Back to the main page

Mailing List Logs for ShadowRN

Message no. 1
From: Wordman <wordman@*******.COM>
Subject: ShadowFAQ, Amazon and you
Date: Thu, 4 Jun 1998 01:25:17 -0400
I have a proposal to make to the list that is either extremely neat or
really stupid. I can't decide on which. It basically involves using
corporate machinery to generate a small amount of money for this mailing
list which could be used to fund t-shirts or other things.

Bear with me, as this is sort of long.

As most of you know, amazon.com is a big internet book and music store.
What you may not know is that they have an Associates Program which anyone
who runs a web site can join. The way it works is that you register with
amazon and get an id. You then add links to your site using this id,
recommending books for whatever topic your site covers. If someone jumps to
amazon from your site, a percentage of any sale the user makes is paid to
you. This is a good deal for all involved: you the site manager makes a bit
of money, amazon.com makes a sale they may not have made without your help,
and the user found a book that she may not have otherwise known about. An
important point here is that the percentage kick-back to you (the site
manager) comes from amazon.com's profit margin; the customer does not pay
extra for using your site to make the purchase.

Now, the ShadowFAQ has long linked to amazon.com, but was not part of the
Associate Program until recently. The ShadowFAQ's product and recommended
reading lists now link to amazon.com using an Associates Program id. At
this point, any sales kickbacks generated from users jumping to amazon.com
from the ShadowFAQ will come to me.

What I am proposing (and very willing to do), is to use any and all such
funds as a ShadowRN List Fund, to be used mostly for defraying costs of
t-shirts, but for anything we can think of.

Why would I do this? Well, apart from being a swell guy, I find it doubtful
that the Associate Program would really make me any money by itself. The
ShadowFAQ alone might generate a few sales, but not enough to be
significant. With this proposal, I figure that people who already use
amazon.com might go out of their way to order through the ShadowFAQ,
knowing that they can derive a small but material benefit from doing so. In
a sense, we get to use the tool of the man (corporate greed) for our own
purposes.

Why would you do this? If you already use amazon.com, you really have
nothing to lose. You will not pay any more for product, but can derive
extra benefit from it. In a matter of speaking, your purchase (which you
would make anyway) now allows amazon.com to donate to ShadowRN. If you have
never used amazon.com... well, you don't have to start.

Why would you trust me with the money? This is a good point. I can only
give my word that the funds would be made available to the list. I leave it
as an exercise to the reader to decide what my word is worth. In any case,
I don't see you have much to lose.

A couple other points. Supposedly, anytime you enter amazon through the
ShadowFAQ and buy books or music, we get kickbacks, even if what you buy
has nothing to do with Shadowrun, or the books recommended by the
ShadowFAQ. The kickback is 5% most of the time. I will get sent a quarterly
report of sales generated through the ShadowFAQ, along with a check; I'll
post such reports to the list. Looking at the program agreement, this all
seems to be totally legal. The agreement specifies that _I_ cannot buy
products through my own site, but gives no restriction on what I can do
with the money my site generates.

As of now, this is just an idea. I won't commit to do this until I get some
feedback, so don't go out and buy stuff through the ShadowFAQ right away
(like that would happen).

Like I said, part of me thinks this could be cool, and the other part of me
thinks it's just dumb. What do you think?

ShadowFAQ: http://pobox.com/~wordman/ShadowFAQ.html
Amazon Associate Program:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/subst/partners/associates/associates.html

Wordman

"Has the net effect of the invention of the printing press been good or
bad? I haven't the slightest idea and neither has anyone else. As well ask
whether it was a good or bad plan to give over so much of the world's space
to oceans."
-- H. L. Mencken
Message no. 2
From: Erik Jameson <erikj@****.COM>
Subject: Re: ShadowFAQ, Amazon and you
Date: Thu, 4 Jun 1998 13:13:04 -0400
Well, while I don't really know you Wordman, I've seen your SR work for
years now. And while I've not always agreed with it, you're concepts and
ideas have never struck me as munchkinous. This would indicate to me
(without excluding or including anyone else necessarily) a certain
maturity. So I'd be willing to trust you on this matter, especially since
I don't really lose anything.

But I do like your idea of creating an Amazon.com funded RN slush fund.
You're right, it probably wouldn't amount to gobs of cash. But even a
hundred dollars a year would drop the price of the t-shirt by a buck or
two. It would also allow for *REAL* cards to be sent to people like Barbie
and Lady Jestyr, and the admin or the card volunteer wouldn't be required
to shell out their own money.

And since most of us are online addicts and early adopters anyway, I'd be
willing to guess we, the list, buy a fair amount of stuff over the
Internet. I, for one, buy CDs from CDNow.com. I used to buy paintball
gear from Skan-Line over the Internet. And now I'm looking at UBid.com for
a new computer. I'd be willing to lay good money that I'm not the only one
either.

So I'd be willing to buy books by wandering through your link if it'd help
the list.

Erik J.


Resepected Elders Relaxation Resort, President of Operations
and Director of Activities

"Hey, how about a game of first edition using only the Blue Book?"

Further Reading

If you enjoyed reading about ShadowFAQ, Amazon and you, you may also be interested in:

Disclaimer

These messages were posted a long time ago on a mailing list far, far away. The copyright to their contents probably lies with the original authors of the individual messages, but since they were published in an electronic forum that anyone could subscribe to, and the logs were available to subscribers and most likely non-subscribers as well, it's felt that re-publishing them here is a kind of public service.