How To Create An Amazon Associates Product Link

Find A Product - Create A Product Link - Insert HTML Link Code Into Web Page

In this section I am going to show you how to create an Amazon Associates - Product Link and explain how to choose a product in the first place. Anyone can create a product link, with relative ease, but not many do the actual product research -It's no good slapping any old product on your website, thinking it will sell, otherwise you will be on a loser from the start.

To get started you first need to go to the Amazon Associates website and SIGN IN. If you are not an amazon associate (affiliate) yet simply click on the JOIN NOW FOR FREE button to get a FREE Account, subject to Amazon accepting your application of course.

Fig 1.0  SIGN IN or JOIN NOW FOR FREE to continue

Once you are signed in click on the LINKS & BANNERS Tab (window) and from there click on the ADD PRODUCT LINKS NOW link (Fig 1.2) to continue.

Fig 1.1  Click on the LINKS & BANNERS Tab (window) to continue




Fig 1.2  Click on the ADD PRODUCT LINKS NOW link to continue

The main difference between Product Links and Banners is that product links are links to products you have chosen yourself whereas banners are simple flash animation banners (graphics banners) that advertise one or more amazon categories, such as its media (i.e. cd/dvd) category. This means you have more control over product links - Where to put them on your website and what products to sell for example.

The product links page allows you to search for a specific product, under the ALL PRODUCTS category or under a specific category (i.e. SOFTWARE), as well as allow you to let amazon list products by clicking on its GO button with an empty PRODUCT edit box. This latter option will be a negative choice for so many reasons though - It will display expensive, unrelated to your website, items for example. So I suggest you physically do your own product searches.

Begin  Your  Product  Search

Begin your product search by either selecting a specific category from the SEARCH drop-down menu (recommended) or by leaving the SEARCH drop-down menu set to ALL PRODUCTS (if you feel a specific product will not be found under a specific category). From there, enter the name of a product or product genre into the FOR (Keyword Search) edit box and then click on the GO button.

Fig 1.3  Select a category from the SEARCH drop-down menu, if need be, for your product




Fig 1.4  Type a product name or product genre (i.e. Office) into the FOR edit box and then click on GO




Fig 1.5  The search results for the product genre WEB DESIGN, under the SOFTWARE category.

The above shows the search results for the product genre WEB DESIGN, under the SOFTWARE category. In order to see the description, offer price and customer reviews (if any) associate with a product you need to click on its search result link (Fig 1.5 above) to then bring up its amazon information page (Fig 1.6 below). In this example I have clicked on the WebPlus X4 (PC CD) link.

One thing to note here is that amazon will normally show the more famous, top selling, products before any other products which means a specific product that you know of might not be listed. In which case you would need to do a specific search for that unknown/unpopular/specific product by entering its name into the FOR edit box. More on product search later.

Product  Research  Is  A  Winner

With the WebPlus X4 information page now displayed you need to take a few seconds to look around the page and notice exactly what is being shown to you. Something that many people blindly choose to ignore, usually because they cannot be bothered to do the research.

What is being given to you on a plate, for free, is the Discounted Price, Manufacturer & Website, Status (i.e. In Stock / Out Of Stock) and Number Of Customer Reviews alongside the average Star Rating. Meaning, valuable information whereby you can check the manufacturer's website for their latest products/prices and customer comments/reviews.

Fig 1.6  Click on the CUSTOMER REVIEWS link on a product information page to continue




Fig 1.7  A wealth of information - Click on any READ THE FULL REVIEW link for more valuable information

As you can see from the above reviews, amazon is good enough to allow good and bad reviews. This is because they are not after the cash, because those reviews also help them decide upon future products and also betters their website and company brand; but this is a side story! What is important here is that you know customers are allowed to be honest and say when a product is a load of ****! And this is something you need to take on board because it will allow you to pick the better products.

Do  Not  Always  Go  For  The  Highly  Rated  Products

Although some reviews can make you undecisive about a product, which is the downside of reviews in general, you cannot always go for the products that have 97% of good reviews for example.

Why? Because one of the bad reviews, within the remaining 3%, might say "It don't work on Windows 7", "It's not that durable" or "The battery always needs charging". Hence why you should always read the bad reviews first and then only read the good reviews to gauge a product's good points and the user's inexperience, if any. One thing to remember here is that many reviewers complain about a product because they do not understand it and/or its technology. And another thing to consider is that what one person likes can also be what another hates.

With the above A Word Of Warning review; the reviewer comments that WebPlus X4 is good at producing simple websites, but at the same time has issues with problems not getting fixed and bad customer service. See full review below.

Fig 1.8  The rest of the comments from the A Word Of Warning review

A part from visiting the Serif Forums, to confirm what the reviewer is saying about problems, you would ideally also contact Serif (preferably anonymously) to test out their customer service. It is these little extra research steps that not only make you select better products but also give your own website a little more authority.....because you can tell your customers you research that extra mile, which will be noticed by the quality of selected products on your website.

More  Product  Research  Using  The  Search  Engines

When you see a product you like, either already known to you or recommended/found by an amazon search, do a search for it on Google for example. Search for something like: "product name reviews", "product name is ****", "product name customer service useless" and so on. I search for "webplus x4 reviews" and found this PC World (.com) review - PC World is a US based "expert guidance and purchasing advice" review site. As you will see; although it has mixed user reviews, for WebPlus X4, they do contain valuable comments/insights. A good review website in general is Top Ten Reviews.

Fig 1.9  Mixed, but valuable, WebPlus X4 reviews from PC World




Fig 1.10  Top Ten Reviews test the software out themselves - WebPlus X4 came 2nd

Hopefully you can see the benefits of going that extra mile. And it's not all about reviews, even though I put a lot of emphasis on it. It also about you trusting your instincts, trusting a brand regardless of reviews, the price your customers can afford, whether or not they will read the reviews and whether or not they will accept/trust your authority against the reviews.

Like  The  Product  -  Get  The  HTML  Code

Anyway, getting back to the Product Link. Once you have decided that you want to sell a certain amazon listed product on your website, the next thing to do is get its HTML Link Code using the GET LINK button. The html link code has the job of displaying the Image/Text that is associated with the product as well as keeping track of the order.

Fig 1.11  Click on the GET LINK button to go to the code link page

The html link code contains a piece of tracking (affiliate) code that uniquely identifies you as the customer-referrer whenever someone buys the product and therefore informs amazon to pay you the commission for that product sale.

To get the html link code begin by clicking on the product's GET LINK button (Fig 1.11 above), which will take you to the code page (Fig 1.12 below). From there, click on the HIGHLIGHT HTML button to select all of the html link code and then right click over that selected (highlighted) html link code before clicking on the COPY menu-item. Doing so will put a copy of that selected html link code into memory whereby you can then PASTE it into a web page.

Fig 1.12  Click on the HIGHLIGHT HTML button, right click over the highlighted code and select COPY

The code page gives you the opportunity to customise the actual look of the product image/text advert, in terms of its border and colours, but I recommend you leave this alone as the colour scheme and border normally fit well on any web page. Saying this, if you do want to customise simply change the attributes by unticking them or by clicking on their relevant colour buttons.

With a copy of the html link code now in memory, all you have to do now is PASTE it into a web page. In this example I have pasted it into a minimal web page using the Windows 7 text editor called Notepad, but you can easily paste it into DreamWeaver, Web Easy Pro or whatever website builder package/software you are using.

The html link code itself starts from <iframe all the way to </iframe>. In Fig 1.13 below I have pasted the whole of the html link code into Notepad but then highlighted the actual Product Link ready for the next explanation. In your case though you need to PASTE everything from the HIGHLIGHTED HTML code, <iframe all the way to </iframe>, into your web page or website builder software before proceeding to the next example.

Fig 1.13  PASTE everything from the HIGHLIGHTED HTML code - <iframe all the way to </iframe>.

As said above; I have highlighted the actual Product Link ready for use in this next explanation.

Cloak  Your  HTML  Product  Links  From  Hackers

In normal circumstances you paste everything from <iframe all the way to </iframe> into your web page (or website builder software) and then upload that web page to your website (public_html folder). The html link code then displays the product as an advertisement whereby whenever someone clicks on that product advertisement and orders the product you get paid a commission. That is the normal scenario.

Unfortunately these days nasty Hackers are about who can easily replace your product link, by hacking your web page with their own code, and thereby have your commissions redirected to them. I will not bore you with the technical details of how this is done, suffice to say you need to protect (hide/cloak) your product links. One way to do this is to hide each one inside a .php file, which is a lot more secure than a .html (web page) file. Again, I will not bore you with the finer details.

So how do you hide the Product Link? Well the first thing to do is replace the original product link, the one that goes from http:// all the way to =ifr in this example, for a standard link that points (redirects) to a new .php file. In this example (Fig 1.14 below) I have done that by changing the original webplusx4 product link with the URL: links/webplusx4.php.

This just means the product advertisement and affiliation information will now come from the new webplusx4.php file, stored inside my links folder, instead of coming directly from the web page containing html code link (i.e. my_products_page.html) with the original webplusx4 product link inside it. All will become clear in a minute!

Fig 1.14  Change the original product link for a URL that points to a .php file

So far you should now have a web page that contains the html link code inside it. A web page called my_products_page.html for example that has html link code inside it going from <iframe all the way to </iframe> (as shown in Fig 1.13 above).

That html code link will itself contain a product link that goes from http:// all the way to =ifr for example. So far so good! However, the hacker and anyone else who uses a web browser's VIEW >> SOURCE feature for example will be able to see that html link code, and its product link, and therefore abuse that code. Hence why the product link itself needs replacing with a URL to a .php file - a .php file that is hidden but also contains the actual product link.

The next job then, now that the html link code has had its product link changed to point (redirect) to a URL, is to create the .php file that will contain the actual product link. This is just a simple case of creating a .php file, using Notepad (or a website builder software), and then inserting the product link. I say simple because the beauty for you is that you do not need to learn PHP - I have done that for you! Look at this next example and see what I mean. It's just a couple of lines of PHP Script with a product link inserted.

Fig 1.15  PASTE your product link inside the PHP Script and then save it as a .php file

In normal circumstances; if you used the original/amazon html link code only, inside a normal web page called my_products_page.html for example, the product link is fetched/used directly from that web page....and can be seen by the public and hackers. However, as an extra precaution, in this example the same web page is used but it must now get the product link from the .php file. It is then, technically, the .php file that deals with the product link and therefore the product advertisement.

Anyway, all you need to do is create two files. A .php file that contains the actual product link (Fig 1.15 above) and a web page (.html file) with the amazon HTML Link Code inside it that has had its product link changed to the URL of the .php file (Fig 1.14 above). Once that is done you then upload the web page to your public_html folder and the .php file to your public_html/links folder (sub-folder).

Fig 1.16  This is what a product link should look like if you did everything correctly

If you did everything correctly you should have a product advertisement on your web page. If you then use your web browser's VIEW >> SOURCE (or PAGE SOURCE) feature you should see the html link code with a URL as its product link.

To create another product link just follow the above procedure again. So if you want five products (product advertisements) displayed on one web page, you should create one web page only (one .html file only) and five .php files (product files). The beauty of the .php files is that you can easily link to those .php files (products), again in another web page, whereas if you use the original html link code in every web page you create you will be producing the same code over and over again. This means more, duplicate, code and more web space in the long run.