[Plugin: Amazon Affiliate Link Localizer] How do the links appear to the reader, cloaked?

  • Hi Pete,
    Your plugin surely is massively under utilized!? Isn’t it the holy grail of internet marketing to get commissions from globally available content?

    I just wondered before downloading though, I use the pretty links plugin to cloak my affiliate IDs to make them look natural and have a amazon disclaimer instead to let people know it’s an affiliate link.

    If I use your plugin, should I switch to using the plain amazon link and how does that link ‘appear’ to the reader when they hover over it?

    Hope that makes sense, looking forward to trying it,
    Many thanks Mr Williams!
    Cheers
    Ian

    https://www.ads-software.com/extend/plugins/amazon-affiliate-link-localizer/

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
  • Plugin Author PeteWilliams

    (@petewilliams)

    Hi Ian, thanks for your message. At the moment the plugin simply doesn’t work with cloaked links. The script looks at the URLs and if they don’t point to Amazon then it doesn’t know they’re Amazon links. So yes, to use the script you’d need to switch to plain links.

    When I have time, I intend to look into a way of supporting cloaking, but it looks to be a fairly major job – possibly a rewrite from scratch – so it might not be for a while.

    Cheers

    Pete

    Thread Starter Ian Anderson

    (@ianmanderson)

    Hi Pete,

    Many thanks for getting back to me, appreciate it.

    Sure, I understand that it needs an amazon link to function, but my question was more about if the reader can see what is going on.

    For example, say I have a plain amazon link in my text and the plugin enabled with all my affiliate id’s; when the reader hovers over or clicks the plain link, what happens or what do they see? I assume the plugin redirects the URL somehow, but will this alarm more web savvy readers?

    Sorry not to have made it clearer in the first message!
    Thanks again Pete,
    Cheers
    Ian

    Plugin Author PeteWilliams

    (@petewilliams)

    Ah I see. Most product links end up in the format of: https://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0028LI9JS/your-id

    Other links (categories, artists, etc) stay in a similar format to the original link.

    Hope this helps.

    Pete

    Thread Starter Ian Anderson

    (@ianmanderson)

    Wow, you sittin on that laptop Pete!

    Thanks, that shouldn’t scare anyone off clicking now should it! Time to give it a trial run and see what happens to the stats!

    Thanks Pete and good luck,
    Cheers
    Ian

    Hi Peter

    I have a question?

    You say above “Most product links end up in the format of: https://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0028LI9JS/your-id”

    I have installed your plugin on a site i’m aiming at US visitors but i live in the UK so i can see lots of links created by your plugin. I thought i would check some in AmazonAssociates link checker and i get this message “Fail: The link above was not tagged or was not a valid Amazon link.”

    The link “https://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B001H3ZUKE/MY-ID” does go to the correct product page so i don’t know what is wrong?

    Isn’t there meant to be “&tag=MY-ID” somewhere?

    I hope you can help as your plugin would be really helpful if i can get it to work.

    Thanks

    Mark

    Hi Peter

    Sorry, I just realized my mistake. I was using the link checker on the AmazonAssociates.com site instead of the .co.uk site.

    Thanks for a great plugin

    Mark

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
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