If you are familiar with the recent changes to Amazon Terms & Conditions, then you will know that as well as closing the Classic fee plan to new reruits in the UK programme, the terms changed to disallow standalone aStore sites.
That doesn’t mean that aStore solutions don’t have their place, but you may need to embed them in other websites as I have done on my Video Preview site, where I include separate stores for UK and US visitors. In that example, I have simply included the aStores in iFrames as a quick fix as that site took on a new direction.
I have however come across a different solution that I would like to share with you … associate-o-matic. This site can be built through an admin interface that will allow you to customise extensively (using Amazon Web Services – AWS), and able to forget about the aStore restrictions.
I have installed a demo associate-o-matic site example here on Affiliate Stores to show a virtually virgin site. I am extremely impressed so far with the customisations available … far too many to list here … and so many that I can’t envisage playing too much any time soon.
Associate-o-Matic is available in two flavours …. full and lite.
The lite version works on a revenue share basis whereby your own links are shown 90% of the time with associate-o-matic substituting their own links on 1 out of 10 occasions.
The full version offers some extra functionality and is available at a first year license of $99. The license allows you to use on as many of your own domains as you see fit. Subsequent years licenses are only $20 after the initial payment.
You can see the full list of features here.
It costs nothing to take a trial … after which it will revert to a Lite edition unless you purchase a full license in the interim.
Oh … and it doesn’t even need a database to run on as calls are made either live to Amazon or by pulling a locally cached version.
It is definitely a tool worth looking at if you want to work with Amazon more.
