If there's one affiliate program that seems to have more members than any other, it must be Amazon.com. I've heard that they have over 900,000 affiliates, and the payout isn't too bad if you have any click thru sales at all. Even better, it's fairly straightforward to sign up -- do so by clicking here -- and you can even be paid in Amazon gift certificates if you have a book, DVD or music habit that needs constant attention.

But for all that they're easy to work with, I don't particularly find that Amazon is set up to help you maximize your revenue from their adverts. An example of this that I bumped into just a few days ago is how they offer to serve up adverts for magazines from their server. So let's take a closer look and I'll share the code I wrote to improve on what they have and improve my click-thru rate.

First off, a caveat: Amazon's affiliate program is a dream for people who don't have the desire or inclination (or expertise) to grovel around in HTML code, so if my later talk of CSS and DIV's is going to be upsetting, remember that you can always use the affiliate build-a-link system to create a wide range of adverts, ranging from a huge keyword-tied graphic like this (the category is "photography" and the keyword is "nikon"):

to just the URL needed to have a buy the Da Vinci Code link on your own site (or weblog) that ties subsequent purchases by visitors to your affiliate account.

Let's get back to the magazine advert, though, shall we? Among the many things that Amazon offers, they have a database of thousands of different magazine subscriptions that you can buy with a mouse click or two. As an affiliate, I like selling Amazon magazine subscriptions too, because they're a trusted brand and reliable company online, so people are more likely to sign up with them than with "fly-by-night-super-cheep-magazines.com".

For a prototypical magazine, Entrepreneur, here's what the default Amazon link looks like:

Looks nice but you have no way of knowing it's a magazine. Not good. I mean, what does "Buy New" mean in this context anyway?

Fortunately, it wasn't more than about ten minutes of experimenting with HTML and style sheets for me to be able to basically duplicate the appearance of the advert, but rephrase things to make it more obviously a magazine subscription advertisement:

Entrepreneur Magazine

One Year Subscription!
Only $11.97

The key to customizing this for your own magazine subscription offers is to be able to disassemble an Amazon URL. The URL for the Entrepreneur subscription, for example, is the long, scary:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00005NINU/davetaylor/103-7816818-0458222?creative=125581&camp=2321&link_code=as1

This includes my affiliate ID - davetaylor - and has various session ID information and other junk. But I don't care about any of that stuff. All I care about is the Amazon Stock Item Number, the ASIN, which in this case is clearly indicated as B00005NINU.

Armed with that data, I can create a link to the page by using the template URL of

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00005NINU/davetaylor/

I can link to the Amazon-served graphic with

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00005NINU.01.TZZZZZZZ.jpg

and I can create a "buy" button by using that ASIN value as the specific field value for one of the hidden attributes of the form button itself.

Now, finally, here's the HTML and CSS that I used for the custom magazine subscription advert above, with each of the elements that would need to be tweaked for a different magazine highlighted in red:

<div style='border:1px solid #666;padding:4px;font-size:80%;width:100px;'>

<br />
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00005NINU/davetaylor"><img
src='http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00005NINU.01.TZZZZZZZ.jpg' width="64"
height="90"
alt='(cover of Entrepreneur Magazine)' border='0'
hspace='10' /></a>
<br />
<b>Entrepreneur Magazine</b><br /><br />

One Year Subscription!<br />
Only <span style='color:#900'>$11.97</span><br />
<br />

<form method="POST" action="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/dt/assoc/handle-buy-box=0689859392">
<input type="hidden" name="asin.B00005NINU" value="1">
<input type="hidden" name="tag-value" value="davetaylor">
<input type="hidden" name="tag_value" value="davetaylor">
<input type="hidden" name="dev-tag-value" value="your Amazon Developer Token ID">
<input type="image" name="submit.add-to-cart"
src="http://rcm-images.amazon.com/images/G/01/buttons/buy-from-tan.gif"
value="$11.97 at Amazon" border="0" />
</form>
</div>

As you can see, it's not the simplest of tasks, but realize that once I figured this out for one page I quickly duplicated it on dozens of pages, advertising appropriate magazines for a variety of different areas on my Web site. The only tweak you'll need to get this working is that in addition to your affiliate ID, you'll also need an Amazon developer token, which you can apply for on this page once you're in the affiliate program.

So if you're not an Amazon affiliate yet, sign up! Then don't be afraid to crack open some of their links and adverts to create just the link and format you want. Oh, and feel free to use my example code above too, and if you forget to change the affiliate ID, well, that's okay too. :-)