As I mentioned before I use the Now Reading plugin for WordPress here. However, it has a small anoyance. It linked to the “You may also be interested in these items…” page, rather than the item’s detail page. If the user didn’t click “add to cart” and looked at the “also interested in these items” stuff, it would cut your earnings from 15% to only 5%. Then again an article titled Amazon Associates Beware states:
The “ref=nosim” links apparently work correctly, although they are undocumented on the Associates site. However, it’s unclear as to whether you make more money from using them. You’re more likely to make that 15%, but you might make more in the aggregate from the recommended items you get using the first method. That is, the number of people looking to buy that item right away (say, 2 people counted at 15% apiece for a $15 item for a total of $4.50) might be offset by the number of people looking to browse and then buy (10 people counted at 5% apiece for a $15 item for a total of $7.50). The reports for my site at Amazon show that people who click through seem to browse and then buy rather than buy directly…I just need to get them into the store and Amazon will take care of the rest.
So perhaps it is best to leave it as is, especially on a site like this where book sales are not a real focus.
Anyhow, I applied the “ref=nosim” bit to the Now Reading plugin. I applied it to template-functions.php file. I added it to the function book_link
funtion after it puts in the books ASIN number. Here is the fixed section of code:
[php]function book_link() {
global $book;
$options = get_option(‘nowReadingOptions’);
echo apply_filters(‘book_link’, “http://www.amazon{$options[‘domain’]}/exec/obidos/ASIN/{$book->asin}/ref=nosim/{$options[‘associate’]}?tag={$options[‘associate’]}”);
}[/php]
This may or may not be helpful, but I prefer to go to the books detail page myself… at least for now. 🙂
EDIT: Of course it would perhaps be best to make it an option in the options panel, but that is too much work for me at the moment. Also, I might try to fix the links some of the other stuff makes to be cleaner like that.