The Amazon Associates program have announced a new widget in the last day or two - it’s called the Carousel Widget. You can see one in action below with six blogging books.
The unit above is a ‘carousel’ format (horizontal) but they also have a ‘ferris wheel’ format (vertical). Each come in different size options.
My name is Darren Rowse and I’m a full time Blogger making a living from this new and dynamic medium from blogs like Digital Photography School and TwiTip - Twitter Tips.
Back in 2002 I stumbled upon an article about ‘Blogging’. I didn’t know it at the time but that moment changed my life. Since then I've become a full time blogger and have blogged on over 20 blogs and co-founded the b5media blog network.
You can connect with me via social media sites at Facebook - LinkedIn - Twitter - SU - Plurk - FriendFeed - Digg
37 Responses to “Amazon Associates Program Introduce Carousel Widget”
Boris
April 13th, 2008 6:28 am
This looks a lot better than Google’s new rotating ads.
Hafiz Dhanani
April 13th, 2008 6:34 am
Wow!
It looks great. The animation is pretty nifty.
Chris Thomson
April 13th, 2008 6:40 am
Their new widget looks great. If only I was doing advertising on my blog…. Heh. :)
JoLynn Braley
April 13th, 2008 6:42 am
I got their notice in my email but didn’t jump on it because I’ve had problems with their animated widgets causing my pages to load super super slow. I haven’t played around with them since then but the non-animated ones don’t give me any problem.
Stephanie
April 13th, 2008 7:00 am
Whee! Do books get dizzy?
Make Money Talks
April 13th, 2008 7:06 am
That looks great!
Amazon tools are awesome!
Luis Gross
April 13th, 2008 7:40 am
What a cool widget, I’ve had a product widget on my blog from an affiliate network before but this is much more appealing with the carousel feature. Thanks for the heads up Darren! I’m going to put this one to use tonight!
Grant D Griffiths
April 13th, 2008 7:59 am
Looks cool, but is it really useful. I for one find it a bit annoying that I have to wait for the book to get around to the front. My 2 cents worth.
Bruce
April 13th, 2008 8:05 am
I like it! Think I use it on my new blogs.
mr.eims
April 13th, 2008 8:18 am
i dont realy use my amazon associate since it does not giving me any revenue..very hard to make sales..
do you have tips for this? hurm..
maybe this new carousel can make difference?
Andrea
April 13th, 2008 8:27 am
I put up some of these new widgets today on a couple of my blogs. I think they look great. New ad types are always welcome. Hopefully people will be inclined to click on them seeing they are quite different. Time will tell…
Simple Mom
April 13th, 2008 8:47 am
Nifty! We’ll see if it generates more clicks.
Pentad
April 13th, 2008 8:52 am
Well, it looks nice. It also seems to take up a lot of space. The one problem I had with Amazon affiliate products is that they slow down page download. The times I’ve attempted to contact them, they never seem to respond with answers to questions. Not the greatest customer service, but that’s only my personal experience. Other people may love them.
Jeff - Sciencesays.net
April 13th, 2008 9:13 am
That’s very fancy-schmancy, but I’m not sure that it’s a good thing.
I kind of get the impression that Google and Amazon are trying to throw so many ads on the page at once that maybe people are just ignoring them - that’s not good.
If more ad-items mean less attention-span, it’s going to translate to less clicks. I’m not sure I buy this new “multi-ad” philosophy yet.
Lamonte
April 13th, 2008 9:30 am
Thats pretty cool :)
Travis
April 13th, 2008 9:58 am
The idea is nice, but usability wise it’s horrible. There’s no reason you should have to hold the arrow down or repeatedly click. One click should automatically rotate to the next or previous book.
Robin
April 13th, 2008 10:02 am
I love it! I’ll have to start doing some advertising!
NextInstinct
April 13th, 2008 10:43 am
Are you able to affect what’s in the rotation?
Or is it auto generated by Amazon? Hmmm.
Either way,
the added variety is helpful in marketing,
but the User Engagement could really increase sales.
ravi karandeekar
April 13th, 2008 11:05 am
I liked it. I enjoyed it. It’s pleasure to rotate it. I keep on doing it in a store. Of course, i stop to pick up the book and browse. Exciting!
Mary Gallagher
April 13th, 2008 11:27 am
This is very cool. I love how you can just plug it in. And keep it moving. That will be fun to add to blogs and websites. Thanks for the tip!
Best,
Mary
http://www.twitter.com/marygallgher
Mike
April 13th, 2008 11:52 am
Very cool! They got some nice ideas there.
The Masked Millionaire
April 13th, 2008 12:13 pm
Hey….I can use the WordPress for dummies book!!
DB Ferguson
April 13th, 2008 12:22 pm
I got the same e-mail this morning and had the widget up by noon. The first time I saw the carousel on the Amazon site, I thought, man, I wish I could see that with products containing Stephen Colbert. So today, after I built it, I just watched the products go round and round. I even blogged about it here - http://www.nofactzone.net/?p=3493
Then again, there is the argument about valuable real estate on the blog and is it worth the space for a gimmick. Only time will tell. I haven’t gotten any sales out of it yet, but then again, most of the power users of my blog own the majority of these products.
Frugal Dad
April 13th, 2008 1:46 pm
I have to say this is one of the better-looking ad implementations I’ve seen in a while. I added a “ferris wheel” to my sidebar with some personal finance books. Remains to be seen if they convert better than the classic links.
blizme
April 13th, 2008 4:03 pm
gimmick! but does look nice in a blog post
Boris H
April 13th, 2008 5:46 pm
This looks fantastic. It fits perfectly on my sci-fi oriented site :) :)
James Mann
April 13th, 2008 8:53 pm
That looks pretty cool. I think I will give it a go.
I noticed that the arrow keys don’t bring the next book around automatically but it’s fun watching them spin.
I don’t think anyone looking at the products would mind that the arrow doesn’t work all that well yet. They are more interested in the products.
thanks
Barbara Ling (aka Owlbert)
April 13th, 2008 9:10 pm
Amazon.com has always been a great deliverer of affiliate commissions for me. I’ll have to test out that particular widget; generally I stick with direct text URLs. Sometimes simple works best.
Data points,
Barbara
01478.com
April 13th, 2008 10:23 pm
I don`t notice the arrow keys.
First,I use mouse pointer to click and drag,but they don`t move.Then,I have to find some button to click.
Mr.NiceGuy
April 14th, 2008 12:08 am
I like it. Looks exciting.
Dennis Edell
April 14th, 2008 12:11 am
Lets say you wanted different ones under different posts, can you choose what it shows?
Bengt - fortyplustwo
April 14th, 2008 1:50 am
Firefox users with FlashBlock installed will not see the carousel. Regular images does show up for everyone.
Nantucket Art
April 14th, 2008 2:45 am
Nifty Little Widget. Pretty slim too ;)
Film-Book dot Com
April 14th, 2008 3:09 am
The widget messes up the layout of my wordpress page.
Dee Stewart
April 14th, 2008 7:24 am
Film-Book you can redo the carousel and input the correct dimensions for your page. I had to customize mine for my blog. I use the slideshow widget to show my top book pick of the month. This month I added the carousel for more effect. I like when my blog opens the carousel moves. It’s a great attention getter. I’ve sold a few books already.
Juha Ylitalo
April 16th, 2008 6:05 pm
From European’s point of view biggest weakness in Amazon is that if you want to make real business with them on global scale, you would have to be associate/affiliate for each and everyone of those amazon shops and then you would have to code by yourself that if user comes from country xyz, show him/her ads from amazon.co.uk, if he comes from abc, show ads from amazon.com, if he comes from country def, show ads from amazon.de, …
fundimar
June 20th, 2008 12:12 am
We are trying used amazon associated,but is never success to the earnings. earnings is zero for one year.
Leave a Reply