Amazon.com Launches Series of Widgets

Last week, Amazon.com announced that they were making available a series of widgets designed to add visual zing to websites (see ours, above). The widgets can display slideshows, wish lists, video clips and so on. Amazon’s purpose, of course, is to display their product offerings as widely as possible to send more traffic to their own site and, ultimately, to create added sales revenue. Their method is to let website owners, bloggers and online social networkers express themselves vividly and visually by using these Amazon tools and a personalized selection of the many millions of products (books, music, movies, clothes, food, etc.) carried by Amazon.

The widgets are a series of small, visually dynamic and easily configurable website tools that feature products from Amazon on blogs, websites and social networking pages. In as little as one minute, users can populate a widget with their favorite Amazon products and their comments about those products, and select from a set of color and layout themes to match both their mood and website.

Amazon’s Press Release explains what the widgets are and what they do and includes an informative linked example of each. Amazon’s widget site is where you can plunge in and add a widget to your website. Amazon Widgets are free to use. Users have the option to make money with their Amazon Widgets by joining the Amazon Associates program and they can earn referral fees from Amazon when a visitor to their site clicks through their Amazon Widget to the applicable Amazon website and makes a purchase. The Amazon Associates blog entry shows how you can use the widgets to generate income.

"Bloggers and active online social networkers have asked us for a fun and interesting way to display Amazon products on their pages as a way to showcase their favorite things. With Amazon Widgets, they can now do this and make money at the same time," said Sean McMullan, Manager, Amazon Associates.

Not everyone will choose to feature books most prominently in their Amazon widgets linking, but that’s what I expect we’ll all be doing here at E-Reads.

- John