Blogger (Google) and Amazon it seems have collaborated and introduced a way for people using Blogger to monetize their blogs using Amazon.
I wonder if Google is making some money as a 2-tier affilaite referring so many affiliates to Amazon
Anyway the implementation is broken for average users
This is what the interface looks like
Seems very simple
- You search for something
- Click buttons
- Code is inserted into your post
Perfect… not!
Average Users
An average blogger blogspot user will see
This as a nice text link
Kindle Wireless Reading Device (6" Display, Global Wireless, Latest Generation)
This as a nice image link
This as a nice text with image
Update: it doesn’t get stripped out the same way with WordPress but leaving it “broken” here anyway (in the feed)
Oops!
If your readers are reading from an RSS Feed that nice text with image gets stripped out, and the same would be true of emails created from an RSS feed.
This is just the same as happens with Javascript, which is why Google had to implement Adsense in a different way for RSS feeds. Amazon & Google need to do the same for Amazon ads, or use an alternative method such as flash embeds.
This is the code they currently insert
<iframe src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=freeadver0cef-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B0015T963C&fc1=000000&IS2=1<1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="align:left;padding-top:5px;width:131px;height:245px;padding-right:10px;" align="left" scrolling="no" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" frameborder="0"></iframe>
Which is meant to appear like this
Blogger & Amazon should really get rid of the link+image option, or code it in such a way that something appears in the RSS feeds, even if it is just a link back to the permalink of the post to suggest clicking through – better would be a dynamic image which Google certainly know how to create for Adsense for Feeds.
At a minimum tell bloggers that it won’t appear in feeds and they might need to include alternatives of their own.
If you see someone using this code on Blogger / Blogspot, warn them about this as it might be costing them revenue
You can link to this post with the following code
<a href="http://http://andybeard.eu/2609/amazon-blogger.html">Warning: Amazon Blogger Integration Broken</a>
Update: hopefully code fixed in my RSS feed
Tags: amazon, Amazon Affiliate Program
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