Would probably look better under the albums info and everything.

Not to be a picky bitch or anything. I'll probably get used to it in time if it stays either way ...

I was thinking the same thing. It's really annoying where it is now...

I agree.

I also agree. It looks out of place. Especially with the big red bar. It's too imposing. People want to buy it AFTER they've found out the info about it.

I'll add this question here:

Will there be a feature for labels to contact M-A about putting links to their bands or will people be given the option to add links like in the links section?

And here I was wondering if I was being irritating by wanting to complain about it. I certainly understand they need the funding, so I've no objection about showing where to purchase it, but as has been said, it's certainly odd about it being right in the middle. It should be right above the "Back to (band name)'s page" link.

Yes, sort of like the links section on the main band page.

Only sites which have affiliation programs will be added to those sections. If you know any, you can post them here.

Yep. Or at least, please take the red background color away. It's just ugly when it's so big and in that location.

How about now? I'm really not a designer, but merley putting the bar at the bottom was much, much uglier. I think it's not so bad like that, but I just spent two minutes. I ain't about to waste a lot of time on design for this old site anyway.

What about putting it at the bottom with that look?

Either way I'd say it looks much better now. There was just something about the big red bar that looked tacky I guess.

Yeah, it looks much better now. I agree that it would look less imposing at the bottom.

Otherwise...

Can I just say that I actually REALLY love those links? I click them all the time to see what eBay has to offer. It saves me some effort of having to go there and then type it in myself. I like to just be able to see an album, say, "Man... I have to own this.", and then just have that be one click away.

Maybe one of the few examples of 'advertising' gone right! I think it's pretty kick ass.

Much better now. Thanks, Morrigan.

OK, it's at the bottom of the page now. Better?



Glad you like it and thanks for the support. I've already received an e-mail saying it was a "disgrace" and selling out, etc...

In related news, we made like 25$ from eBay in less than a day, fucking wow.

I put it at the bottom now. It's not bad. I don't know which is better, and I don't care enough, so it'll probably stay like that for a while.



Thank you. And if people don't find it useful, they can easily ignore it, I think.

On a semi-related note: Xmas is coming, so those of you who planned to use eBay or amazon to do their shopping, we wouldn't hate you if you did that by using our link or anything.

But that's all the nudging I'll give, I certainly don't want to pressure anyone. That's why you won't ever see ugly banners on here.

I support fully the decision of posting the EBay and the other links, anything to make the site better, but, I have a question. Do these links have to be necessarily present in all of the site's albums, even when a band itself may have made it clear that there are no existent copies of said item left? For example, Ahti's Pohjantähti, or Moonsorrow's 1997 promo tape? Isn't this a bit confusing? Not that I'm complaining or anything, but, is there anything that can be done about this?

I'd be more than happy to help out, but the only thing I'm purchasing from amazon this Christmas is Hawkwind, and obviously I can't use that here. I'm getting Neurosis as well, but from the main site.

This also brings to light a new question. For Metal Archives 2, if a band has distribution from its own site (and I'm referring to moderately bigger bands, not smaller ones) would you wind up contacting them and trying to get some support by using links to there, say from Neurot Recordings, Jester Records, etc... And will record labels also themselves be linked for profit, such as The End, Black Mark, and others?

I also think that rather than for specific albums, each link should just stay on the main bands page, rather than under each individual album, because as the poster above me said, many albums have been out of print for quite some time. I know this is most likely to ease the impossible manual modification to every available album, which is why I mentioned just taking them off the individual albums entirely.


Those fuckers need to get over themselves. This site needs it.

Wow, now it looks nice.

Click on any Amazon/ebay link on the site, then search for whatever and buy it that way, the link still has the affiliate code thing in it. So you can buy any crap you want through ebay or Amazon, it doesn't have to be music related, and the site will still be credited for it. Correct me if I'm wrong Hellblazer/Morrigan, but I'm pretty sure that's the way it works.


The label would have to offer an affiliate program (I think The End does have one), but all other label and band deals would have to be settled separately if they want to do that but I doubt that many who don't already have an affiliate program would be willing to do it.

Actually, it's not really relevant. For amazon, the link you click will simply track your visit to us, and if you add something to your cart within 24 hours (and checkout before the cart expires, obviously), the sale will be tracked to us. So even if you buy a book, it should work. The link to an album page is merely the incentive, it doesn't matter if you end up buying something else entirely.
For eBay, same thing, only it's within a few days of bidding on an item, IIRC.

Edit: Lana beat me to it. She is correct.


We can link anything that's a) relevant and b) has an affiliation program, i.e. a way to track the sales back to us. Unfortunately, this often demands quite a bit of programming so few smaller stores have them. On the other hand, if some labels or stores (or even bands, anyone that sells something really) are interested, we could refer them to existing affiliation platforms they could use... a lot of stores such as Fearshop and Amazon have their own in-house affiliation program, but even big stores like eBay use a third party, such as Commission Junction (North America) or TradeDoubler (Europe). These third parties provide merchants (and affiliates) with tools to integrate into their website. Some stores have found it easier to use those pre-made tools than make their own, but I have no idea what kind of integration is necessary to say, use CJ's program.

I'm not sure if that really answered your question though... But if, say, Neurot Recordings want to be linked by us, we could refer them to those platforms, and once they're an official merchant, we could certainly link to them.



It's either that or nothing, really... Unlike amazon or other stores, which has a steady catalogues and a webservice feed we can use to add the relevant links, as far as I know there is no way to add links like that with eBay, since the listings change constantly anyway (and there is no way in hell we can set those up manually). Clearly it's pretty much a "yeah, right" when you see a "search on eBay" link for an obscure promo tape, but hey, even for most of those, there's pretty much only eBay left if you ever want to buy it... who knows what you could find.

Much better Morrigan. Far less intrusive now.

Looks great now! Lets hope it grows and helps the website. Nice to see it working already.

since it works like that, (for ease of navigation) can you just put a generic link (with your referral code) for each of the sites with which you have the affiliate program on the front page?
I spend a pretty penny on both Amazon and eBay every month, so I wouldnt mind just clicking from here (I guess it would just save one click, but it was just an idea which I dont think would compromise the site's integrity nor look out of place even if it were just in the 'news' section)

Awesome! Anything from amazon? From now on, I'll order all my amazon books through here.

Well, we might make a news post with the links to all the stores after (hopefully) adding a few more. I'm not really comfortable with having permanent links to them on the main page though because... well it might seem silly to some, but to me that's on a different level than having a link to a specific search on the band pages, and I don't really like it. We could put the links on the donation page with explanations, I guess, though that doesn't save you a click. You could always bookmark the URLs with our affiliate code though.



No sales yet... at least the stats don't show any, I don't know how often they're updated. Up to around $50 on eBay though, mainly because they give us $25 for anyone who creates a new eBay account and places a bid, and two people have done that. Earnings from actual sales are only like $1.50 right now, heh.

Heh, V2 will have a show/hide option for every section of the bandpage, right? Because if more large distros pitch in it could get rather ugly.

Yes, don't worry, we won't let such a list clutter up the pages utterly, even in this version.

Just a small question: By using e-bay the opportunities to select from a region is rather limited; Worldwide, North America, US only...

it would be pain in the ass for users from other areas to buy albums from this site and search for sellers from their areas/continents.

Is it possible to offer this program also to users in Europe/ Asia?

Need to agree with oneyoudontknow here, I was going to bid on a bunch of metal lps this afternoon and won't mind letting EM have a penny from that, but going there through the links won't work because I need the German ebay... any solution for this?

Btw the new design for the releases pages looks really cool now with the red line above and below, what about trying this for band pages? Thin red lines to separate headings and content instead of those red bars (which I've found very ugly from day one to be honest)?

said and done

Hmm, hadn't thought of that. Can someone explain how it works exactly? Does eBay Germany really show auctions/sellers that ebay.com does not show, or what?

I'll see what I can do for the regional eBays...


Thank you.

The problem is that we here across the Atlantic cannot narrow down the search - left hand site on the e-bay page - to Europe, but have merely the options I had mentioned above;Worldwide, North America, US only. Therefore it is pretty pointless to search with the links here at the MA, because the total amount of hits can be pretty heavy. If someone searches for a band like Carnivore Horde for instance the chances are good that it will work with the current available link, but with more famous bands the chances to find the item quick are poor.

Well, after investigation, it appears that I can't link to eBay Germany specifically, which kind of sucks - affiliates who want to link to eBay Germany (and Switzerland, apparently) must be European or possess an European bank account. So, I am sorry, but there is nothing we can do for that.

I don't quite know why, but it appears that the affiliation programs of the various local eBay sites are spread across several affiliation platforms. eBay.com, eBay.ca, Australia and a couple of others are grouped under one platform, Germany and Switzerland on another, the South American ones on yet another... I have no idea why this is the case, but there you have it. Right now I'm able to link to eBay.com, eBay Canada and eBay Australia, and pending approval for France, UK, Belgium, Netherlands and Italy, which should get added shortly if all goes well. I can't be bothered to add eBay Singapore or India, I doubt the traffic we get is worth the integration hassle.

For amazon, it's a bit different. Each local amazon site (there are quite fewer ones than for eBay, thankfully - much easier for integration) has its own affiliation program. So, I had to sign up with all of them (ugh). After some testing, amazon UK and France appear to be quite buggy for the band searches so I turned them off for now (the album links are there though). It kind of sucks for us since we have to keep track of so many accounts, but hopefully it'll be worth it for our overseas visitors.

As you can see, the "local" sites appear in an expandable/collapsable list under the main one when you click the arrows. This was to reduce the clutter, obviously. I hope it looks decent enough.

in Poland ebay.pl isn't so popular
we prefer www.allegro.pl
what about this ?

Excellent work with the extra "buy from" links, Morrigan!

Yeah its a little late but I guess I should say thanks for fulfilling the requests here. It looks great now and I've even found myself clicking some of those links already.

I've already told my entire family and I'm planning on telling everyone else I know that if they're buying anything from Amazon or eBay to do it through Metal-Archives.

Would these links have an influence on google's page-rank of the site?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank
I just wondered...

edit: Thanks for the additional links Morrigan. It kinda sucks that e-bay Germany is not supported, but there are ways to deal with this.

Rockabilia has an affiliates program.

Thanks... but that site is horrendously slow for me, and I severely dislike the fact that they don't even write the prices on the item page (until after you've added it to the cart, WTF?)... I am reluctant to add that one right now. We'll see.