Step by Step Guide to set up your own Amazon Store

After reading Waynet's article, I decided to set up shop at Amazon and see how easy it was after all. Even though he mentioned that it can be done in minutes, it actually took me a couple of hours to have everything right.

The so called "aStores" allow you to create a dedicated web area where you can include all Amazon products, or display only the categories you choose, so I went and create a "Green Store" featuring Organic and Natural products, books about recycling, solar energy, etc. as well as items made from recycled materials.

Procedure:

• First you need to create an Associate account with Amazon. If you are a Hubber then probably this step is already taken. If you do not have an account, check this tutorial for more information.
• Log into your account at Amazon's website and click the "aStore" link at the left side navigation bar in the "Tools" section:

• Click the "Add an AStore" button:

• Then enter a tracking ID you would like to use for your new aStore. In this way you can track the performance of the store and differentiate it from other stores you may have.

• The next step is create the aStore pages. For each page, you have three options to select products from Amazon's inventory:

1. Hand pick products for each page,
2. Display products from Amazon Listmania lists,
3. Display products that belong to selected categories or sub-categories. These pages will automatically show best selling products for the selected categories (Books, Apparel, etc.).
4. In addition you can streamline the content of a category page to include products that contain a specific keyword (For instance: Recycled, Organic, etc.).
5. You will also be able to setup some extra stuff like a link back to your Blog or site, an "About" page, etc.

• At each step you can Preview your store and continue the design as well by clicking the appropriate button/link at the bottom of the page. The next step is to customize the look and feel by selecting the color theme, specifying the store title and including a link to your logo.

• You follow then by specifying which widgets you would like to display for each page type. These include a sidebar and body widget. You can set up the Product Detail Page, Search Results Page, Shopping Cart Page and so on.

• The last step is to integrate your aStore into an existing Web site by placing it as a standalone section or link to a page within your site that contains your aStore. Amazon provide you with URL to do so. You can click here to see the final results for my Online Green Store.