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September 7, 2004April 15, 2012 by Brendon J. Wilson

Clicking For Dollars

A couple weeks back, I mentioned to one of my co-workers that he should check out the special features on the “Wag the Dog” DVD. About five minutes later, he passed by my cube and mentioned that he had looked at the information on my blog and added the film to his Netflix queue. The importance of this moment didn’t strike me until Apple’s more recent announcement of an affiliate program for the iTunes Music Store.

It occurred to me that my friend had been forced to go through a circuitous route to add the movie to his Netflix queue. Rather than simply clicking a link within the review on my web page, he had to log into his Netflix account, find the movie and then add it to his queue of movies. What a pain.

It’s no secret that I’m a fan of the Amazon Affiliates program – it seems almost obvious that Netflix should incorporate a similar affiliation system to allow web sites to provide users with an easy way to use the Netflix system. Such a system would enable Netflix to embed itself into the web – and all it would cost is a little web plumbing and whatever credit they give to referring web sites. Netflix gets a way to leverage the blogosphere, the blogosphere gets a way to further build useful content and value for its readership, and the bloggers get a way to get mildly compensated for their effort to create value.

But the prospect of multiple affiliation systems raises an interesting user interface obstacle (oh, where art thou OK/Cancel?): what happens when affiliation systems collide?

Picture the scenario: a user comes to your web site to read your review of a kick-ass new independent film about an underground band you’re interested in checking out. Does the link to the movie go to Amazon (and hence, contains your Amazon Associates ID) to allow the user to buy the DVD, or does it go to Netflix to allow the user to add the film to their Netflix queue? Does the link to the album go to Amazon to allow the user to buy the CD, or does it go to iTunes to allow the user to buy individual tracks in a digital form? What if they prefer to buy digital music from Real? Or movies from Barnes and Noble?

Although Amazon is the only real player with enough momentum to draw significant link-love from the bloggers, they can’t be all things to all people. Inevitably, as demonstrated by Apple’s affiliate program announcement, there will be new entrants, each striving to carve out their particular niche by leveraging blogs to enable customers to be “self-selected”, for lack of a better word. But it’ll have to get easier – blogging tools fail abysmally to simplify the process of leveraging other web services, like Google’s Adsense (assuming they don’t smack you down in the process). Making it easier will require a standard mechanism to interface with affiliation systems. Hmm, makes me wonder – would Marc Canter consider affiliation relationships another form of micro-content?

in Technology 2 comments

May 11, 2004April 16, 2012 by Brendon J. Wilson

Money For Somethin’?

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?