Amazon’s Associate program offers at least 5% on every purchase. Items linked directly by the account can earn up to 15% but they are somewhat vague about what determines the actual price.
Even at that ambiguous rate mechanism, if we only work with the 5% rate dopers will have to purchase about six-thousand items a year from Amazon (collectively, of course) to pull in thirty-thousand a year (that is assuming an arithmetic mean sale price of $10, which is actually pretty low).
I alone spend about $500 a year at amazon between books and CDs, which would put my lot in at $10 a year to the Straight Dope, given the lowest tier percentage. As others mention, however, even non-dopers could be encouraged to click through. I know my mom wouldn’t mind (she’s a lurker, never registered). Directly linked books make higher revenue as well, so if persons (like me) who often refer to books and are not afraid to preview their posts learn how to code direct links to books with the SD account this could only improve the situation. I would much rather put forth effort into learning to code an associate url than I would to just give the SD money! (not that I don’t think they deserve it, of course, but as a matter of preference this would allow me to get two things for the price of one: a great message board and good reading material).
In fact, the linking process isn’t especially difficult. If you’ll look here you can see that a direct book link would take the following form:
[url=“http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0201354934/your_associates_id”]Read this book for a clear understanding of basic HTML[/url]. More concisely, of course, and given my godly coding skills, we would see that this book clearly demonstrates the need for a better paradigm for consciousness, starting from the ground up.
From this page we see the following criteria:
I think that the mods and administration strictly adhere to the above (even though Amazon themselves don’t adhere to that code of conduct! (check out the nifty combo they offer, lol)).
Space Dog, I’m not sure any regular doper could be perfectly trusted with something like this. Hey, I know I would be honest with it, but there is a pretty high doubt-level here on an effectively anonamous message board, no?