Authors and musicians - link your blog to your Amazon product pages!

I am constantly amazed by the ability of Amazon.com to push into new ground. I've always said that Amazon is successful because they run the company as a content site that happens to sell stuff. Everything on the site is focused on creating important content that surrounds each product – things like editorial reviews, customer reviews, similar books, search inside and whatnot. There's even the cool statistically improbably phrase feature.

Amazon now allows bloggers to link their blog posts to their product page on Amazon in a program called AmazonConnect. What a cool way to add content to your page. Potential buyers see what you are passionate about by reading a few of your posts. You can even post with a podcast or a YouTube video embedded in your post which appears on Amazon.

So far very few authors and musicians are taking advantage of it.

Here is what it looks like on The New Rules of Marketing & PR product page. Scroll down below the product information and you will see my three most recent blog posts followed by customer reviews.

Kind of cool don’t you think?

Linking your blog to Amazon is very easy to set up. The best part is that after the one time set up procedure is complete, you don't have to do anything else. Your blog posts automatically appear on your product pages.

Here are the steps required:

1. First, you need an Amazon profile. If you've ever written a book review, then you've already got one. Here is what mine looks like.

2. Then you create an Amazon blog on your profile page. If you want to, you can manually update your Amazon blog, but I think most people will just want to link their existing blog.

3. Once the blog is set up, you link your existing blog's RSS feed to your new Amazon blog.

4. The final step is to link your Amazon blog to your product pages (your books, CDs, and other products). To do this, Amazon needs to verify you are who you say you are so they have a form to fill out so your agent or publisher can verify.

Here is a list of authors who have participated in this AmazonConnect program.

All blogger/authors and blogger/musicians should consider setting this up.

Comments

[Yehuda Berlinger]

Sorry. I couldn't figure out how to add my own blog/rss . I have an Amazon login and I've written reviews. Can you be more specific about where on your profile page you can find this link? Or is there some other requirement I'm missing.

I also didn't understand what posts get linked to what products. Do you manually link them? Does any post in which you reference a product auto-link to your post?

Yehuda

[David Meerman Scott]

Yehuda

Since I already have this up and working on my Amazon profile, I can no longer see the how to links.

The program is called AmazonConnect blog. You can try the help pages that are available from your profile.

You can also try this link.
http://www.amazon.com/connect

Sorry - that's the best I can do.

[Michael A. Stelzner]

Here's how it works.

You go under your individual profile on Amazon.

Should look like this: http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/A1EAE9YL9AGZ0Z/

Then click the add RSS feed link under Your AmazonCOnnect Blog

The system says that next time you post something on your blog it will feed to your product pages.

Thanks David!!

[Denise aka The Blog Squad]

I do believe you must be a member of AmazonConnect in order to set up a blog. Which means you have to be an author whose books are available on Amazon. At least that's what I took away when I tried to set up an AmazonConnect account.