Nerdy stuff

Visiting the Amazon associates central website the other day after a long absence, I was excited to see that they now have some intriguing new ‘widgets’. The most useful for me is the ‘my favourites’ widget, a customizable box you can put on your web-site containing selected books, and your own comments on each book. Once you have set the box up and put it online, you can then alter it via the Amazon site, for example by changing the books.

I have put one on this blog, in the side bar, featuring all the books I have mentioned in posts. It will now be much easier to add new books, than via the individual entry for each book I did before.

I have also done lots of ‘favourites’ boxes on my Landlord-Law site (I don’t call them that, you can change the text at the top). Its great because I can recommend books which relate to the content of the page. More of a service to readers really than a money earning exercise - I think my average earnings are about £10 per quarter so it is hardly a get rich quick exercise.

But there is more. I can now put links in the text like this (hover your mouse, it is supposed to make a box pop up, but even if it doesn't it will still link to the book). Cool eh? You need an ASIN for that – I had to go to the ever helpful Wikipedia to find out what that was, and how to locate it (it is the ISDN number for books).

Other widgets include a slide show and product cloud, but I don’t like them as much, so will leave them for the time being.

Still, hours of innocent fun to be had. Why not try it - you too could earn a few pence extra per day! Oh, and here's a banner:



Of course your links depend on the Amazon site working properly. So if none of the above are showing - its not my fault!