I think the title is a bit misleading, it should be "Why blggers can't make money by linking to books". This is a very specific case. I know people who actually their only business model is Amazon association. Risky if you ask me(as always when you depend entirely on someone else), but it works.
Of course this works, but i'd wager a guess and say that those are mostly US bloggers targeting US visitors.
Once your visitors are from all over the world, it is indeed as the author described - there isn't a "proper" solution available (save for e.g. a WordPress plugin that generates the link on-the-fly but this approach has other problems like non-cachability).
If there is indeed an approach that lets you monetize like 99% of international traffic/clicks i'd like to hear it.
Yeah, my main hobby site is a news site about a band. It supported itself through Amazon quite well up until a few years ago, when people stopped pre-ordering CDs. I've been able to recapture income by setting up a 'merch' page that hits the eBay API for things like posters and records, but in my niche, Amazon's completely dried up.
