Adding Amazon Affiliate Links With SiteStripe
First of all, I wish you heartily welcome to this tutorial!
I wrote this tutorial first of all because so many people ask how to add Affiliate Links to their site. The tutorials out there have not been explaining it well enough or just have been out-of-date on the matter.
Amazon Changed A Lot
A lot has changed. Amazon SiteStripe is something from the last 2-3 years. Only last year they started using a new system called OneLink that binds the storeID of all your Amazon Associate accounts for each country together.
Amazon has also a link builder plugin for WordPress, called Amazon Link Builder, that adds all this code and more right into your post.
Of course I could advice anyone to add this plugin to their site, but it might not be what you want. It adds yet another plugin to your site and too many plugins can clog the speed of your site.
I will leave the advanced OneLink out of this story and the same goes for the plugin. If no-one else writes a tutorial about these, I could do so in the near future.
For the sheer purpose of simplicity I write this tutorial about adding links through Amazon SiteStripe.
In this tutorial you will learn:
- Amazon SiteStripe Basics
- How To Find A Product
- How To Add A Text Link
- How To Add An Image Link
- How To Add A Text+Image Link
- How To Add A Native Shopping Ad
Click Next / Page 2 for Amazon SiteStripe Basics
Extra Resources
In this section I place some extra resources and information. You might have been redirected by me from other pages in my tutorial to this section to do something before you can continue with the tutorial.
Amazon Associates Programs
If you are not an Amazon Associate yet, you need to sign up for the program for each of the country specific websites you want to advertise for. If your website is targeting USA customers, you need an account for amazon.com associates program.
You can link multiple programs together using the Amazon OneLink system. About that more later.
First of all, the Amazon Associates Programs per country:
Amazon OneLink
For Amazon OneLink you naturally need an Amazon Associates Account as was described here above.
For Amazon OneLink to function you need to do a couple of things:
- Configure each associateID with the Amazon OneLink system
- Add OneLink code to your websites' footer
- Add Product links using SiteStripe
Amazon OneLink Resources:
Amazon Link Builder
The Amazon Link Builder Plugin for WordPress can be downloaded through your Dashboard.
Plugins - Add Plugin - Search for Amazon Link Builder and install & activate the plugin.
The Amazon Link Builder has a script within the plugin that recognizes shortcodes it generates for the linking of products.
The Amazon Link Builder adds an icon to your Visual WordPress editor for Posts and Pages with which you can add the various offered product linkings. I will not go into the details of this plugin, as it is a different subject, but I will give you some resource links here instead.
Do understand that this adds yet another Plugin to your website and plugin count. Too many plugins can slow down your website.
Amazon Link Builder Resources:
Reply
This is good. I just added some Amazon image links yesterday and today and I think my menus were a little different. I think the UX was maybe a little more graphic.
Anyway, it was pretty intuitive to work with.
Keeping this for a good reference.
Thanks for the work it took to pulling this together.
Good job. Will help a lot of WA people.
Which UX are you referring to? The menu's of SiteStripe or the ones of your WordPress?
I took the screenshots this week of SiteStripe, so I doubt they have already changed.
I gladly clear that up if you don't mind. I gladly look into your version and help you out where possible. Just reply and I will see what I can do.
It should essentially be looking pretty much the same as on what I used in the tutorial, unless you are using a visual editor that replaces big parts of the entire WordPress interface.
Glad you like it - feel free to share it.
Steven
