How to add an Amazon Wishlist to Your Blog

Another in my series of Tech Tips for Artists.

It’s not that you’re materialistic, or G*d forbid, a selfish bugger, but everyone wants something. And what’s more fun than writing a Christmas list to Santa? Writing an ongoing, ever-updating list of things you really really need (or want)? on Amazon, so your kind and generous readers will know what to get you for all your hard work.

I tried to find how to add a Wishlist 3 years ago. I even called Amazon Associates, but they were dense. Finally, I found a link for the strange cousin of WordPress, WordPressMu: http://wpmu.org/how-to-add-an-amazon-wishlist-to-your-wordpress-blog/

Works with straight WordPress just fine. The trick was to find where it was hidden on Amazon’s site; as the author says there, it’s not easy to find! If you’re an Amazon Associate, it’s listed under Widgets>Other Widgets. https://widgets.amazon.com/Amazon-Wishlist-Widget/ If you’re not an Amazon Associate, lay down and die. JK.

From the helpful Yahoo Q &A:

I am guessing you want to take people from your site to your Amazon wish list on Amazon.com. If that’s what you want, you will first need to make the wish list public. You can do so by click on the wish list then click “Change Settings”.

Once it’s public, you will see a “Share with Friends” link (with email, facebook, & twitter icon besides it) when you look at your list. Click on “Share with Friends” you will see a pop up window. At the top is the permalink to your wishlist. Copy the permalink and use that as the anchor link for the button on your site.

That was easy! And now you can see my Amazon wish list up at the bottom of my sidebar. Actually, the text on it looks a little wonky, veering towards the right, so I’ll have to spend an hour in WordPress figuring out how to adjust that, but at least it’s up.

And as it turns out, now you don’t have to lift a finger to do this yourself:  there’s a button right on the bottom of my widget that directs you on how you can add one, too!

It has a really nice assortment of templates and layouts, and you can change any of the colors. Now I’ll add a different one to each of my sites, and watch for Amazon boxes in the mail.