Wee Alternative to Amazon Affiliates?

So I'm using shrtn.co as a URL shortener and for affiliate referrals because it's a PITA to apply to each individual store's affiliate program. In any case, I smell the whiff of doom for the mothership of affiliate programs, a.k.a Amazon. Apparently there are no Amazon affiliates available for these states anymore:

Arkansas
California
Colorado
Connecticut
Hawaii
Illinois
New York
North Carolina
Rhode Island
Texas

Who's next?! Dun Dun Dun!

If you're located in any one of these states, I'm guessing shrtn.co can act as the middle man, for now (until the affiliate hammer comes down on wherever it's located). You potentially get less referral money unless you refer like all of your Facebook/Twitter/G+/TheNextBestThingEver friends and beat it into them (metaphorically!) to use it in their tweets and messages :p   

Eh, they also have iTunes and Drugstore.com as affiliatatatable merchants if you're into that kindaofthing.

Look, I bought a hand blender, don't you want one too?! Go to http://shrtn.co/1gi and get one! (Actually, it is pretty awesome for smoothies, there are BAGS of frozen fruit in my freezer.)

Passive Income Via Twitter-able URLs

I'm not a huge Twitter fiend, but I suppose I can appreciate the 'succintitude' of the platform and the whole buttload of tools that have been built around it. What I can really get behind though, is of course any form of passive income :D So I'm totally on board with this new thingamajig designed for Twitter:

shrtn.co
(The link above includes my referral code, if you prefer, use this one for a non-referring URL)

It shortens the URL of a huge number of merchants (Amazon, iTunes, just to name a few) so you can insert it into your Twitter messages. Any purchase that goes through that URL gets your a referral percentage. What's even better is that if someone retweets your URL, you're still getting that referral if a purchase is made.

So let's say I have the Amazon link to my favorite kitchen appliance, the hand held immersion blender (it's time for some creamy hot soup, burrrr):

http://www.amazon.com/Cuisinart-CSB-76BC-SmartStick-200-Watt-Immersion/dp/B000EGA6QI

It gets shortened to: http://shrtn.co/1gi and I can tweet it to everyone following me or just use it on Facebook, MySpace, what have you.

If you sign up, make sure you check out their Bookmarklet, under the Tools section. Makes it a no-brainer to get the shortened URL of any page you're looking at.

The bookmarklet tool: Go to a item from a listed merchant and click on the bookmarklet.

Get Instant Twitterable URL!

Even if you don't need the extra dough, shrtn.co works with charities to send that referral money to good causes. Guys, what's not to love about it?