Dave, I notice that whenever you mention any products on Amazon, your links always go straight to the recommended product (rather than their annoying intermediate landing page where they try to sell you on other products) and neatly tuck your affiliate link in too. So, do tell, what’s your secret technique?
If you’re already an Amazon affiliate, then you know their affiliate area has a nice “build a link” capability, highlighted on their Build Links to Amazon.com area. If you’re not an affiliate, then, for goodness sake, go sign up!
Let’s step through an example so you can see how the Amazon Affiliates program works, and then I’ll show you how I make links myself. Since it’s the holidays, let’s do this by considering a game I’ve always loved, in an edition that my kids would doubtless really enjoy: Disney Monopoly.
To use the Amazon Affiliate “text link” system, I have to navigate to the page in a separate window, then copy and paste the URL of that page into their dialog box, then click “bulid link” to have the code generated. Here’s the HTML they give me:
Disney Monopoly
Nice, but that’s a long, torturous way to build these links if you just want to pop a few into a Web page or Weblog entry. Instead, here’s how I do it…
First off, go to Amazon and find a page that you’d like to link to. Copy the URL by clicking on the address bar in your browser. It’ll look something like this:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00005JG32/ref=cm_lm_fullview_prod_3/102-2173641-6432913? %5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance
Generally, you can just slap your affiliate code on the end of any Amazon URL and their system is smart enough to catch it and give you credit for the purchase. But that’s really not the best solution. Instead, chop the URL down to immediately after the first sequence of letters and digits. In this case, it’s B00005JG32 .
Stick with me. Once you’ve done this once, you’ll see, it’s just as easy as using the Amazon system, but much, much faster.
So the URL at this point is:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00005JG32/
Now, all you need to do is add your affiliate link. My affiliate link ID is davetaylor, logically enough, so this is the minimalist URL to point to this Monopoly game:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00005JG32/davetaylor
Now it’s just time to drop this into a hypertext reference. That’s done by using an a href=”” sequence:
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00005JG32/davetaylor"> Disney Monopoly</a>
Perfect! Try clicking this link to see how it works.
Easy enough, isn’t it?
It’s also easy to include the image from an Amazon product and even make it clickable. Pop over to the product page and simply right click on the product image itself. You’ll see a pop-up menu from your browser that includes “View Image”, “Open Image In New Window” or something similar. Do that. Now you’ll see just the product image itself (click here to see what I mean). If your browser’s decent, it’ll not only show the image, but the title will include the size of the image (this one’s 160×160).
To include the image on your Web page just wrap the image URL in some rudimentary HTML:
<img src="url of the image" alt="product name" />
For bonus points, include height=”height” width=”width“. Here’s how that HTML would look for our Monopoly game:
<img src="http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00005JG32.01._SCMZZZZZZZ_.jpg" alt="Monopoly Deluxe" height="160" width="160" />
Here’s the image as it’ll show up on the page:
Just about done. All that’s left is to put the two pieces of HTML together, so that we have a clickable image. That’s surprisingly straightforward. Just replace the text in the earlier hypertext reference with the img HTML instead:
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00005JG32/davetaylor"> <img src="http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00005JG32.01._SCMZZZZZZZ_.jpg" alt="Monopoly Deluxe" height="160" width="160" border="0" /></a>
That’s all there is to it. To show you it’s legit, click on the monopoly board below and watch how the affiliate link is saved as Amazon rewrites the URL to its internal system and shows you the page with that product:
Finally, you can use the Amazon affiliate link building system, but I promise, once you start experimenting with this approach, you’ll find it’s considerably faster and much more flexible. Oh, and the affiliate payout for purchases is exactly the same as if you’d used their tool too.
Updated July, 2006 to reflect changes in Amazon’s inventory and to further simplify the affiliate URL link by using the “ASIN” shortcut.
I want to post the Amazon URL purchase page for my ebook to my website. So I inserted the URL used by Amazon. And when I clicked on the URL, I noticed the Amazon purchase page had my name on the account. How can I get the Amazon URL purchase page for my ebook to omit my name and reflect your account?
I hardly drop remarks, but i did some searching and wound up here How do
I quickly build Amazon affiliate links on my pages?
| Ask Dave Taylor. And I do have a couple of questions for you if it’s allright.
Could it be just me or does it give the impression like some of these comments appear like they are left by brain dead visitors?
😛 And, if you are posting at additional online sites, I would like to follow everything fresh you have to post.
Would you make a list of all of your community pages like your
twitter feed, Facebook page or linkedin profile?
You can find my social media outposts by clicking on the various links at the very top left of this page (up in the dark blue part) including our Facebook fan page and YouTube channel. Thanks for asking!
I truly love your site.. Excellent colors & theme.
Did you build this website yourself? Please reply back
as I’m attempting to create my own personal website and want to learn where
you got this from or what the theme is named. Many thanks!
Thanks for the kudos, Twila! It’s based on a standard WordPress theme, 2013, with lots of hacks and work by a team of designers. 🙂
Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!!
I have just finished developing a product called Tweet Eye Affiliate. You can put your Amazon id into this software and search various keywords. When you have found products that you like with those keywords you can click Tweet and the software will tweet your selected Amazon products to Twitter Account with your Amazon affiliate ID. The software also has functionality to do scheduled tweets of any Amazon or eBay product with your affiliate ids.
I get to the end of the first episode of the product to add your affiliate ID followed your instructions – it works! I’m writing an ebook and include a link to my Amazon Associates would like to recommend reading.
http://www.laptopstablets24h.com/
how can i get link from just “amazon todays deal” and then posting in my blog automatically? Thanks before
The method did not work for me. Try using /?tag=affiliateid in the end instead. You can verify the link here:
https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/network/tools/link-checker/main.html
FYI: these don’t work according to the amazon affiliate link checker that you can use when you log into your account.
I followed your instructions for adding my affiliate ID to the end of the first sequence of a product link–it works! Thanks! I’m writing an ebook and want to include my Amazon Associates links to further suggested reading. The link builder on the associates’ site was not working at all–kept throwing up errors when I tried to link from a Word doc.
Its new style of web. good content. Thanks Dave 🙂
Just started with amazon marketing but did not know there were so many formats of affiliate links that can be used. Will be handy and easy to use.
what is my direct amazon link? to add to my posts?
Hi Dave,
Thanks for the info. Is it possible to tag multiple products in the same way ? How can i tag this full page ?
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_nr_i_0?rh=k%3Abasketball+hoop%2Ci%3Asporting&keywords=basketball+hoop&ie=UTF8&qid=1330427634#/ref=sr_st?keywords=basketball+hoop+portable&qid=1330428660&rh=i%3Asporting%2Cn%3A3375251%2Ck%3Abasketball+hoop+portable&sort=relevance-fs-browse-rank
Thanks,
Richi
@Aish – same here! have you found out?
Thanks Dave. That’s quite a cool way of setting up the links. I’ll give it a try in my next post. It’s not only quicker but i think it actually looks better then the blatant flash banners I’ve been using. It’s subtle and easy but I’ll have to be carefull not to mess it up.
A quick question: How do I let my friends buy from Amazon, no matter what they want to buy, using my affiliate ID?
I have a friend who is a frequent buyer on Amazon and offered to give me a start as an affiliate by buying things on Amazon using my links. The problem is I cannot keep sending her links every time she wants to buy something.
Ramesh, the Amazon Alliliate terms don’t allow any Special Links to be sent by email. You’d need a website or blog to earn commission.
Can i automaticly create 1.000.000.000 tracking id ?
I am from India. I want to join Amazon Associates. I want to use Special link in the email body so that the email recipient will purchase the Amazon product by clicking on the link, which goes to Amazon website. Can I earn commission in this way? Pleas advise.
Amazon’s tools for creating links have improved quite a bit. There’s even a script that you can put on your pages to auto link (with some direction and tuning) to keywords in your text.
Amazon also has some widgets that you can add that are kind of cool that display the products you choose.
The best results that I have found though are from plain old text links and picture links.
US “-20”, Fr “-21 ” etc. Thanks for your post~
I normally use this format amazon.com/dp/asin/?tag=tracking-id, this short and easy for me
No matter what I do, the HTML code appears on my Blogger site as CODE instead of readable text. I am an Amazon.com affiliate and I have read all the instructions – but when I hightlight their HTML code and copy and paste, it’s the same disaster. Whatever is the secret? Is there something missing from all the instruction?
This to me seems to be a reasonable way to do affiliate marketing because it gives me complete control of what i promoted and where it goes, how it looks ets but is amazon the only affiliate network that allows you to do this? All the networks i arrive at seem to use paste in scripts that generate the ads and it generates ads which seem like spam to me and frankly i just run my eyes over google ads without even taking notice.
Hey Guys,
I have got the ISBN’s for my products. How can I build a link using this with my associates ID?
Any help appreciated.
Thanks
Nice tips for working with Amazon URLs. You might find it easier to manipulate the URL via http://urlparser.com.
thanks and just followed your instruction and seems amazon have changed something now. i just cliked the get link and then the link shows up..is that ok also?
I’ve made a tutorial video that makes this process even easier:
http://bit.ly/CreateAmazonLinks
There may be a MAJOR error in Dave’s post above, in the section about “minimalist links”. (I’m grateful for the many awesome blog posts Dave has here, but *this* one may be erroneous.)
Here’s the error:
You can’t just use the “davetaylor” tag. You also need the “-20” that comes afterwards. (I’m not sure what number Amazon has assigned to Dave, but mine’s 20.)
So you need this kind of link…
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00005JG32/davetaylor-20
Instead of just…
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00005JG32/davetaylor
Sure, both links will go to the product…but only *one* of the formats above gets successfully tagged with Dave’s affiliate account!
You can check this for yourself at the Amazon Associates Link Checker, here:
https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/network/tools/link-checker/main.html
Test both formats above by loading them into the link checker, then scroll down and click Check Link. (You need to test your OWN affiliate links… testing Dave’s won’t work.)
Again, check out the tutorial video that makes this process even easier and more accurate:
http://bit.ly/CreateAmazonLinks
I think they changed the rules on Aug 15.
Very helpful. I was searching for the exact same thing and you’ve answered it so perfectly. Thanks.
I came across this page as I was interested in why the amazon tool (as mentioned in Daves post) inserts a 1px by 1px image in the text link. Surely it serves no purpose?
For example it will generate
Buy This
Thanks for the info tho Dave.
I’m a 6 week newbie, awesome info! I’m definately coming back here again. You guy’s sound like you really know your stuff. Now I’m off to become an Amazon and Ebay affiliate, lol.
I am getting the following URL for mobile safari:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d.html/ref=mp_s_a_1/180-5891994-4397819?a=B001F7AHXM
Adding the affiliate code at the end does not work. Any suggestions?
Bobby –
If you make a link the way Dave suggests and then open it you can check out the source code. You’ll see your associate ID referenced throughout the html which is pretty convincing.
I’d like to just append my affiliate id to the end of a url like Dave does, but how do you know if it really works?
The code Amazon give you is a pain to generate going through their cumbersome interface. But I’d like to know that Dave’s way actually works or that Amazon isn’t likely to start rejecting links in that format…
useful and quick. Thats what i like. The linking process from amazon is really hectic and you showed an easy method.
actually, your URL’s are still longer than they have to be.
The shortest form is:
http://amazon.com/o/asin/###ISBN###/
We are just rolling out a new link building tool for Amazon where all you have to do is highlight the text you want to link to amazon and we search their api and automatically create the link for you. Check it out here triggit.com
Why would’t you try Amazon Web services Tracking ID? Associates tools such as Build-a-Link and Amazon Recommends are helpful if you want to build Amazon links quickly and easily. But if you’d like to more deeply integrate their features and content into Amazon Web site, you might want to check out Amazon Web Services.
I’m confused, are you saying the links they give you are some how corrupt or it’s hard to put the links on your site?
Ack – I didn’t realize the link to the tool I mentioned didn’t have a link.
Here it is:
http://dan.hersam.com/tools/amazon.html
Thanks for this page. I found it very useful.
Hi,
Isn’t this kind of alteration of Amazon’s “Special Link” violate the Amazon Affiliate user agreement?
I wrote a tool to make it easier for me to generate Amazon Affiliate links in case anyone’s interested.
There seem to be two problems with the instructions on this page.
1) The suggested abbreviated url’s don’t seem to work.
2) The Monopoly Deluxe example seems incomplete in the instructions because Amazon does not seem to have that image on their server anymore.
Try the Amazon Affiliate Link Creator. It is the quickest and easiest way to create affiliate links for your blog and webpages. The software is freeware.
http://executivedatabases.com/amazon.html
William
Other people thinks that kind of link (with “tg/detail/-” instead of “ASIN”) does not retain the associate ID:
Amazon Associates beware
http://www.kottke.org/03/02/amazon-associates-beware
But that’s from February 2003. Maybe the things are different now, I don’t know.
It’s worth noting that this doesn’t work with Amazon FR, though it does work with Amazon UK. The FR site wants an ASIN listing. I haven’t tried with any others, since I don’t have accounts with them.
How can I quickly add Amazon affiliate links to my pages?
Dave, I notice that whenever you mention any products on Amazon, your links always go straight to the recommended product and neatly tuck your affiliate link in too. So, do tell, what’s your secret technique?…