so that it points to wherever you have stored that image on your computer. Of course, please feel free to use a different logo from our collection if you prefer.
LINKING TO MUSIC TITLES If you've visited our site recently, you know that we're asking customers to help us design our upcoming music store. There are lots of music CDs in our catalog for you to choose from and Associates can link to them directly as recommended items. All non-book items earn 5% of the selling price. To link to music, follow this format http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0679433740/benofbensskaandf LINKING TO RECOMMENDED BOOKS You may now use the same format for linking to music and books - this new link format will work for all Amazon.com products. Your existing links to books will continue to function, but you may use the music link format above for both books and music if you like. WHERE DID THE CAPITAL "A" GO? The new link formats no longer require the additional capital "A" at the end of your account code in the links - don't insert it. You may also remove the "A" from your old links if you wish but it is not necessary when using the old "ISBN=" link format. Either way is fine. HOW TO DEAL WITH LINKING PROBLEMS We've tested the new link formats extensively, including the HTML code for the search box. If you have problems getting these new links to work, please check them over very closely. Small typos and extra spaces inserted in a link can cause problems, but if you copy these links exactly they should function normally for you. If you see a "broken image" on the search box, it means that either you don't have one of the new logos copied into the right place on your computer or you have an image with a different name. If your link isn't working, it's very likely that you've made some small mistake when inserting the new link onto your web pages. HOW TO GET HELP We're sending this message to tens of thousands of Associates at once, and we'll also be sending the quarterly payment reports very, very soon. As you can imagine, we expect a much larger than usual volume of email over the next week or two. Please try to restrict your questions to urgent matters only - at least for the next couple of weeks. We want to be able to give our full attention to those Associates whose requests need immediate attention. Of course we'll be here if you need us, but your patience and cooperation during the new few weeks is appreciated. We'll make every effort to provide you with help if you really get stuck. I hope you'll take advantage of these new linking options, and that you'll be pleased with the added referral fees already in effect. Thank you very much for becoming an Amazon.com Associate and helping us make this not just the first but the best such program on the Internet. Sincerely, Tom Schonhoff Amazon.com Associates Program ---------------------------------------------------------------------- P.S. In case you were wondering, we've just cut all the checks for those of you who earned more than $10.00 in referral fees this past quarter. Look for that email message separately, very soon.