Amazon Context Links

So Amazon has an affiliate program where you get paid if people buy stuff from Amazon by linking from your site.

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From a moneymaking standpoint, Amazon is not that great because it only pays 4% to start up to 10% based upon your volume of business - but when I have checked Amazon always has the lowest prices, so I strongly recommend them as a place to buy books, especially when you get free shipping on orders over $25!


They recently (I assume - it's in beta) rolled out a new application (or "app" to use the "lingo") that scours your text for search terms and makes those words "live" where you get a preview if you hold your mouse over it and can click it to go to Amazon to buy.

e.g. if I wrote "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire", this should become an active link to Amazon where if you hold your cursor over it, you will get a preview of the item, which you can then click on to go to Amazon.

I think this is really cool (putting on my "old man hat" for a minute) - it's incredible what that there technology can do these days. Seriously, I do think it is cool, and given my experience with Amazon being very cheap, the idea seems really cool, if it works.

After some trial and error (and consulting the all-knowing Google oracle), I figured out how to incorporate this into Blogger.

Please give me feedback on these context links:
1) Do you like them or not like them?
and of course,
2) Let me know if they are not working for you!

Thanks for your help!

HELP! - How to make money with your blog?

Or to use the proper "lingo" - how do you efffectively monetize your blog?

I wish I had all of the answers on this one :)

As stated in the purpose of this blog, my primary intent for this blog is to journal my journey to financial freedom and share my successes (and not-quite-as-successfuls) with others. At the same time, I have put in some Google advertising (Adsense) blocks in an attempt to not only generate some revenue from the site but also provide more relevant content.

Adsense makes great sense (no pun intended) to me because many readers will stumble across my blog looking for information on a certain topic. You may or may not get value from the information I provide (hopefully you will!), but the ads provide information on similar topics that you (the reader) may find useful. If you do - it's a win-win - you get information you were looking for, and I get some advertising revenue.

My attempts to monetize this blog effectively (note also the link to Amazon.com for the 5-day book) are part of a larger goal of mine:

I hope to start a road trip blog where the revenues from the blog are what I have to live on each day. So no revenue would mean no gas, no place to stay, and no food.

Of course it would be critical to get some revenue generation before starting out because the blog about me sitting in my car in my driveway waiting for some revenue would be pretty boring (potentially very amusing, but still boring).

So that's where I need your help. How do I effectively make money from a blog? Adsense is easy to drop onto the sites, but any tips on generating click-throughs? Targetted advertising? eBooks? A "recommended reading" list linked to Amazon? I would welcome all ideas here - please make a comment to this post if you have an idea.

I plan to experiment on this site with revenue generation, so be aware of that. If you see things on here that you think are good ideas, please let me know. Likewise, make me aware of things that really "turn you off". I want this to be a positive learning experience for all of us.

Many people have great knowledge and experiences that they can share with the world. I think blogs are a great way to do that. If we can figure out the best ways to make some money at the same time, I think that would certainly provide more incentive for people to share via a blog.

Thanks in advance for the help!