If you haven’t used your Amazon account in a while, you’ll love the way Amazon has made it easier to link to products.

Let’s say I was looking for a bottle opener. So I go to Amazon.com and search for a bottle opener. I find one that I like so I click on the link to the opener. At the top of the web page is a toolbar that gives me the option to: “hide, Link to this page, Add to Store, etc…”  If you don’t see the toolbar when you search, sign into your Amazon Affiliate account first.

Click on the “Link to this page” option and you’ll be taken to the Amazon Associates page to sign into your affiliate account.

After you sign into your account you’ll see the “Customize and Get HTML” page.

Select on the “Text Only (Basic Display)” option in the “Select Link Type: box.

Then navigate down to the “Get HTML Code For This Product Link” and highlight the link beginning with “http://www.amazon.com/……” Be sure to scroll all the way across to get the entire link. The links are pretty long.

Copy and paste the link into the Resource box in your eHow article

Give the link a user-friendly description and you’re done.

Word of advice: I’ve found the eHow resource box accepts links to specific Amazon products just fine, but linking to a general page, doesn’t seem to work because the Amazon links for general pages has too many characters and the eHow resource box won’t accept them all.

For example, to find my bottle opener, I had to do a search for bottle openers which initially displayed several products. If I tried to link to the first result page, the link would be too long. Therefore, I had to select one product from the results page to link to.

The Amazon Factor

As an Amazon Associate, I periodically place links to Amazon products at the bottom of my articles. I try to find products that enhance or are related to the How To that I’ve written to make it easier for my readers to find the products or subject I’ve written about.

Not keeping close track of the relationship between my eHow/Amazon earnings, I was a little surprised the other day when I looked at my numbers to find that in addition to the eHow earnings of $166.53, I earned $13.48 in commissions from the Amazon links placed on eHow articles. Not bad for just adding a link.

Couple of How to’s on How to…

As a matter of fact, I wrote an eHow ‘How To’ on How to Increase Your Income Using eHow and How to Make Money Writing about Products Sold on Amazon that will give you more information on how I did it. Mind you, I’ve only added Amazon links to about 10% of my eHow articles. Can you imagine if I increased the percentage?

I started placing Amazon links on my eHow articles in November. When you sign up for an Amazon account, if you don’t have one already, make sure that you use a separate tracking ID that is exclusive to your eHow articles. It gives you better tracking control.

For example, I place Amazon links on my Tidbits & Stuff website, BLULOW and others. Each has its own tracking ID link so I can see where the money is coming from.

eHow Related Amazon Revenues

Here are a few things you should place on your ‘To Do’ list:

1. Finish reading this post
2. Click over to the Amazon Associate site and sign up.
3. Always check to see if the topic of your freelance writing has an affiliate link, whether it is Amazon or some other affiliate. Not all topics have a related affiliate program, but taking an extra 10 or 15 minutes to search and sign up will add to your freelance writing financial bottom line.

Okay, you’ve got your marching orders. Go and make money!

Here’s my eHow experiment.

I’m going to track how money grows and how long it takes to make eHow earnings worthwhile. I’m going to use Demand Studios as my comparison yardstick. If I had written 100 articles through Demand Studios, I would have earned $15 per article, which would mean I would have earned $1,500.

Well, maybe not. Demand Studios recently instituted a change. They no longer pay $15 for writer-generated titles. They pay based on a sliding scale. From what I understand the price can range as low as $5 to as high as $15. Although I completed the 100 articles prior to the title rate change, going forward, that is another moving factor to consider.

So far, writing 100 articles earned me a total of $14.46. That means each article is worth a little over 14 cents. I’m averaging out the income across all 100 articles. Actually only 25 articles have earned anything so far.

Using SEO Tactics

I’ve got to say that approximately 25 to 35% of the articles are written using the tips outlined in the book How to Earn Passive Income at eHow.com. Those are probably the 25 to 35 articles that have made money so far. The rest were written on topics that floated into my head on any particular day.

Going Forward

I’m going to continue to place content on eHow, but at a much slower rate. I’d like to see what happens to the first 100 after they season a little.

Check back monthly as I report my eHow earnings. As a matter of fact, why watch what I do, why not join me and try it too?

Check out My eHow Statistical Trend.

Update 4/16/10: Due to the recent changes at eHow/Demand Studios, I have decided to discontinue my experiment.

A little history (well, not history, I bought the book yesterday)

I recently purchased the book, and was blown away. The book is a quick and easy read. Ms. O’Brien writes in a very down to earth and practical fashion. She shares her experience working with eHow and she shares how she increased her monthly income from next to nothing to currently about $900 a month and growing.

Nothing New

The advice she offers is not new, but I guess she wrote it in a way where it finally sunk in. After all, she’s another freelance writing mom looking to make an honest dollar just like so many of us out here.

Although I do not know Maria O’Brien personally, I almost feel as though I do. Her straightforward honest style comes through in the book. What I appreciate the most about her book is that she didn’t have to write it. I’m not sure how much she’s made off of the book, but her tips alone will have her sitting pretty financially.

Apparently she has a philosophy similar to mine of ‘each one, teach one’ and has decided to share her success with the rest of us.

The Details

I’m not going to go into the details of the book because I believe you should support her in purchasing a copy. After all, the book costs $25 (which you will soon make back once you implement the tips). Not only that, as a freelance writer, it’s a tax deduction (tool of the trade).

Please do me a favor

The one thing I have to ask is if you do purchase the book and are as blown away as I am and wish to share it with your friends, please offer them the link to purchase the book. Maria O’Brien did us all a favor in writing this book, let’s do her one and not distribute it freely.

My 24-hour update

This may sound silly to all of you (as it did to my hubby when I called him at work all excited), but I started writing for eHow on 9/25/08. As of yesterday I had 19 articles and had not earned a dime. Last night (10/1/08) after reading Maria’s book, I uploaded 2 articles using her tips.

Imagine my shock when one of the articles earned 22 cents in less than 24 hours. I know it sounds silly and 22 cents isn’t much money, but when you stop to think that I had 19 articles on eHow for 5 days without a nibble and in less than 24 hours I earned 22 cents on a brand new (properly written) article.

I may be a ‘glass half full’ type of gal, but to me that’s definitely a step in the right direction.

My hats off to you Maria and thank you for writing such a practical book.

(Follow my progress with “My eHow Experiment” post)

In my never-ending search for better ways to earn money I came across My Work at Home Mom Blog. Similar to my experience with eHow, the blog owner, Maria O’Brien, started out writing for eHow through an outfit called The Writers Research Group.

The Writers Research Group was my intro to eHow. Although they provide content for sites other than eHow, as with Demand Studios, I wrote exclusively on the eHow project.  They paid less than Demand Studios. Their rate was $10 per article and an additional $1 if you suggested an approved title. The other difference is that they didn’t pay weekly. They paid 60 days later.

Back to eHow

Maria O’Brien is now writing for eHow and earning compensation through the eHow Writers Compensation Program. In essence, you write the “How to” article under your username and get paid based on traffic, ad revenue, article popularity and so on. The idea is similar to that used on Suite 101, Associated Content, Bukisa and other shared revenue content sites.

The difference that I see here is that Maria is doing well residually writing for eHow. If you read her blog, you’ll see that her earnings have increased steadily each month. In June it was around $400, in July around $500 and $600 in the month of August. I’m sure you see the trend here.

Don’t have to hit me with a brick

My mom didn’t raise a fool. I decided to sign up for an eHow account and try writing articles directly under my eHow user name.

What I like about writing for eHow directly is that my articles are approved instantaneously. No waiting for a week or so for an editor to approve my article.

Terms and Conditions Violation?

I read through the terms and conditions to see if I was violating anything by having dual accounts. I couldn’t find anything so I decided to write to Demand Studios to ask the question.

Here’s the response:

Hi Felicia,

Please refer to this blog post. If you have more questions, let me know. You can do both, but the accounts must be separate.

http://www.demandstudios.com/blog/2008/09/03/the-difference-between-writing-for-demand-studios-and-ehow/

In essence, writers can write for both Demand Studios and eHow as long as the accounts are not combined.

What are you waiting for? If you write for Demand Studios, why not try writing for eHow directly and build a residual income stream?

(To see how much I’ve made on eHow so far check out my post: My eHow Experiment)