Amazon Affiliate linking made easy

Affiliate marketing is a great idea if you can trust the company you essentially work for to pay you and if your volume of referrals is sufficient to pass their threshold and result in income. There are many people who claim to make a good income this way, but as far as I am concerned most such claims are exaggerations. Nonetheless, in this article we'll be looking at how to easily generate links with your affiliate tag embedded.

As I sometimes write about books or videos, I usually provide a link to either Wikipedia, Amazon, IMDB or all of them. Linking to Amazon does not have to involve, however, going to the Affiliate page.

If you do not wish to use an affiliate link and know the uniquely Amazonian ASIN, you may construct a link in the form http://www.amazon.com/dp/ASIN where you substitute the ASIN for the actual number. To add your affiliate link there, use a “tag” as in http://www.amazon.com/dp/ASIN/?tag=consumerd-20 (replace “consumerd-20” with your own affiliate tag). For a slightly shorter version, try amzn.com/ASIN or go to bit.ly and get your amazn.to/customized link, if you have a login with them.

To further automate the process of creating a link to Amazon.com is you may create a bookmarklet (ppd-bookmarklet), which will return a full, usable link when clicked while on an Amazon product page(ppd-bkmrklt). Just click, hold and drag it to your bookmarks or favorites .

AmazonAffiliate

After installing the bookmarklet, you may change its name or code by right-clicking on it or you may drag it into a folder to reduce clutter. The bookmarklet uses the following code.

(function(){
    var aff = 'consumerd-20'; 
    if (!document.getElementById('ASIN')) {
        alert('Can\'t find the product ID'); 
        return;
    } 
    var asin = document.getElementById('ASIN').value;
    prompt(
        'Here is the link:',
        'http://www.amazon.com/dp/' + asin + '/?tag=' + aff);
})()

When properly formated as a link / bookmarklet, the code above will become:

javascript:(function(){var%20aff%20=%20'consumerd-20';%20if%20(!document.getElementById('ASIN'))%20{alert('Can\'t%20find%20the%20product%20ID');%20return;}%20prompt('here%20is%20the%20link:','http://www.amazon.com/dp/'%20+%20document.getElementById('ASIN').value%20+%20'/?tag='%20+%20aff);})()

Once again, make sure you change the affiliate tag to yours.

Finally, if you are using WLW, you can automate the insertion of tags using Dynamic Templates. Here’s my code, which I launch after selecting the text I want to point to Amazon.

<a title="<’%= Title %’>" target="_nofollow" rel="amazon" href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/<%= ASIN %>/?tag=consumerd-20"><%= _selection %></a> (<a rel="nofollow" title="<%= Title %>" target="_blank" href="http://www.amazon.ca/dp/<%= ASIN %>/?tag=morethan-20">.CA</a>, <a rel="nofollow" title="<%= Title %>" target="_blank" href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/<%= ASIN %>/?tag=consuconsu-21">.UK</a>, <a rel="nofollow" title="<%= Title %>" target="_blank" href="http://www.amazon.fr/dp/<%= ASIN %>/?tag=consuconsu0a-21">.FR</a>, <a rel="nofollow" title="<%= Title %>" target="_blank" href="http://www.amazon.de/dp/<%= ASIN %>/?tag=consuconsu05-21">.DE</a>, <a rel="nofollow" title="<%= Title %>" target="_blank" href=http://www.amazon.it/dp/<%= ASIN %>/?tag=httpwwwcons0b-21>.IT</a>, <a rel="nofollow" title="<%= Title %>" target="_blank" href="http://www.amazon.es/dp/<%= ASIN %>/?tag=httpwwwconsum-21">.ES</a>)

Please let me know if you have found better or simpler methods of linking.

Sources / More info: ppd-bkmrklt