This text was originally written to help people add Amazon links to their Squidoo lenses, but it was locked without warning by the wise Squidoo HQ gods.
So I decided to move it overhere, where I don’t “violate” any rules or otherwise behave like a criminal.
Want Your Own Amazon Affiliate Links?
Squidoo has made it really easy for us to make money through Amazon’s affiliate program. You don’t even have to be signed up for. You can just use Squidoo’s own link and make (roughly) 4.25% commission of every sale.
But if you are signed up anyway, and you think you can sell more than six items per month, then you can make more Amazon money by using your own link.
In this lens, I’ll show you some simple, cool and elegant ways of using your own Amazon affiliate links in Squidoo lenses.
First Things First: Join the Amazon Associates Program
If you want your own Amazon affiliate link, you will have to sign up as an associates first.
If you’re already a customer at Amazon.com, you can use your existing e-mail address and password to sign up with.It’s free, and you can do it here: https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/
Then you’re given an affiliate ID, which will be your username-20. You can use that one for affiliate links, or you can make extra tracking IDs so you’ll know more about where you’re making money.
Image: Make Money with Amazon Associates available at Amazon
Associates Site Stripe
Amazon makes it really easy for you to grab your affiliate link, check how much money you’ve made and more.
All you have to do is to make sure that the “Associates Site Stripe” is turned on.
After you’ve joined as an associate, you can log in, and click on Account Settings in your top right corner of the screen.
Then click on the link called “Associates Site Stripe Options”.
Display Status must show “On”. If it doesn’t, then hit the button and turn it on.
Grab the Link and the ASIN
There are two ways you can add use your own Amazon associates account on Squidoo.
One is by using an ordinary link, either in HTML code or by adding it to a field in your workshop. The other is by using the ASIN from Amazon.
I’ll show you both ways.
When you’ve found a product, you’ll have access to both link and ASIN.
You get the link by clicking on “Link to this page”, and you can find and copy the ASIN from the address bar in your browser (second arrow in this picture).
Quick Way to Get the Link
After you’ve clicked on “Link to this page”, you will see a popup window with two or three tabs.
I always click on the tab named “Image only” to get the link.
Then I right-click on the image, and choose “Copy Link Location”.
After I’ve done that, I have the link captured in my clipboard, ready to use. You can paste it with Ctrl+V to the location where you need it.
HTML: How Does a Link Look Like?
The structure of a link is simple.
You have a tag called “a” where you link to the URL (the address) inside with the help of the code “href”.
Then you have to decide what will be shown on the site as an “anchor text” or even a picture.
Finally, you have to stop the “a” tag by using the “end” code for it.
You start the tag by writing <a etc> and you end it by writing </a>
In between, you have the anchor text, which is the text that will be visible in the browser.
So, if your affiliate link was “http://amazon.com/mylink”, then your full code should look like in the picture. I’ll add it here, too, as text, so you can copy from it.
<a href=”http://amazon.com/mylink”>anchor text</a>
Avoid Google Penalties
Important: If you want to avoid Google penalties, you need to add one thing more to your HTML code.
You need to tell Google NOT to follow the link. And you do that by adding this:
rel=”nofollow”
The full tag:
<a href=”http://amazon.com/mylink” rel=”nofollow”>anchor text</a>
SquidCrafter – Click, Copy & Paste
If you want it to be super-easy and with many possibilities, you should get SquidCrafter.
You can add your Amazon affiliate ID to the program (even use more than one tracking ID, if you need), and then you can browse Amazon in the built-in browser and just click to add products.
Show-case your products with different templates, one product, six products… There are so many possibilities.
You only need to click, copy and paste.
Example SquidCrafter Module
If you want to see the original lens, then you can click on this link to see a picture of it: http://getmoneymakingideas.com/pics/squidoo-amazon-afflinks.png. If you click on the picture, you can see it in a larger size.