You've likely seen the phrase 'easy money' thousands of times on the Internet. Get-rich-quick marketers offer 'effortless' ways for you to make 'thousands of dollars in your first week'. This article, however, describes a free opportunity that really IS easy, and within minutes you can start making money through a website that you probably already use and trust. Intrigued?
No, this isn't Google AdSense or some other kind of pay-per-click or pay-per-impression program. This is a great system that can be used for blogs, article directories, link directories, or any type of website that uses a common wrapper or footer for pages. It is also good for smaller sites with individually coded pages, although the installation time will require a one-time investment of a few seconds for each page.
All you have to do is add a little snippet of Javascript to the bottom of your webpages. You earn a percentage of sales based on links created from keywords already in the text of your site. No tweaking or fiddling - exactly the same code for every page - and you don't have to make design decisions about where to place it.
Enter - TA DA! Amazon.com.
You can sign up for the Amazon affiliate program, copy and paste a bit of Javascript code, and soon you will see little clickable 'links' on your pages that highlight books or merchandise at Amazon when you mouse over them. You control the colors, whether or not links will open in a new window, what you want to be able to sell (just 'books'? only 'computer and video games'? strictly 'clothing and accessories'? or 'everything').
<b>How to Sign Up and Install on your Website</b>
<li>1. Set up an account by clicking on the 'Join Associates' link near the bottom of the Amazon site.
<li>2. Go to the affiliate area and click on the following:
Tools ... Build Links ... Context Links
<li>3. Access the 'Select Locale' flyout menu to choose the most appropriate Amazon site for your audience - i.e., United States, United Kingdom, France, etc.
<li>4. Choose your options. Select 'Advanced Options' if you don't want to sell everything that Amazon offers. You can restrict the products to a specific group or several groups, if you wish.
<li>5. Copy the code given into the appropriate files on your website. The code should appear just before the closing 'body' tag.
<b>A Few Notes</b>
<li> You can disallow any portion of a page. The 'Context Links FAQ' section explains how - or you can access a longer version of this article as described in the author resource box for more information.
<li> Amazon context links do not appear the first time you load a page, like they do with AdSense and other programs. It may take anywhere from a few minutes to three or four hours before you see the first ads on a new page.
<li> Because the Javascript is installed at the bottom of your pages, load times are not increased.
<li> Dynamic pages are monitored by Amazon, and once the spider calculates the frequency of updates, it spiders accordingly so that new content is included in the linking process.
Give it a try! Your website visitors already trust Amazon - and the links will provide useful content in a relatively unobtrusive manner. If you want to see how the program looks and works, visit some of the article directories in the author's resource box, and load a few of the newest articles. What have you got to lose?
(c)Copyright Kathy Steinemann: This article is free to publish only if this copyright notice, the byline, and the author's note below (with active links) are included.
A longer version of this article is available at <a href="http://1stratearticles.com/">1st Rate Articles</a>. Use the site search engine to search for Amazon_CLS. The system is also installed in the <a href="http://www.triple1.com/Travel/">travel articles</a> area at 111 Travel Directory and the <a href="http://www.a-language-guide.com/Articles">language articles</a> section at A Language Guide. | 
