As for the US Amazon.com, web-savvy users can right-click (or ctrl-click) those button links and choose “add bookmark” (or a similarly worded option) to set bookmarks to the Canadian and UK stores, and this will help the Skeptics Society on an ongoing basis.

Thank you for raising this concern. We took it directly to Amazon.com and they said,

“There is nothing wrong with your supporters bookmarking the link to Amazon.com.”

They also recommended,

“The best way to make sure that you get the referral fees is to give your supporters the URL for where the link is located on your site, and then they will go to your site and click the link over to Amazon.com.”

So, we have set that up on our site as well.
You will find our new affiliate links page here:
http://www.skeptic.com/get_involved/affiliate_links.html

If you want to be sure you’ve bookmarked the correct URL to ensure that Skeptic gets a commission, simply manage or edit your bookmark and see if the bookmarked URL is the long URL I noted above rather than the short one. Don’t bookmark the short URL. Bookmark the long URL.

I usually start with Amazon’s detailed search page. If I go there to look for titles and add them to my cart, can I then access my cart through the Skeptics Society/Amazon link to make my purchase and give the Skeptics Society credit, or if not, can I access the detailed search page directly through a different Skeptics Society/Amazon link?

Will we see a statement at any point that tells us how much our purchases are worth to the Skeptics Society?

Yrs,
CTew

I would like to know the structure of the Sceptics organisation as it seems their are a number of requests for support/money. This means that as a sceptical person I currently see this site as similar to many ‘religious’ groups… I have no desire to cause offence or be litigated against for asking…

Not at all, Steve, it’s a common question. The Skeptics Society is a US 501(c)(3) nonprofit educational organization, which is legally able to accept donations and issue tax receipts. It is funded through direct sales of educational material, and also by private donations.

Comparisons to religious groups are, I think, a bit of a stretch for a science literacy organization. A better analogy would be PBS: we sometimes request donations to assist us in producing high-quality educational material with minimal advertising. In addition, public support allows us to fulfill our science outreach / public service mandate by making expert advice available to the media, pursuing investigative journalism, and doing consumer protection reporting on fringe science claims.

Author Gene Garman seeks to promote an accurate understanding of the founding constitutional principles for the United States of America and addresses what the “Religious Right” distorts.

But, it will redirect almost instantly to:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/homepage.html

You don’t want to bookmark http://www.amazon.com/gp/homepage.html even though that’s where you end up. You always want to start from the link that has the Skeptic affiliate code in it. Even though it redirects, Amazon registers the affiliate code.

UPDATE: June 26, 2009

To make it easier, I’ve created a shorter URL that visibly maintains our affiliate ID, so everyone can be sure they’ve either clicked or bookmarked our affiliate link successfully. The new URL for our Amazon.com link is: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect-home?tag=skepticcom-20&site=home

Our affiliate links page has been updated accordingly.

Thanks.
B. David