As of March 2012, you may have noticed that I've started including more links to products on Amazon. This is because I've signed up to the Amazon Associates program. In fact, just to get the legal spiel out of the way:
I'm a participant in the Amazon EU Associates Programme, an affiliate advertising programme designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.co.uk
Essentially, this is a way for me to earn free money by writing on the Internet. Yep, it really happens sometimes.
The idea goes as follows. If one of you lovely people clicks on a link to Amazon from my blog, and ends up buying something, I get 5% of the price. The customer doesn't pay a penny extra - it's donated to me, by Amazon, as a thank-you for directing custom their way. The product doesn't necessarily have to be the one that I linked to - as long as there's an unbroken chain of Amazon browsing between the link and your purchase, 5% of the total price will be funnelled from Amazon's coffers into my (much-more deserving) pockets.
Of course, if you are struck by the desire to buy something unrelated on Amazon, and choose to navigate to it via one of my links instead of going straight to Amazon so as to contribute a little something to my funds, I would be most appreciative!
No, this isn't going to be something on which I can make my millions and retire at 30 (unless this blog gets disproportionately popular among a very wealthy demographic!), but since accounts are free and I'm writing a blog that's well-suited to linking to products anyway, I thought I'd give it a go!
