Among the things I’m experimenting with this quarter is changing my book reviews to include an affiliate link to Amazon. I did a couple manually (there are a couple in the pipeline for the next few weeks done that way), but it’s also one extra thing to do, so thought I’d look at plugins. First one I saw had a single review (bad), then found Amazon Book Linker v1.3 and it works pretty well. I’ll show you some of what it does below.

One you download and install, close and reopen Live Writer, and then click Settings, put in your own affiliate code. Funny that we get in the habit of blanking out info when posting on the web, but in this case if you’re inclined to use my code so that I can accrue cash, I guess that’s ok!

Then enter a search and click ‘search’, find your book, click Insert.

This is shown with the medium size image, the one flaw I’ve seen so far is that it defaults to small and doesn’t seem to save changes. I’m going to try the large image on my reviews and see what everyone thinks.

The HTML it generates is customizable, just click modify template (shown next). I need to tweak the layout a little, and I wish it supported pulling in some other data points like price, popularity, and a link for the author, but at least it can be tweaked some.

All in all a useful tool. Now it remains to be see if using it is worthwhile!