Buy your school books from the PF store

[Greg Bernhardt]

Hi all,

Please think about buying your books from our new online store. It is in association with amazon. You can find anything that is on amazon and all the payment and shipping is done by amazon. The difference is we receive 15% of your order for Physics Forums.

http://www.pixelbattle.com

thanks!

 

[jimmy p]

woah Greg, is there anything you CAN'T do?

 

[Zantra]

Excellent! I'm sure I'll make use of this. Is it all of Amazon's books, a select group, or just all books related to the sciences?

 

[Tsu]

Videos, too?

 

[Eh]

Say Greg, here's an idea you might want to look into. On another forum (not sure if it was a Vbulletin) there was an interesting feature on each thread. At the bottom of the page, there was a related links section. It would take keywords found in the thread, and put in a pre determined link for it. IOW, a discussion about Einstein would bring up keywords for relativity, time travel, curved spacetime and so forth.

Do you suppose you could take such a feature and apply it to the books? So in a discussion about Einstein, you'll get links to various books about Einstein (and cosmology or other repeated keywords that come up) from Amazon at the end of the thread. It might make people more inclined to buy through physicsforums if the books are right in their face.

As I said, I'm not sure if this was done on a Vbulletin. But there are so many hacks for this kind of forum, that I would be surprised if something like that already exists.

 

[jimmy p]

oh yeah, greg is it JUST books? cos i do a lot of random cd purchasing on Amazon and i would be happy if 15% of the money i spent there went to PF.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Originally posted by jimmy p
oh yeah, greg is it JUST books? cos i do a lot of random cd purchasing on Amazon and i would be happy if 15% of the money i spent there went to PF.

Actually it is everything amazon sells :)

Goto the link and click the "bestsellers" link in the middle and you can goto other categories and search.

http://www.physicspost.com/cgi-bin/shop-mode-none-locale-us.html

Say Greg, here's an idea you might want to look into. On another forum (not sure if it was a Vbulletin) there was an interesting feature on each thread. At the bottom of the page, there was a related links section. It would take keywords found in the thread, and put in a pre determined link for it. IOW, a discussion about Einstein would bring up keywords for relativity, time travel, curved spacetime and so forth.

Do you suppose you could take such a feature and apply it to the books? So in a discussion about Einstein, you'll get links to various books about Einstein (and cosmology or other repeated keywords that come up) from Amazon at the end of the thread. It might make people more inclined to buy through physicsforums if the books are right in their face.

As I said, I'm not sure if this was done on a Vbulletin. But there are so many hacks for this kind of forum, that I would be surprised if something like that already exists.

Interesting idea, I will look into it! thanks!

 

[jimmy p]

So as long as i go through the provided link i can get us money?? coolies, we have got to keep this thread going until i get paid guys if you want to spend my money!

 

[DarkAnt]

wow, this is really great. I wish you had this before (got a few of these books) plus this is a great way to give something back to the pf. Buy books!

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Originally posted by jimmy p
So as long as i go through the provided link i can get us money?? coolies, we have got to keep this thread going until i get paid guys if you want to spend my money!

Yep, anything amazon sells can be found through that website. We get 15% of whatever you buy. :)

Tell your friends and bookmark it for later!

 

[DarkAnt]

I'm just curious, how did you manage to pull this off anyway?

 

[Monique]

Is there going to be an easily accessible buttoned link?

 

[Tsu]

Originally posted by Monique
Is there going to be an easily accessible buttoned link?

GREAT idea!

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Yeah, I'm going to add it to the top right banner under physics network

 

[jimmy p]

greg, i can't get the link to work. I get an HTTP 500 Internal Server error message?? is anyone else having trouble?

 

[Tsu]

Originally posted by jimmy p
greg, i can't get the link to work. I get an HTTP 500 Internal Server error message?? is anyone else having trouble?

I got right to it a day or two ago, but now I can't. I get an Sbox error saying it's temporarily down.

 

[Monique]

I have to order some music CDs for a friend from amazon :) I guess he'll just have to wait until the link is back up

 

[chroot]

You get... 15%?

That means if I order a $100 textbook, you get $15 in your pocket? That doesn't seem reasonable or possible at all. Greg, what are you talking about?

- Warren

 

[Eh]

That's the standard Amazon affiliate program. Actually, most affiliate programs in general offer 15% of sales. Why does that sound surprising?

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Originally posted by chroot
You get... 15%?

That means if I order a $100 textbook, you get $15 in your pocket? That doesn't seem reasonable or possible at all. Greg, what are you talking about?

- Warren

Actually Amazon doesn't give the exact percentage, but they say it's between 3-15% depending on the item.

 

[jimmy p]

whats happened to the link?

 

[Monique]

What is causing the link to be broken? Someone impatient can't wait for his CDs to arrive, but I am holding the strings so he'll have to wait Can't wait too long though

 

[jimmy p]

im getting withdrawal symptoms...[b(] [b(] I also want to buy a book by Richard Feymann to boost my physics knowledge! hurry i may get depressed!

 

[jimmy p]

OH GREG! i WANT to give you MONEY! i can't wait much longer to buy my cd's!

 

[Hurkyl]

Originally posted by Monique
What is causing the link to be broken? Someone impatient can't wait for his CDs to arrive, but I am holding the strings so he'll have to wait Can't wait too long though

Ack, Monique is scary!

 

[Monique]

just trying to get a few bucks for PF.. I could just tell that guy that the shipping was really expensive..

 

[jimmy p]

i really can't wait...must buy cds...

 

[The_Professional]

The books are a pretty good deal..especially the com. Security related ones.

When is the link going to be fixed?

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

I don't know what is wrong with the link, however you can order everything from here too: http://www.talkroot.com/cgi-bin/shop.html

 

[Tsu]

Will 15% of the sales at that site still go to PF?

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

My estimation of 15% was a bit high. The reality is about 5%-7%, but yeah it will still go to PF. :)

 

[Mattius_]

still a great idea greg and i suspect you will make quite a bit of money from this. It is reassuring to see great website sustain itself.

 

[Dagenais]

I was just wondering, why does PF need cash?

To pay for the server?

Pay for the subscription to UltimateBBS?

I'm just curious to know, since I've never ran a large website with thousands of members before.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Originally posted by kenikov
I was just wondering, why does PF need cash?

To pay for the server?

Pay for the subscription to UltimateBBS?

I'm just curious to know, since I've never ran a large website with thousands of members before.

All the above and we use vBulletin, not UBB :)

We're going to have to upgrade our system soon too.

 

[NSX]

Has anyone tried this yet to see if it works?