I came across the associate program offered by amazon.com when I was surfing their website. Basically they offer a 4% commission on anything that is sold through a lead from your website. But more important, I am interested in their vast collection of book database. I am thinking of starting a book swap website, and really want to tab into ready made database. They do offer something called ECS (E-Commerce Service) that will let you do that. Has anyone had any experience with this? How difficult is the programming involved? I have basic knowledge of PHP and has done programming in Cold Fusion before.

I'm an Amazon Associate and I have had some experience with the database that you are refering to.

The database is XML based so there are several ways to use the information.

You can search via url the entire database for keywords, title, author, etc...

You can use PHP to interface with the XML either with the PHP XML functions or by pattern recognition inside of the XML documents.
The XML document returned will look something similar to this:


That is a simplified example but you can see that collecting the data using pattern recognition is pretty straight forward if you know how to do this in PHP.

You can also use an XML parser to help you out but you'd need to know how to access it from whatever other script or program you are using.

There are some scripts written by other Amazon Associates that you may be able to use.

Amazon will have it's staff check your site out from time to time to ensure that you aren't abusing the system. Just remeber, as long as you provide the buy it link with any database item you display on your website, you can pretty much clone their database without any problems.
You can use a script to search the Amazon database and copy any information that you search for into your own database. You database will be quicker to access from your site that the Amazon database. Then from your database, you can provide your users with a very detailed description of any book from the database. You can even get the images from Amazon which they want you to save to your own server. Then somewhere on the page probably near the bottom, just add your link to the Amazopage for the book. This way you are actively advertising the product from Amazon and providing your users with all the information they need. Who knows, someone may even buy the book and you'll get the 4%.

Amazon is kind of slow going sometimes but at least you only need $10.00US to get paid each quarter.

Well, I hope this helps.

vujsa

I looked briefly into the Amazon Associate Program. But about the database in question. What if you do not have alot of experience with databases? Is there some set-up way that Amazon will work through your website? I was thinking of going that route once I got my site up, but if Amazon just put up whatever it wanted, it just wouldn't be for me. I'd want to have some sort of control of what goes on my site. But now that I think about it, I guess it would be hard without your own database to control the content. Anyway, if anyone knows about Amazon with no need for your own databases, let me know.

Thanks for the replies! I am still in the conception stage of this website and exploring my options. It’s nice to know that I can find a way to save some of the information on my server for quick search. I guess I really have to brush up on my PHP, SQL and XML.

Thanks!

Well, if you are just wanting to advertise products from Amazon on your website, then you can use their forms to build ads based on several criteria. You can do individual item ads or keyword ads. Using an ad management script, you can rotate the ads as you wish.

The database only comes into play if you want to build ads or use the data outside of the normal Amazon ad builder. Like if you wanted to show all of the books related to a certain keyword but you wanted to display them in a format not offered by the Amazon ad builder form.

Another reason for this is if you wanted to offer a lot of information to your users without the need for them to go to Amazon. You can advertise a book and have a link to more information. Then you can have a page on your server that will allow the usser to get the information they need without leaving your website. This way if they don't want the book, they are still on your website to look for more. If they buy the book directly from your website, you get a larger commission. If the user goes to Amazon doesn't buy the book and buys a different book instead, you still get a commission but not a much.

The Amazon Associates program also allows for the creation of your own web based bookstore that uses the Amazon stock as your stores stock. A purchase from your website is shipped from Amazon and you get the commission. I'm not sure of all of the details on this program.

All of this information is openly available at Amazon.com

Hope This Helps.

vujsa

I doubt I can actually sell any books, do they care if you are only using their database as long as your provide a “buy” link? Have you had any success with your Amazon ads, vujsa?

Thanks