The Amazon affiliate program has a new option called aStore that enables affiliates to create a custom Amazon storefront.

Amazon aStore is currently in Beta and they describe aStore on the affiliate site as follows:

aStore by Amazon is a new Associates product that gives you the power to create a professional online store, in minutes and without the need for programming skills, that can be embedded within or linked to from your website.

I decided to try out aStore, since Amazon said it would just take minutes to set up a store. I picked out some books featured in the latest Revenue magazine as the classics of marketing.

As advertised, it was a quick and easy process to customize an Amazon aStore. Mine is at http://astore.amazon.com/velocitynyc.

aStore is a neat concept - it lives entirely on the Amazon server, but retains the customization by the affiliate.

So if you were to click from my aStore on Successful Affiliate Marketing for Merchants, you would be brought to a page with product details that still has my aStore look and feel.

Add the book to your shopping cart and you're still in my aStore. When you click to proceed to checkout, Amazon will prompt you to login to complete the purchase.

I noticed at the bottom, left of each of my aStore pages that there is a link that reads:

Join Associates, the Amazon.com affiliate program.

That link has my Amazon affiliate ID built in - could Amazon be considering a second tier for their affiliate program? Given the margins they have with books and such, I'd imagine it's just for internal tracking.

There is a helpful summary of Amazon aStore at Ask Dave Taylor.