The new Amazon aStore tool gives affiliates a very quick and easy way to create their own personalized storefronts. Up to one hundred storefronts, in fact. You decide exactly which of Amazon's millions of products are included in each storefront, and how your selections are arranged.

You can create a bookstore that offers your personal favorites, another bookstore that focuses exclusively on web design or marketing, another store specializing in digital cameras, and so on, up to a total of 100 different storefronts.

1. Select name
2. Create product pages
3. Add product
4. Arrange product
5. Select color theme
6. Select widgets to include
7. Get link

The second and third steps, creating product pages and adding product, are the most involved, but this tutorial will not delve into the depths of those complexities.

Amazon.com aStores are available only if you are signed up as an Amazon.com Associate. "Associate" is what Amazon.com calls their affiliates. I don't know why. Everyone else calls them affiliates.

If you are not already an Amazon.com affiliate, er . . . Associate, it is free and easy, and you can quickly become one here: Join Amazon.com Associate Program

The name you select, if it is still available, will be used as an additional Amazon.com tracking ID for your Associate account. Currently you can have up to 100 different Amazon.com tracking IDs, and 100 corresponding aStores. Each tracking ID is used to provide a unique sub-domain URL with the format:

Your tracking ID can include letters, numbers, dashes, and underscores. It can be up to 64 characters long. Blank spaces are not allowed. The "-20" is automatically added by Amazon.com to specify a particular geographic region. In this case the "-20" signifies North America. I don't know what numbers are appended for users in other parts of the world.

When you sign on to your Amazon.com affiliate account at Amazon's Associates Central the left-hand navigation menu will look something like this.

Click on the aStore link and you will be taken to the aStore management page. You will have the option to "Add an aStore."

The first step is to select a name, or Tracking ID, that is not already in use by someone else. If the name you enter is not available, you will be presented with a few suggested alternative names from which to select, or you can enter something entirely different and try again. When you find an available name, you will be given the option to proceed to the next step. If you proceed, the name you have chosen cannot be changed later, but it can be deleted and a new aStore created. Each Amazon.com Associate can have up to 100 aStores, so this is not a critical issue. Relax. This is fun.

Once you proceed past the name selection stage, you will be taken to the heart of the process. The page that appears is called "Category Pages" on the left side navigation bar, and it is titled "Create aStore Pages" at the top of the page. This page is where you will add new category and sub-category pages to your storefront, name the pages, arrange them, and add, delete, and arrange products on each page.

When you first create a new aStore, Amazon automatically creates one page, named "Home Page" for you. This tutorial will cover renaming the "Home Page" and adding products by direct product selection, and we will bypass for the moment the procedures used to create category or sub-category pages, and other methods of selecting products for inclusion.

This aStore example is a selection of my personal favorite books, so I renamed "Home Page" by first selecting that item in the left-hand column and then typing in "My Favorite Books" in the Custom Title text box on the right. I left the selector box set on the default "Add individual products," and proceeded to "Add products."

In the unlikely even you already know the identification number for a specific product you want to add to your main page, enter the product ID in the text box and click "Go." Otherwise, use the drop-down box to limit your search to the appropriate product category.

The search results will pop up in a list to the right of the search box where you can add or remove the individual books, or other products, that you want to include in your Amazon aStore.

Immediately below the blue product search box is a grey "Added Products" box that displays the images of the selected products in a matrix of three rows and three columns, in the same order as the final display page. Each category or sub-category "page" can contain up to 54 items, but they will be divided automatically into groups of 9 in each of several linked display pages.

When you click on a product image in the "Added Product" box, an "Edit Product Settings" box pops up. Here you can change the order in which the products are displayed, remove the product, or add a custom text description for each product. I am so happy that Amazon.com included a spell check here.

Remember this - if in the future you wish to remove a product, the only way to get to the Product Manager Page is to click the "Add products" button on the Category Manager Page.

At this point you have a functioning Amazon aStore with a few products. You can either conduct another search to add more products to your main page, return to the Category Manager Page to make a more elaborate structure, preview your existing page, or continue on for a few basic finishing touches.

Navigate to the "Color and Design" page and select a basic color theme for your Amazon aStore from the drop-down list of options. You have the option to set a custom color scheme for the aStore, but that is beyond this tutorial.

Right below the color scheme controls, there is a text box for entering your aStore's name. This is not the same as the aStore's Tracking ID name.

Sidebar Widgets are difficult to explain, but they are easy to recognize if you are familiar with Amazon.com's existing features. I have not yet found a good reason to change the default settings for this feature, so I recommend that you proceed on to the next and final step.

The "Get Link" page will show you exactly what the URL link to your new aStore page is. It's as simple as that, and that is all there is to a basic setup.