Many people don’t take advantage of Amazon’s very easy to use, helpful, and profitable tools that allow anyone to create a web store, using Amazon’s back end to support it. Ministry organizations are the ideal market for this venture because it is almost free to start up and the store can be updated with just about any product that Amazon sells and anyone (including the nontechnical) can easily update the products once the store page has been created.

The free Amazon Astore model might not be ideal for building a super sized multi-million dollar business, but it’s GREAT for supporting a ministry fundraiser or supplementing your physical bookstore offering your membership the ability to go right to your website and order your preferred items. The members get their books shipped right to their door within a couple of days and the ministry get’s commission on all sales.

The benefit of using the Amazon tools are:

1. It opens up the entire Amazon Product offering to your store. Amazon sells A LOT OF STUFF!!! I mean, they even sell groceries at this point, so very often if you are looking for it, they are selling it. And that means, YOU can be selling it.

2. Because they sell so a variety, you can give your ministry leaders the opportunity to promote the books and materials that you are most comfortable with and that you think would most benefit the ministry and those who are ministered too by it.

3. If you have authors in your congregation, or leading it, you can promote those items online front and center just as you promote them physically in your brick and mortar bookstores.

If you are in charge of your churches website or bookstore, please do check out the Amazon Astore to see if it would be a good avenue for online book promotions.