Burning Questions - The Official FeedBurner Weblog

Amazon Web Services Integration

We have been working with the folks at Amazon Web Services to enable our publishers to integrate Amazon Associates links into feeds, and we're happy to announce that the work is done, and the service is live on FeedBurner. You can add the Amazon Associates service to any FeedBurner feed.

Here's how the service works: FeedBurner detects your feed categories and then asks you to assign an Amazon store to any category for which you want to include the Amazon Associates program. For example, you might choose to associate the music store with your music category, DVD's with your Pop Culture category, and nothing at all with your Personal and Family categories. You, the publisher have total control over the frequency with which Amazon Associates links appear, and whether they should appear alongside really short posts or only very detailed posts.

FeedBurner then leverages the latest 4.0 release of Amazon Web Services to match your posts to relevant Amazon content for that store, and FeedBurner transforms that link and content from Amazon Web Services into a simple linked GIF tied to your feed item.

There are a host of things about this service that we find interesting. Let's enumerate some of them:

1. A compelling example of Amazon Web Services brought to bear in feeds.

2. Publishers have total control over which (if any) parts of their feed get amazon links, which amazon stores they want to map to their content, and how frequently they want these associate links to appear.

3. We have tried to implement this in a way that is least disruptive to publishers and subscribers, and we're initially very happy with the results. A couple examples to help illustrate: we've taken the text content we get back from Amazon and convert all that to a linked GIF that we redirect. This does a bunch things for publishers and subscribers, one of which is that if the Amazon link or related text changes, this won't cause your feed to appear updated in an aggregator. There are benefits to the search engines as well by going the GIF route, namely that the Associate content doesn't get mis-indexed as part of a post by the publisher.

Ultimately, we love the fact that the publisher has real control over what/when/where Amazon Associate links gets placed in the feed. We will expand on this type of maximum choice capability as we continue to roll out commerce services and other feed capabilities for publishers.

Just for fun, and because commerce is an area around which we've had more email and feedback than anything else, this service gets its own FAQ:

1. Do I have to add the Amazon Associates service to my feed?
No.

2. Can I associate my feed categories with any Amazon store I want?
Sure. This is straight ahead web services integration. The results you get back aren't magic, they're based on the content of your post relative to the Amazon store you selected for that post's containing category. The relationships can be strong or weak. Amazon's Web Services engine will do its best with the parameters you give it.

3. I splice in my Flickr photos (or some other feed) and I don't want any Amazon links on those spliced items.
That wasn't a question, but we know what you mean. We do not add Amazon Associate links to any spliced items at this time. The simplest way to think about this is as follows: we first apply the Amazon service to your source feed and then we splice in other feeds, creating the resultant feed.

4. I don't have an Amazon Associates ID, but I want to use this service. What should I do?
Go here to get an ID. You can use a blank Associate ID, but then we just add our own ID to all your Amazon Associate links. At that point, you're doing all the work, and we're making all the money, and what good is that?

5. There's a checkbox on the service that asks if I want to add Amazon links to my existing posts or not, what's that all about?
Our initial thinking had been to only add Amazon links to new posts, so that the subscriber experience for your feed wouldn't be disrupted. If the links are added to old posts, many feed readers will see that the post has been updated and show the items as unread. This can be annoying for users who go to check your new posts and find that it's just old posts with Amazon links. We decided to make it an option, however, when several publishers who tested this service for us said "Ok, I tried the service and nothing happened. I want to see the links on my existing posts to see how it works". When faced with two imperfect choices, we punt. So, it's up to you as to how you'd like to approach this for your feed.

6. You seem to make a joke about Flooz
on your services page. Aren't you guys afraid that people won't take your business seriously when you're all the time making little Internet jokes?
No.

Posted by Dick at September 28, 2004 12:24 AM | TrackBack | Post A Comment | Email This Post