For your Christmas Shopping on Amazon, think of it as a Tip Jar

I was going to do another beginning of the week political blog post, but I avoided the internet all weekend. I even took Facebook off of my phone. I’d reached my sanity quota for how much preening and virtue signalling I could handle for one week.

So today’s blog post is about one of the ways I GET PAID. I thought of this because I was doing Christmas shopping online last night.

See all of those book links over on the right? If you click on them they take you to one of my books on Amazon. The cool part is because I’ve got an Amazon Affiliates advertising account, I get a percentage of that sale for the referral.
TipJar

(Or click this image: )- Jack

The really cool part is that if you enter Amazon through any of those links, even if you don’t buy the item you clicked on, anything else you buy I get a percentage of that sale for the referral. So if you click on Monster Hunter but you end up buying a pair of cowboy boots while you are there, I just got like 6% of that purchase.

It doesn’t cost you anything extra. The prices are the same. All Amazon cares about is how you got there, so if you entered through that portal, that person advertising it gets paid.

It is pretty nifty.

So basically, if you are planning on doing any shopping, Christmas or otherwise, on Amazon, if you enter through one of my links, I get paid. So think of it as a tip jar for blogging.

I can see a big list of what gets purchased, but I can’t see who purchases what, and I don’t see any of the purchaser’s information.

I use this to pay for things like the MHN upgrade to a dedicated server and hosting (note, no more crashing!) but honestly most of the time the Amazon money is applied toward the purchase of ammunition and miniatures. 🙂

So if you do that, thanks. It is appreciated.

I don’t know what the rules are like now to get set up with an Amazon Affiliates program, but you need to have a website that gets a lot of traffic, and you need to show them your stats. I don’t know what the cut off is. According to the Alexa ratings somehow my blog is up in the top 50k of all the websites in America (and considering there has to be like 40,000 porn sites ahead of me, that’s pretty good!) so I get a pretty decent amount of traffic. But if you’ve got a blog that gets some traffic, it is really worth looking in to.

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29 thoughts on “For your Christmas Shopping on Amazon, think of it as a Tip Jar”

    1. If you’re visiting via smart phone, the site configuration is different than with a laptop/desktop. Amazingly smart things, these magic elf boxes! Scroll down. They’re there.

      1. No, I only use a desktop computer. The “Tip Jar” in the middle of the page showed up just fine, but there have never been any “BuyMe BuyMe BuyMeNOW” links shown to the right. Incidentally, I’ve appreciated that – I find trying to read a blog that plastered with BuyMes very irritating.
        You mentioned “Scroll down” – Ekshully, I’d never scrolled past the “Recent Commentaries” – You’re right; there are links to merchandise at the bottom. Thanks.

    2. Jack added a tip jar into the post. You’re probably on a mobile device. They’re at the bottom on there. I forgot that part when I typed this up.

  1. I signed up for an Amazon Affiliates account right when I set up my blog. Apparently you don’t really need any traffic at all. (They will sweep your account, though, if you don’t generate enough referral fees.)

  2. Tangently related, I am a couple of chapters into MHI (#1) on my reader and having a blast. And I can’t get the image of the mini-lop with the switchblade out of my head. -laugh- (having lived several years in a certain town in the middle of Calif, I love the references – although I would’ve never call it humid, at least not when I was there in the 70’s.)

        1. There are 18 years of archives. Budget some time. Thankfully, the mini-lop in question shows up early.

          After that you might want to start reading some John Ringo as well. You might find something interesting there as well.

    1. (Hangs head in shame.) I know this, and keep going straight to the Amazon site.

      Well, I needed a New Year’s resolution (besides doing more writing) anyway.

  3. Hm. Does anyone know if there’s a way for me to log into my Amazon Smile account once I enter Amazon through the links to the right? I’d love to see both Larry AND Jews For The Preservation Of Firearms Ownership get a piece of the action.

    1. Yeah, I do this all the time, because I want to support Wounded Warriors.
      You have to open ASmile, then save it as a bookmark.
      Next, go back to whatever page had the merchandise link you want.
      Copy the text-name of what you want, i.e., book title in this case.
      Now, right-click in the URL bar – enter an “a” – this should bring up a menu of your “a” links.
      Scroll down to ASmile (mine always comes up at the top, because I shop so much).
      Click that – ASmile will open for you – Paste the merchandise text into their Search bar.
      It should then take you right to what you want.

  4. Any idea if it works to other Amazon (i.e. .co.uk?) probably a bit more niche market this side of the pond but if it does can you put up a link?

  5. Figures. I bought my dead-tree instance of SOTBS yesterday at the dead-tree bookstore.

    Here’s a thing though, can your cyber minions put up a link to foreign Amazon pages? Mine is Amazon Canada. With the exchange rate, nobody in Canuckistan shops Amazon US if they can possibly avoid it. Our money is worth nothing these days.

  6. Mr. Correia:

    I basically do all of my book shopping at the local SF store, “Uncle Hugo’s” (it’s where you’ve had your past couple of signings here in Minnesnowta). I’ve been buying stuff there ever since I discovered them back in their old place off Franklin Avenue ‘way back when. Good folks, and I’m happy to pay the small premium over buying through Amazon just to help keep ’em in business (and since they’ve got the worlds greatest selection of used SF, too).

    Here’s hoping you and your family had a safe and happy Thanksgiving.

  7. Thanks for the steer, why not?! Also, working on your writers’ workshop helped me polish my story into a sale, so doubly inclined to say thanks. When is the next one; I want to steer someone to it.

  8. OK, I just discovered you thanks to Chicks on the Right so I’ve got lots of reading to do. Please tell me which 3 books I should pick up first. Thanx

    1. It depends what you are into. Son of the Black Sword is my latest.

      Urban fantasy monster hunting for fun and profit? – Monster Hunter International
      1930s alternate history super heroes with magic? – Hard Magic
      Epic fantasy, caste system rebellion, sword and sorcery? – Son of the Black Sword
      Modern thriller, mercenaries vs. thieves? – Dead Six
      Steampunk mad science lightning swords dirty dozen? – Into the Storm

      And the books get better as the series go along, just because I got lots of practice. 🙂

        1. All of those are the first books of the series.

          Monster Hunter International
          Monster Hunter Vendetta
          Monster Hunter Alpha
          Monster Hunter Nemesis

          Dead Six
          Swords of Exodus
          Still debating the title, but it #3 is coming this summer. 🙂

          Son of the Black Sword
          House of Assassins (forthcoming)
          Destroyer of Worlds (forthcoming)

          Hard Magic
          Spellbound
          Warbound

          Into the Storm
          Into the Wild (forthcoming)

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