To explain it simply, if you put a snippet of code in your web page’s HTML, Amazon automatically reads the content on your page, understands what the page is about, and converts appropriate words in your content into hyperlinks.

These hyperlinks link to related products on the Amazon website. If your visitor clicks on the link, goes to Amazon and buys a product, you get credited with a commission. Is that mind-blowing or what?!

It’s appropriate to point out at this point that Amazon pioneered the concept of affiliate marketing and thus spawned a multi-billion dollar industry. They also managed to keep the release of this feature a carefully-guarded secret (as far as I know, there hasn’t been even a whisper about it in the online press.

Congratulations, Amazon, for taking technology forward!

UPDATES: Takuya Misawa, a fellow member of Ecademy, a leading online business network, says that the links lead to Amazon products with relevancy less than Adsense.

Andy Beard says in his blog that the Amazon links are is still swarming with bugs, and warns readers against using it.

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