Unbranded Amazon Affiliate Links

So, the Amazon affiliate scheme is great just generally, but at this time of year it can be particularly awesome. A little story for you..

A band that shall remain nameless had most of their marketing falling around this time of year last year. We figured as they were pretty famous most people would feel more confident using the amazon site rather than our own branded store so all the digital advertising we had booked was pushing to there, with the affiliate tag in the link. Well.. we didn't sell *that* many records. But by golly we sold a lot of Xboxes. And our affiliate rate (I think around 9%?) basically paid for the advertising campaign.

Now we could go into the ins and outs of why the record didn't sell that many at that point or the value of the campaign for the record (.i.e lots of awareness or advertising booked too early by product manager?). But wowser.. we're talking a few grand of free money for advertising something we were going to advertise anyway. And thats because Amazon pay out on the percentage at the tills no matter what people buy and it lasts for the whole session. The last 2 weeks in Nov is the busiest for online shopping. So a massive campaign taking people to amazon.. suddenly they are doing their xmas shopping and you are getting a cut.

So how do you do this without having a nasty branded widget? Well.. knowing something about how the links on amazon are built definitely helps. Here's a link for an item on their site.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B004132I4S/ref=s9_simh_gw_p15_d0_i1?pf_rd_m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&pf_rd_s=center-1&pf_rd_r=0TNP9E529FNJK4T6ZXRR&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=219600407&pf_rd_i=468294

Everything in blue is the session ID. Everything in red is the ASIN. Ahhh... ASINs. This is amazon's internal catalogue number system. In books they are literally the ISBN of the book. I know this cos, myself and Mark Thwaite set up the book catalogue department in the UK. Yes, I'm showing off.. la la la dee dah dah dah.

Anyway, ASIN stands for Amazon Standard Identifier Number. And everything after it is gunk you don't need. They always start with a B (unless its a book and then its an ISBN).

What you do need is your affiliates tag. Mine is "convertculture-21" so I make the link..

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B004132I4S/convertculture-21

I can use that link anywhere, in an email, in a twitter, on my facebook page. Anywhere. Only I will know its an affiliate link. Oh and amazon will know.. hence they will give me lots of lovely dosh for any session that starts through my link.

Anyone writing a blog or already directing people to amazon for any sales really should sign up to the affiliates scheme and start tagging their links. Its free money for a small amount of work.

You can sign up from any amazon account personal or otherwise here..

https://affiliate-program.amazon.co.uk/

Of course if you're happy to be upfront and commercial and show your affiliation with amazon then you can grab the embed codes easily from their site, and have a lovely box and buy button but thats not going to fit everyone's tone or aesthetic.