There used to be a company called Parish WebStore which allowed parishes to sell merchandise online from their own website. So in essence, the parish had their own online store. The Parish WebStore was a non-profit company and would fulfill the orders, maintain the inventory, etc. The parish would simply provide the customers and make commission. A beautiful idea, but not enough parishes signed up and sales numbers remained low. So the non-profit closed it's doors a few months ago, leaving many Parish websites with broken WebStore pages (like the this one from St. Joseph's below).
However, there are a few other way for parishes to provide Catholic products without spending money. For one, Amazon.com! While a little more setup work is required to make money by using Amazon vs. the old Parish WebStore. With an Amazon Associates account, parishes can become a distributor of all products sold on Amazon.com, and make commission.
Amazon's "Amazon Associates" program has a lot of advantages too. In addition to featuring links and product pictures on the main parish site, Amazon has an included program feature called "aStore." aStore allows to easily create a browsing online store with product categories.
When setting up an aStore, the account admin selects the products from Amazon.com that will be featured in the aStore. But other products not featured (diapers, snow skis, computers, etc) can also be purchased from the aStore, and raise money for the parish. This is the advantage of Amazon.com vs. other affiliate programs. If you parish site gets someone to Amazon to browse Catholic books and then they decide to purchase diapers, the parish could still make commission on the diapers.
Example: Jimmy Akin has an aStore liked to his website which you can visit: http://astore.amazon.com/jimmyakincom-20/
You can sell rosaries, chapel veils, first communion gifts, Catholic CD/DVD/Blu-Rays, Catholic books, booklets, Bibles, etc. Anything you can find on Amazon can be featured. Finding products for the store is as easy as searching Amazon.com. However, when it comes to selecting books, it is important to make sure they are Faithful. Amazon is not going to indicate whether a book is in line with the Catholic faith or not.
One easy way to locate faithful books is by searching for books sold on faithful sites like Catholic Answers, Lighthouse Catholic Media, Ignatius Press, Sophia Institute Press, Our Sunday Visitor, The Catholic Company, and many other well known & respected Catholic publishers and online stores. Plus, you can search for books written by well know Catholic authors, such as Patrick Madrid, Dr. Scott Hahn, Tim Staples, Fr. Mitch Pacwa, Steve Ray, Archbishop Charles Chaput, etc.
Another option is becoming an affiliate for The Catholic Company. This online Catholic store describes the benefits of their Catholic Affiliate Program as follows:
- Earn 10% commission
- 45-day referral period
- Dedicated affiliate manager
- Well-designed, easy-to-use, sophisticated sites
- Very competitive commission rates and program structure
- Special promotions/coupons for affiliates
- Multiple sites and links under one program
- Managed within industry-leading Commission Junction Network
The Catholic Company's 10% commission rate is pretty good. However, with Amazon 12% is possible. Plus Amazon offers a ton more products. In theory, if the parish were to convince parishioners to always use the parish link, people could provide the parish money for ALL their Amazon.com purchase.
For more information regarding Amazon's aStore and affiliate program, visit https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/join/landing/tools.html. For more information regarding the Catholic Company's affiliate prorgram, visit http://www.catholiccompany.com/workWithUs.tr
