Chapter 13

The Grand Opening of an Amazon aStore

Would you love to have an online store that highlights Amazon products? What about having this store ready to go live within minutes? aStore by Amazon offers this store along with a quick setup. Within a day, you can be selling the same featured items as businesses with many years of merchandising experience.

There are two major aspects of running any business. The first is the marketing and merchandising to your customers. If you have no one to buy your products or services, having a store is a moot point. Build it, and they may not come; if it does not cater to people’s needs, they will come but may not return. There are hundreds of thousands of stores where visitors come only one time and then go off and try something else. Amazon is giving you the opportunity to open a truly successful store within a short period of time. You can rely on its decade of experience and millions of customers who are already buying their products.

Second, you need products. With aStore, you do not have to find and pay a vendor to supply the merchandise, have these items shipped, and worry about storage. All you have to do is hang up your shingle or put your domain on the server, and you are open for business. Of course, you have to market, and the competition is keen. That is true for any online business. Nonetheless, even here, Amazon helps you out. It offers suggestions on how best to market your new enterprise and also does some of the marketing for you by continuing to spread its positive reputation.

Amazon, Amazon.com and the Amazon.com logo are registered trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates.

What is the aStore?

The aStore is an Associate product that gives you the power to create a professional online store in minutes, which can be embedded within or linked to your Web site without the need for programming skills. If you enjoy making referrals in your area of interest and find that a number of your readers are purchasing products based on your recommendations, why lose the benefits of these sales? You can create an aStore, which is an e-commerce business in which you put Amazon’s merchandise up for sale, and you design the store with your own selection of items from the numerous company products. After setting the site up, you will keep visitors longer and make referral commissions. Any member of the Associates program can use the aStore tool.

Whether you are selling on Amazon yet or not, you can still make money with an Amazon aStore. All you have to do is sign up with Amazon’s Associates program, and you can quickly have an e-commerce enterprise virtually on anything on the Web, using a variety of widgets and links. With the aStore, there is a collection of products you choose, categorize, and display on your own Web site or blog. You can customize the look of the store quite easily, and if you are familiar with editing .css files, it is easy to get creative with the fonts and layout. The aStore allows Amazon Associates to configure an entire online store in a few easy steps. It gives customers the shopping experience they expect and can contain selected product groups — or an entire product range offered by Amazon. This store can be integrated into an Associate’s Web site with a single line of HTML code. The store also offers many of the features available on the Amazon Web site, such as search, customer reviews, and similar products.

How Does the aStore Work?

Integrating aStore is simple. To create and configure the store, the Associate only needs to complete a few forms. Then, the Associate receives a single line of code that he or she can copy and paste into the appropriate section of their Web site. The “Get Link” step of the configuration process will provide a single line of HTML code that needs to be copied to the Associate’s Web site. The HTML code can be integrated into an iframe on the Web site or placed directly in a page with sufficient space to show the complete store. There are no programming skills needed to create or integrate aStore into a Web site; the key feature of this tool is its complete ease of use. The development process is self-explanatory and can be completed in a short amount of time. Depending on the level of customization required to match the store to layout of an Associate’s Web site, setting it up may take from only a couple of minutes to a quarter of an hour.

Amazon offers several choices and ways to integrate and publish an aStore: Link directly to your aStore as a stand-alone site; embed your aStore using an inline frame; and integrate your aStore using a frameset for Web sites using frame layout structure. If you own a normal HTML-based Web site, integration of the aStore into the Web site is straightforward and simple: Just create a link directly to the aStore or a new page, insert the Amazon iframe or frame layout embedding code to the new page, and link to this page from your main index page. If you are blogging on the WordPress® platform, integrating Amazon aStore with WordPress can be somewhat more difficult. Yet aStore and WordPress can still be integrated by using WordPress’ page template. The aStore will appear inside the framework or layout of WordPress without having to use a WordPress plug-in.

Amazon also lets you customize your aStore to match the layout of your Web site. You have the choice of a wide range of colors for matching borders, fields, lines, text, and background to the color scheme of your own online site. There is no good or bad aStore concept; it just comes down to the individual entrepreneur and his or her merchandising skills, business skills, and commitment level. Smaller Web sites that are tailored to the interests of their users can be as successful as larger Web sites with a great deal of traffic; niche Web sites can be as lucrative as those that offer a wide range of assortment of merchandise.

In fact, Associates should try to make the aStore match the layout of their own Web sites. A well-integrated Web site will lead to better results, as visitors will feel more comfortable with the experience. aStore also allows you to offer your customers a shopping cart for multiple item purchases, as Amazon is already one of the most trusted stores online for checking out. If you have a blog about pet supplies, for example, you can sell Amazon products that correlate with this blog. The object is to find a good niche with a high profit potential and build the aStore to take advantage of it.

The aStore is a shopping venture you can integrate into your own online presence, selling products from Amazon that you think your visitors may find of interest. For example, if you have a Web site about music, you could set up different categories, such as rock, hip hop, heavy metal, or mellow, and let Amazon automatically display a list of top-selling CDs from its range, with prices, cover images, information, and reviews. The use of the widgets, such as the MP3 and video, add to the entire look and interest for the potential buyers. Visitors to your store can stay around a while by reading the blog, making comments, seeing the products uniquely displayed, adding items to their shopping cart, and then, when ready, be taken to the Amazon Web site for secure and safe purchasing. You will receive reports regularly, so you can see specifically what any changes are bringing to your Web site in terms of visitors and purchases made on your site or elsewhere.

The aStore also features Amazon and third-party products listed on Amazon only. Some aStore owners, for example, have followed the early lead of Amazon and sold books. Some of these store owners have written their own books, and others only sell publications by other authors who they believe their visitors would like. Amazon Associates can easily set up international stores on their site as well. They simply need to sign up separately for the different Associates Programs, build their stores for each locale, and integrate the stores into their Web site. Appropriate links in the Web site’s navigation can then link to the stores of different geographies.

Here is how aStore makes this an enticing option:

It is a good idea to test a product before investing a lot of time and money into it. One way that you can do that is to use Amazon’s aStore. You can list for free whatever products you want from Amazon’s vast catalog of products. The good part is that there is no cost, and it is easy to start. The bad part is that you will not make nearly as much money per item shipped as you would with drop-shipping and your own store, and it is also a tough task to get an aStore to look custom-designed. Still, it can be an excellent choice for a brand-new Web site that is still building traffic, and it can give you an idea of interest for your product line.

As with any other business, there is no guarantee that you will quickly make a lot of money from running an Amazon aStore. But it does have a lot of possibilities, all based on how you use it. Ultimately, the success of the aStore for your Web site will be based on several parameters, including your ability to get your visitors to feel confident about buying from your store, and how well you integrate the aStore and product links into your other online sites. As noted on the Associates Program agreement, partners using aStore are paid according to the usual Associates referral.

Here is the easy step-by-step process for setting up your store:

Asha Wadher, having worked in the hospitality industry, has gained a strong background in business management and customer relations. Her brother, Vishal, brings the other half of the equation in Information technology: Internet marketing, Network Administration, Custom Software Development and Project

Management. “In 2006, we heard that Amazon was looking for high-quality vendors as partners for the WebStore Division,” recalls Vishal Wadher. “We saw this as a great opportunity, as it further complemented services provided by Atmosphere Solutions.”

Since then, the Wadher siblings have helped a variety of Web Store owners with Web strategies, e-mar-keting and custom software development.

For example, Euro Mattresses, of Somycol in Miami, turned to Atmosphere Solutions to design a WebStore, as well as get help with the technical backend of the online business. Wildflax in Las Vegas, which sells natural food supplements, turned to Atmosphere Solutions to create a customized design for a look different from the norm.

The firm will work with new WebStore businesses that have a business plan and are ready to launch into e-commerce. Atmosphere Solutions also teams with long-tenure companies that have wanted to branch out into other online areas. There is a one-time charge to design the WebStore, according to the customer’s specifications. Additional charges are accrued for online marketing solutions, such as search engine optimization, and design updates and changes.

Why go with an Amazon partner rather than work solely with the template provided to build a WebStore? “With an Amazon WebStore template, Associates can build the basic foundation of their store. However, it will look similar to most other WebStores. Also, although the template is easy to use, many companies just do not have the time or skills to create a customized and professional design to reflect their brand identity. They want to focus on their business and leave the IT work to us. We can also give Associates a great customized look by adding Flash animation, custom images, music, or video that they want,” explains Vishal Wadher.

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