Introduction

Recently I added a widget to my blog for Amazon that displays a Top Twelve list of health and business resources that have been most useful to me.  Most of the items on the list are in my personal collection.  This blog post is the result of my good friend, Liz Kilpatrick, asking me how I did this.  Here’s how to join Amazon as an affiliate and have a widget or link in your blog.

Create an Associate Account

1. Go http://www.amazon.ca/ if you are in Canada or http://www.amazon.com/ if you are not in Canada.  Amazon dot com is mainly geared to the United States.  If you are not in the USA, you will have an option to pick your country.
2. Scroll to the bottom of the Amazon page.  Click the Join Associates link.  Create an account.  Follow the prompts.
3. Approval may take a day or three.  You can still add links and widgets to your blog while your approval is pending.

Add a Widget to your Blog

1. Go to https://associates.amazon.ca/ (Canada) or https://associates.amazon.com/ (USA) and log in using the account you created above.
2. Click the Widgets tab.
3. The widget you see to the right of this post is My Favorites.  This is the one I will use for demonstrating in this article; go ahead and click on it.
4. Next we do a search for items of interest for our Favorites.  For this demo I did a search for Scrabble, my favorite word game.

   

5. Click the add product button for as many products as you desire.  When you are finished adding, click Next step.
6. We now may customize the appearance of our widget.  Don’t worry about getting it right the first time.  One of the coolest features is once the widget is installed on our blog, we can change it by logging into our Amazon Associates account.  When you have something you like, click Add to my Web page.

   

7. There are links for various blog platforms.  For my self-hosted WordPress blog, I simply clicked the Copy button.  This puts a copy the code on the clipboard.
8. Open a new tab or window and log into your blog.  The following instructions are for self-hosted WordPress.  Other platforms are similar.
9. From your WordPress Dashbord, go to the Appearance section along the left side and click Widgets.  Click the Text widget.  This is a generic widget that lets you enter a title and either HTML or text.
10. For my own blog, I left the title blank and pasted the code from Step #7 into the bottom area.

Here is the Scrabble demo widget I created above.  My regular Amazon recommendations appear on the right.

<A HREF=”http://ws.amazon.ca/widgets/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&MarketPlace=CA&ID=V20070822%2FCA%2Fgarcamheahomb-20%2F8001%2F24b9ab5a-9692-4359-bb17-cc929cd21f6d&Operation=NoScript” mce_HREF=”http://ws.amazon.ca/widgets/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&MarketPlace=CA&ID=V20070822%2FCA%2Fgarcamheahomb-20%2F8001%2F24b9ab5a-9692-4359-bb17-cc929cd21f6d&Operation=NoScript”>Amazon.ca Widgets</A>

Modify Existing Widgets

1. Navigate to https://widgets.amazon.ca/ or https://widgets.amazon.com/ and log in.
2. Under the Widgets heading, click My Widgets.
3. Changes made here will automatically be reflected on your blog.

Conclusion

As usual, I trust you found this helpful and look forward to your feedback.