July 29, 1999 | Read Time: 1 minute
Book lovers can now recommend their favorite titles to friends and raise money for charity at the same time.
MybnLink, a new charity effort by Barnes andnoble.com, is designed to reward people who send electronic messages with their book recommendations. The sender signs up for a hypertext link that can be placed in the e-mail and will identify the sender when the recipient uses the link to go to the Barnesand noble.com site.
Whenever the recipient uses the link to make a purchase on the site, the e-mail sender earns 5 per cent of the amount of the transaction. They can donate the money to one of five charities or keep it for themselves.
Charities that can be named as beneficiaries are the American Red Cross, CARE, First Book, the National Wildlife Federation, and Special Olympics. In addition to the money that the e-mail senders direct to the charities, Barnesandnoble.com will donate 1 per cent of all sales generated by the MybnLink program to First Book, a group in Washington that gives books to poor children.
Since early 1998, Barnesandnoble.com has had a similar affiliate program that lets charities and companies sell books through their Web sites and earn a cut of the profits. The company would not say how much charities have received through the program.
FOR MORE INFORMATION: Go to http://www.bn.com/mybnlink.
