Over in this thread, you can see there was some discussion about six months ago (at least on the member side) about having a link that would let you buy stuff from Amazon and give kickbacks to the SDMB. Has there been any discussion about this with the powers that be?
It was on a back burner for a while, but is now under serious discussion. We’re in the fact-finding phase. The mills grind slowly.
I’ve always been a huge advocate of Amazon linking and frankly, thought it would have been much better to introduce this before trying to introduce advertising. I can’t think of a single person who would object to Amazon linking but it seems theres quite a bit of resistance to the whole adwords thing.
Shoot, a whole Marketplace sub-forum would be welcome. I’d be more inclined to eBay from Dopers. And there are plenty of people who run interesting businesses.
It might seem that encouraging IRL contacts opens the messageboard up to further complications and complaints, but I think the opposite is true; thinning the veil of anonymity improves accountability, in my experience.
I usually don’t chime into these types of threads but I buy all my books from Amazon and I currently go straight to their page when I order. I would gladly click through a sponsorship banner if the boards put one up.
I used to buy my Amazon books through the Sluggy Freelance partnership, but since the page redesign, they forgot to add the link.
I think a SDMB partnership with Amazon would be a fine choice, as they go together well.
I would like that, too, except it would mean I’d stop doing it through the guy I already use.
Nah, he’s one guy running a terrific site and needs the money more than the SDMB.
We are working on it. I was thinking maybe just an amazon search box under the header? I think it needs to be somewhere fairly obvious or it will just be forgotten about. You can do “highlighted items” which are supposed to have better conversion rates, but those might be more obtrusive. I search amazon from the dope all the time anyway, when someone mentions a book that sounds good in a thread.
Yes, keep it handy and obvious.
See? We have a revenue producer that some people actually want and would use.
::starts chant:: “do it, do it, do it…”
I would DEFINITELY support this.
Can Amazon auto-redirect to the correct national website?
Yeah, I’ll say! Seeing as how I suggested this in November, 2001 (and I probably wasn’t the first), that’s some long-ass fact finding mission. But obviously I’m one who’d take advantage of such a link, as well. Better late than never, I guess, but imagine all the missed revenue over the past 4 years!