There are many benefits to being an Amazon Affiliate. Typepad blogs allow you to enter your affiliate ID once and then when you enter an ISBN number they will automatically create the link to the Amazon site, downloading the cover thumbnail to your blog. The link to find out about being an Amazon Affiliate is http://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/join.
If you just go to www.amazon.com and scroll to the bottom of the home page, on the left side there is a list of services most people don't even know about because they never scroll down that far.
You can sell just about anything Amazon carries on a website or blog. You can also sell through an aStore, Amazon's new program for creating sales pages with anything sold on Amazon.com. On the left side of the Affiliate page above, there is a link to aStore information. You must be a member of the Affiliate program to have an aStore. It is absolutely free to sign up as an affiliate and free to have an aStore. Amazon takes care of everything for you and you get the profits. You do not have to go through the hassle of setting up a merchant account, getting products, shipping, etc.
Now, aStores are fine but they have limits. One thing you can't do as an affiliate is add products. If you are a publisher, you can join the Amazon Advantage program for under $30/year and send inventory to them for sale then sell it for free on your aStore.
If you want to add a product to ship yourself (such as used books, or products that you make) they have a special Marketplace program for that. The cost is steep - currently arount $40/month, but you can list and sell any products you want - used books, electronics, etc.
Another option is ProStores. http://www.prostores.com/. ProStores is owned by eBay. You have to pay to play, but there are multiple levels of services to choose from. They are tightly integrated with eBay and PayPal. With PayPal, people used to have to join PayPal to purchase products. This is no longer the case. When you process payments through PayPal (www.PayPal.com) consumers have a choice of paying through their PayPal account OR through a credit card. PayPal takes care of everything. It is very secure and you do not have to have your own merchant account. You do have to join PayPal and set up as a vendor there.
There are many other ways to have stores, but these are the two easiest ways. In later posts, I will go into other options. With many of these, they expect you to have online merchant services, which can complicate things and expose you to risks from scam artists. I will also get links to some of the books I recommend on marketing for small business.
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