Thinking back to when I was setting up ThinkBling.com, and not realizing what my intentions where at that time, I played around with idea of drop-shipping using oscommerce (http://www.oscommerce.com). The problem with drop-shipping is that it is highly difficult to automate the taking of incoming orders and placing outgoing orders. Also, one man customer service is tedious at best. That's what started me thinking about affiliate programs. My intentions were to dynamically take banners from affiliate programs, strip out the products, and then display them in a manner more corresponding to my personal website. This way I get a few bucks (hopefully) and people aren't ignoring my ad because it has a big Barnes&Nobles icon stuck on the top.

So I signed up for a few affiliate programs, BN.COM, OVERSTOCK.COM and ofcourse AMAZON.COM. Due to the nature of Amazon's website, information is not given to you in the easiest way for what you are looking for. I was nearly done with PHP script that dynamically loads a banner based on keywords and rips out the icons, prices and links when I stumbled across Amazon's Web Services.

Amazon's Web Services (AWS) comes in two flavors. These are XML links and SOAP. Not being the slightest familiar with SOAP, the investigation continued with XML. After signing up and almost immediately getting what Amazon calls a developer Token (this is a code that you use so that Amazon knows who is accessing the information) I was able to put together weblinks using keywords and other criteria that returned a data page of item information including small, medium and large sized pictures, prices, availability, reviews and much more. Any potential customer that I had would definitely choose a website that gave this content over one that didn't AND the prices at Amazon almost always are lower than anything I could come up with, with drop shipping.

So now I have a small commission based website. How much money has it brought me? Very little. The reason is simply that I don't get enough traffic to it yet. Is all my work for naught? Hopefully no. My work is available to individuals free and is easy to download. Just go to www.thinkbling.com and there should be a link taking you to my PHP scripts and forum full of information and comments.

Think Bling Baby.

It has come to my attention that some people have been trying to choose from ThinkBling's PHP scripts and Mr.Rat's Perl scripts.

Well the easy answer is this. Shut the H#!% up and don't worry about it. ThinkBling is the right choice!

The real answer however depends on your needs. Here's a brief comparison...

http://www.mrrat.com
- More fully tested than the scripts provided at www.thinkbling.com
- Uses Perl
- 1 Single file means it's easier implement the first time but harder to tweak/change/debug

http://www.thinkbling.com
- Multiple files are harder to implement but easier to tweak/change/debug
- Uses functions in an object-oriented-like design.
- Uses PHP. (Some find PHP easier to pick up and use than Perl)
- Hasn't been around the block as many times as Mr. Rat's scripts. So this there may be more undiscovered bugs down the road.

Knowing what you are looking for it's easy to take these simple lists and pick the one that is best for you.

The main guts of this blog is going to concern the scripts at http://www.thinkbling.com These are PHP scripts and are generally free to download and use.

This is the very first post AND just a test.