Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Google's Blogger adds Amazon (Updated)


Blogger in Draft has been rolling out features relatively quietly over the past few months including easy embedding of videos, inline translation, and more.

Many bloggers use the build-in  interface to display Google's Adsense ads on their pages (and in their RSS feeds).

Apparently, Google has cut a deal with Amazon, as the Blogger log-in page now offers Amazon as an alternate and / or additional way to monetize a Blogger-hosted blog.  Just enter your Amazon Associates ID and you're set to go.

Amazon introduced one of the very first affiliate programs on the Internet.  Now there are thousands of affiliate programs and networks, not only from individual companies but from 'networks' such as those from Federated Media, Commission Junction, the PepperJam Network and others.

With hundreds of thousands of Blogger-powered blogs now online, this 'shortcut' of sorts, directly to Amazon (IE: Without needing to know code or JavaScript) could be a substantial hit for the online retailer in the coming months.

Whether or not there is some sort of revenue sharing between Google and Amazon was not clear as of this post. 

What is clear is that Google continues to grow Blogger as an alternative to WordPress and other popular blogging platforms.

Update 1 - Dec 16, 2009 10 PM ET:  A Press Release was issued today at 6 PM ET by Google and Amazon (via BusinessWire) and a new joint Google / Amazon Associates page has now been launched as well.