{"id":134,"date":"2004-01-27T07:52:00","date_gmt":"2004-01-27T07:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jclark.org\/weblog\/Miscellany\/amazonlinks.html"},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"-0001-11-30T04:00:00","slug":"amazonlinks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jclark.org\/weblog\/2004\/01\/27\/amazonlinks\/","title":{"rendered":"Better Amazon Links"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some time ago, I signed up for Amazon’s Associates Program<\/a>. I doubt I’ll ever sell anything, but it seemed like A Thing To Do at the time. I do occaisionally write about books that I’ve read; I try to provide Amazon links as well. Might as well be prepared on the off chance someone buys something on my recommendation.<\/p>\n

One thing that I disliked was the linking process. Most of the tools Amazon provides for creating “associate” links include pictures, html, or both. All I want is simple, text-only inline links to use in the occaisional blog post. With some looking, I found a tool to create a text-only link; and the link structure is simple enough to adapt from a regular Amazon link, once you know the layout. Here’s an example link to one of my favorite web books, Zeldman’s Designing with Web Standards<\/a>. The link looks like a standard Amazon book link, with my associate ID appended. If you follow the link however, you don’t get the product page for the book, you get a “You clicked this, here’s some similar items” page. This has always irked me. Just let me send people to the product I want to show them. <\/p>\n

Today while reading something at Zeldman’s site<\/a>, I clicked a link to a book, and got the Amazon product page. A look at the link url confirmed that his associate id was present, but also included something extra. Here’s another link<\/a> to the same book, only this one goes straight to the product page. Just add ref=nosim<\/code> to the ‘path’ after the ASIN<\/span> number and before the associate ID. <\/span><\/p>\n

It’s possible that you can do this directly with Amazon’s current tools, but I’ve never figured out how. I always learn something when I visit Zeldman’s site. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some time ago, I signed up for Amazon’s Associates Program. I doubt I’ll ever sell anything, but it seemed like A Thing To Do at the time. I do occaisionally write about books that I’ve read; I try to provide Amazon links as well. Might as well be prepared on the off chance someone buys […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellany"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jclark.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jclark.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jclark.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jclark.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jclark.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jclark.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jclark.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jclark.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jclark.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}