Associate-O-Matic

DO NOT BUY! AMAZON DOES NOT ENDORSE IT AND SHUT DOWN MY ASSOCIATES ACCOUNT BECAUSE OF IT. IT'A A SCAM! NOW THE PERSON I BOUGHT IT FROM IS NOWHERE TO BE FOUND!

"F-Worthless" is probably overly harsh but since I can not install this to try it out at all I have no basis for anything higher.

I was interested in trying this out. First of all I had to install ioncube which encodes the programming to keep it secret. This ultimately went ok but it does require full su/admin privileges on the server plus relatively detailed knowledge of your server. Then I got a blank white screen. According to their forums this happens quite a bit, but there is no solution there.

So I opened a support ticket. I had to turn on php error logging in the config files and locate the log, again this requires significant server experience although it's not hard if you have that background. It turns out that the ioncube encoding is done in php5 and therefore the unencoding must be. So whether or not the program itself works in php4 is irrelevant, it can't be decoded. The support ticket ground to a halt at that point, a few weeks ago. So apparently they are not interested in maintaining php4 compatibility.

In an ideal world I'd just update php. But I've run the server for a long time and there are many scripts on it that run fine that would break and the effort required to update and recode all of that would not be worthwhile.

The aomtalk pages have "Requirements" parts 1 and 2 that are somewhat defensive in response to people finding that they needed more than they thought to set this up. It's true, strictly speaking, that there is not any database and you can't deal with any programming anyway since it's encoded. However, a significant background in running a server and installing utilities like ioncode may be required. The fact that they had to respond with these two articles, somewhat defensive in nature, indicates that this is not uncommon.

If you have a host with php5 and ioncube ready to go you may be all set. Otherwise expect some significant server administration skills to be required. In 15+ years this is the first time I've heard of ioncube, let alone needed it. It's also the first time I had to just give up on installing a script.

This is a pretty slick application for creating your very own Amazon-based web site, as an Amazon Associate (affiliate). There are two versions, the "lite" free one, and a paid, full featured one. The paid version will cost you $99 for the first year, but the fee reduces from year two onward. The free version does have most of the features of the paid one, but is also just sufficiently limited to make the paid one tempting to anyone wanting to do the job as best as possible and maximize their chance of good profits. For a start, the free version automatically keeps 10% of your profits, while the paid one lets you keep it all.

You need to understand, however, that you can take this software, paid or otherwise, and make a really horrid, unattractive web site out of it. The capacity is there for a really impressive store front, but also for a derivative, same-old Amazon affiliate site that will have your potential buyers going to Amazon instead.

The number of Amazon affiliates is such that there are all manner of sites already using Amazon ads and banners and complete stores such as this one, so you'll want to think about how to make yours original. Don't sell musical instruments in an office supplies store or shoes in an electronics store, you don't have to be that original. But there's a lot of competition out there, so make some plans about what you want to sell out of Amazon's huge range, and how you want to sell it. Just dumping a template on a page and hoping people will use it, is unfortunately what too many people do, already.

If you Google around you'll find there's a lot of information on this application out there, at varying levels of reliability. Treat the guy who complains that he's not sold a thing, as being the average, and your expectations won't go over the top. Even if you have an unique, professionally designed web site selling your own unique products, it's still not anywhere nearly as simple as it looks to make an online fortune. It can be done, but I'd also treat any claims that people make hundreds of dollars or pounds or euros a month from day one, with a considerable suspicion.

Having offered the mandatory warning to would-be entrepreneurs, I have also seen some fine pages made with this product and I've even found one that was on the first Google page for the query I made. It's a good solution in the right hands and if you're an Amazon associate and can afford the web space for your own pages then I'd give it serious consideration as another tool in your selling arsenal.