SwingDJs

I am just about to email someone a copy of a setlist for a DJ set I did a few months ago. I've been promising to do this for a while (one of the reasons it takes time is that I don't have Excel on my Mac and I need Excel to be able to make sense of the text file that iTunes exports). Anyhow, recently I've noticed that an increasing number of people who write about music online are music affiliates - they link to online music stores like iTunes and Amazon, who pay a commission when someone clicks through and buys.

So this made me think about doing this too. I tend to save my DJ setlists in iTunes for my own reference, and it wouldn't be that hard I suppose to put these online and then link to the iTunes store. I guess that you wouldn't make a lot of money this way, but it would help to pay for the cost and time of putting everything online, and putting setlists online would be a good way of keeping in touch with your 'crowd' if you have one

Do other people do this? What do you think?

I've been thinking about this too, mostly as a way of subsidising my website/teaching costs.
But I couldn't really figure out the itunes program, and while the amazon one is simpler, it's not so good for me here if I'm linking to individual songs and downloads (because we can't buy downloads from Amazon in Australia.... I don't think). I wish there were CDbaby ones... maybe there are?


In sum: least useful response ever. But I say: do the affiliates thing if you can make it work.

I've used Amazon's affiliate program with my podcast show notes since I started recording in 2006. The program is easy to set up and use, and it's a great way to get some occasional music-spending money. For example in the US, an affilate gets $0.10 for every $0.99 download purchased, and Amazon pays out to an affiliate with an Amazon gift card when the affiliate's balance goes over $10 (I think the minimum amount is higher if you want them to cut you an actual check).

I have looked into iTunes affiliate program a few times over the years, and it's always been run by a third party and has looked too confusing for me to consider setting up an account.

Not sure about the other online retailers.

With Amazon, and I assume other affiliate program as well, you're probably not going to be rolling in the dough unless you have a hugh volume of traffic coming to your site.

Hope that helps!

Jesse

Amazon.com announced today that the advertisement fee (as they call it) will be reduced from 10% to 5% effective November 1, 2012.

So you get $/€0.05 for a standard song price $/€0.99.