Almost since the day the CCLaP website opened, I've been fielding emails from readers asking why I don't link to the Amazon page for the books and DVDs being featured here, like every other website and their mother does in this grand ol' blogosphere of ours. And my answer has always been that I don't exist to promote a private company like Amazon, just because I run a website and can; that if Amazon wants me to help them sell more books and DVDs, they can damn well pay me to do such a thing. And wouldn't you know it, Amazon actually has a program for that; called Amazon Associates, it is one of the older and more successful examples of an incentive-based customer referral program online, where basically you are precisely convincing your customers to link to your product page every time they publicly mention something you sell. Amazon Associates basically have their own account at the service, and can then generate unique URLs to products they are mentioning at their own site; anytime one of their own readers clicks on that link, Amazon uses the info in the unique URL to determine where that person came from, and will pay that blogger a collective sum at the end of the month for all the successful referrals they made ("successful" of course meaning that something ultimately got bought). And of course, this being the sophisticated age of direct marketing that we live in now, the Amazon Associate program actually has all kinds of tools to help spur on sales at participating blogs, from scripts that automatically turn text references into Amazon links to pop-up windows that float over Amazon links, showing a picture and other info of the item being referenced.

I of course always encourage CCLaP readers to patronize their locally-owned independent stores whenever possible; but I also acknowledge that many people are not in such a position, and will be shopping through Amazon no matter what. For those of you doing so, this is a very easy way for you to support the center and help get new CCLaP programs off the ground -- every time you buy a product by following a link here, in fact, Amazon will pay CCLaP between 50 cents and two dollars, depending on the circumstances. The Amazon links will now be tied to the title of the book or DVD in its review; for those with a low tolerance for shilling, however, I'm also adding something else new in each review, which is a line of links to that book's official website, the author's official website, and its entry at social networks GoodReads, LibraryThing and Shelfari (or if it's a movie, its entry at both the IMDb and Netflix). Call it a little thank-you for being tolerant of the Amazon link that will now be a part of every review here; I dislike corporate intrusions just as much as the next fan of the underground arts, so appreciate you being patient with CCLaP's in return for the center perhaps getting to generate some much-needed revenue.

And speaking of which, I'm going to try all this out for the next six months or so, until spring of 2008 rolls around; if it's not making the kind of referral money I'm happy with at that point for the effort being put into it, I'll abandon it again, given my hesitancy in trying it out in the first place. The only reason I'm doing so, in fact, is because I receive requests for Amazon links here on a regular basis already; I figure that this is a good way for those already purchasing their books, music and movies through them to help out CCLaP at the same time. We'll see what the actual results turn out to be.