I’m a huge fan of the Amazon Associates program, notwithstanding my previous concerns that it seems unfair that someone can make more money in referral fees by linking to Amazon books than their authors make in royalties. That concern aside, it’s still a marvelous system that, when combined with Amazon’s Web Services APIs, has yielded some very interesting applications. I’ve recently seen two excellent applications that appear to effectively leverage Amazon’s programs to create value-added functionality that benefits both the application users (in terms of functionality) and the application authors (in terms of referral fees).
The first example is Toru Yano’s iTunes Radio Lover. It’s a simple little application that “displays the iTunes’ current streaming title along with the cover art”. Oh, and you can of course click on the album cover image and go to Amazon to buy the CD. Naturally. It’s simple, but it works.
A much more sophisticated example is provided by MusicPlasma. MusicPlasma is a Flash application that allows a user to view a map of the relationships between bands. Enter a band name and the application shows a map of different bands that might interest you – presumably based off of Amazon’s own recommendations data. See something you’d like to buy? The current artist’s discography shows that album cover for the application and links to Amazon, embedding an Amazon Associates ID along the way to make sure the MusicPlasma creators make something out of the transaction.
From my own experience, I found the Amazon Associates program to be invaluable even without using the Web Services APIs. When I launched my book, I used Google Adwords to guide people to the book and an Amazon Associates ID to capture extra revenue. The Amazon referral fee more than covered the costs of the Google AdWord campaign. Though it may seem like the developers of these applications are making money for nothing, I’d argue these applications are finding unique and interesting niches to fill in order to drive viewership and capture referral revenues.
Though I originally couldn’t figure out why Jeff Bezos was hailed as a visionary – now it’s abundantly clear: he’s created a system that permits free innovation that supports Amazon’s ability to generate revenue. Like the developers who create applications built on top of the Amazon APIs and Associates program, all he has to do is sit back and let the system make money for itself. The only way this could be improved would be if developers building on top of Amazon’s programs could in turn enable others to re-use their applications and continue the process ad-infinitum. I’m not such if that would technically count as a digital pyramid-scheme, but with useful applications like this, who cares?