by Sasha
Photo: Markg6, Flickr
Amazon.com, Inc.: it’s huge! It’s the biggest online retailer in the world and, weirdly, we can easily divert some of its mighty river of money into Phoenix Rising’s coffers. For free! Free, my friends!
First I’m going to tell you how to do it and then I’m going to tell you why.
How to make Amazon give Phoenix Rising free cash
Amazon pays a whacking 5% to 8% of the price of your purchase to any affiliate site from which you arrive at it, with absolutely no extra cost to you.
Phoenix Rising has affiliate links to the following Amazon stores and clicking on your country’s link will take you straight to your usual Amazon home page (go on, have a go):
• Phoenix Rising’s US Amazon Store
• Phoenix Rising’s UK Amazon Store
• Phoenix Rising’s Canadian Amazon Store
• Phoenix Rising’s Deutsches Amazon Speichern
• Phoenix Rising Française Amazon Store
• Phoenix Rising Españoles Amazon Store
Whatever you buy during that ‘trip’ to the store will benefit Phoenix Rising. Amazon, of course, doesn’t pass on your name or details of what you bought.
To help you remember to use the link, you can drag and drop the weblink for your chosen store onto your bookmarks toolbar (below the web address field in your browser) and it will form a button with the Amazon logo. You can edit the button’s title, if you want, by right-clicking on the button. If you don’t know how to get your bookmarks bar to display with your particular browser, throw that question with your browser’s name into Google.
What’s it worth?
5% to 8%, you’re thinking. That’s worth, erm, a year, that’s… erm…
Hang on, I’ve got my calculator…
Right, then. The average annual spend of a customer on Amazon is now $313, which is about $26 a month. People with ME/CFS might, of course, have a lower income than average but then more of it might be spent online because we can’t get out to the shops as easily so let’s use that figure as a rough guide. The average of 5% and 8% is 6.5% so that annual spend of $313 would be about $20 (£13 , €15) to Phoenix Rising a year.
Phoenix Rising has over 1,000 regular visitors and our newsletter goes out to over 3,000. If just a fraction of us used the affiliate button we’d easily keep Phoenix Rising funded.
Why support Phoenix Rising?
Phoenix Rising costs proper money. Without an income, the lights would go out and you and I would be tipped into the street like drunks at closing time, milling about on the pavement and wondering what happened.
If you’re reading this, you probably read three to four new articles a week that Phoenix Rising has provided to help keep you informed, whether that’s articles on symptoms, treatments, new research, or the charities that are trying to find the answers. You also have access to the forums and all that they provide: companionship, support, information, and the expertise of other members.
Any regular user of Phoenix Rising should support it financially, if they can, even if that’s just to donate the cost of buying a magazine (go here to donate cash). It’s only fair. But if you shop on Amazon, supporting Phoenix Rising isn’t just right, it’s free.
So join me as I leave the moths sleeping peacefully in my wallet and let’s go shopping…