• by Marc Vigliotti , June 27, 2006

Bloggers looking to make money from advertising can turn to Motion-Mall, a Boston-based company that creates free Amazon.com advertisements for Web sites.

According to founder Ryan Gorer, the service is unique because it creates ads that are both customizable and interactive. Bloggers can visit MotionMall.com and build an ad in minutes with choice of color scheme, sizing, and specific Amazon product category best suited to their readership.

For example, a former city slicker writing a blog about his new home on the range can display an interactive banner ad for DVDs of spaghetti Westerns that allows a reader to scroll through an array of Amazon titles without leaving the blog.

Gorer describes his service as fun and engaging. “There’s no reason not to,” he says, referring to the nothing-to-lose concept many of his clients adopt when choosing to run MotionMall ads.

Neither the client nor MotionMall get paid unless a purchase is made from an ad. Amazon pays commissions directly, based on an 85/15 scheme: 85 percent of purchases lead to commission for the client, and in the remaining 15 percent of instances, MotionMall collects the commission.

The downside: The inter-active ads may elicit more interest than the blogs themselves.  But the prospect of compensation may be worth losing a few readers to the shopping urge.