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How to funnel more Amazon $$ to the site?

 
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lyd




Joined: 15 Sep 2007
Posts: 390
Location: Lake Mills, Wi


PostLink    Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2008 12:12 am    Post subject: How to funnel more Amazon $$ to the site? Reply with quote


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Hey Kal, apologies in advance if some or all of this has been covered already, I've not been reading as regularly lately and it is really hard to search for anything specific having to do with Amazon, what with all the varied talk about it.

Thing is, I buy a lot of stuff from there, and I get there from all over. Most frequently I wind up there from a google search, sometimes directly, sometimes from someone else's link, and sometimes from your links.

What I would like is a relatively painless and transparent way to make sure everything I buy from Amazon gets credited to you guys. Is there some sort of persistent cookie I could set that would do the trick? Or, can you help me determine in what way to have my filtering web proxy (I use privoxy) munge the amazon urls/spoof the referrer/whatever the heck they key on to do this? (If that's possible, then we could make a greasemonky thingy for the firefox users too...)

Something more simple and obvious that I am overlooking?

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kal
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Joined: 06 Mar 2006
Posts: 17850
Location: Ottawa, Canada

TV/Projector: JVC DLA-NZ7


PostLink    Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2008 12:31 am    Post subject: Re: How to funnel more Amazon $$ to the site? Reply with quote

lyd wrote:
Hey Kal, apologies in advance if some or all of this has been covered already, I've not been reading as regularly lately and it is really hard to search for anything specific having to do with Amazon, what with all the varied talk about it.

Thing is, I buy a lot of stuff from there, and I get there from all over. Most frequently I wind up there from a google search, sometimes directly, sometimes from someone else's link, and sometimes from your links.

What I would like is a relatively painless and transparent way to make sure everything I buy from Amazon gets credited to you guys. Is there some sort of persistent cookie I could set that would do the trick? Or, can you help me determine in what way to have my filtering web proxy (I use privoxy) munge the amazon urls/spoof the referrer/whatever the heck they key on to do this? (If that's possible, then we could make a greasemonky thingy for the firefox users too...)

Something more simple and obvious that I am overlooking?

I wouldn't try spoofing anything or adding our curtpalme.com tags to all amazon URLs to give us credit for purchases. That wouldn't be right. If you found something at Amazon through someone else's affiliate link then the credit should really go to them.

Not everyone understands how this all works so here's the background info: How does this work?

At the top of the forum right now (June 2, 2008) is a banner ad for a 50% Blu-ray sale.

The URL is: http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/?ie=UTF8&docId=1000233361&tag=curtpalmecrtp-20

Notice the last part of the URL: tag=curtpalmecrtp-20. This lets Amazon know the link came from us, so we get the credit.

By credit I mean that we then get a small kickback for any purchases done at no cost to the buyer (and the buyer isn't even aware that it's happening). For consumer electronics the usual 'finders fee' is 4%. So if you buy a $100 gadget from Amazon using a link here, we get $4. The kickback is for anything the person orders after linking to amazon, so if you follow a link from a book but then buy $10,000 worth of equipment, they get all the credit.

If you truly want to support us every time you buy something at Amazon, go to Amazon first using this link:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http://www.amazon.com/&tag=curtpalmecrtp-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325 (Available on our Links page too).

Or through any Amazon links here and then search for the items you want. Same result.
Then add the items you want to your cart and order them.

So there's no easy way to do it automatically which is actually the correct and preferred way. Sites should be credited for what revenue they help generate for Amazon. If you really went through a different site, you should give them credit. Just like us, they likely worked hard to put those links together.

But if you truly want to help support us then your help is appreciated and we thank you! Wink

Kal

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lyd




Joined: 15 Sep 2007
Posts: 390
Location: Lake Mills, Wi


PostLink    Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2008 10:25 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Cool, Kal, thanks.

Is "tag=<sometext>" used for anything other than identifying the affiliate, as far as you know?

If not, it should be reasonably straightforward to have my proxy look for that tag, leave it alone if it exists, and append yours to the URL if it doesn't.

Are you guys on the "performance fee structure" or the "classic fee structure"?

I ask because you referred to 4% above, but it seems like if you have opted-in to the "performance" structure, you quickly move beyond that for most things.



I can't see any downside.

EDIT: Oh, duh, "CE" means "consumer electronics", which is just what you said above. Sorry.

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ecrabb
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Joined: 13 Mar 2006
Posts: 15909
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TV/Projector: JVC RS40, Epson 5010


PostLink    Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2008 3:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Couldn't you just bookmark the link Kal gave you? When I'm looking for a price on something, I just go to amazon, and search for it. If you just used your bookmark, that would do the job. Wouldn't that be easier than writing some sort of script for your proxy? (I've never done that, so I'm assuming it's more than a 30-second job.)

SC
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kal
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Location: Ottawa, Canada

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PostLink    Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2008 5:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

lyd wrote:
Cool, Kal, thanks.

Is "tag=<sometext>" used for anything other than identifying the affiliate, as far as you know?

Nope. That's the sole purpose.

Quote:
If not, it should be reasonably straightforward to have my proxy look for that tag, leave it alone if it exists, and append yours to the URL if it doesn't.

Not sure if the structure matters, but it may not work if you just add "&tag=curtpalmecrtp-20" to all URLs. I don't know. This also won't work if you click from someone else's Amazon link as you'd have two tags in there. Not sure who wins then. I'd rather that people don't mess around with URL parsing as it may get us in trouble here if Amazon starts to see a lot of clicks that have two affiliate tags in there and one of them's always us.

Just putting the following URL into your bookmarks is probably easier anyway and you know it'll always work right:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http://www.amazon.com/&tag=curtpalmecrtp-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325

Or just click through any of the Amazon banners here or on the main site.

Quote:
Are you guys on the "performance fee structure" or the "classic fee structure"?

Everyone's on the performance fee structure. There's no reason to be on the 'classic' structure. The option's really only for those that have been around for a long time that may still be on the older classic structure for whatever reason (can't imagine why).

Kal

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lyd




Joined: 15 Sep 2007
Posts: 390
Location: Lake Mills, Wi


PostLink    Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2008 9:54 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

ecrabb wrote:
Couldn't you just bookmark the link Kal gave you? When I'm looking for a price on something, I just go to amazon, and search for it. If you just used your bookmark, that would do the job. Wouldn't that be easier than writing some sort of script for your proxy? (I've never done that, so I'm assuming it's more than a 30-second job.)

SC


Well, sure, I could, but then it wouldn't be "painless and transparent". I'm a recovering sysadmin, man. I guess I haven't yet kicked the "do the work up front, once, so you can stop thinking about it thereafter" mind set. "Lazy" is a positive attribute. Wink

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lyd




Joined: 15 Sep 2007
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PostLink    Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2008 10:16 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

kal wrote:
lyd wrote:
Cool, Kal, thanks.

Is "tag=<sometext>" used for anything other than identifying the affiliate, as far as you know?

Nope. That's the sole purpose.

Quote:
If not, it should be reasonably straightforward to have my proxy look for that tag, leave it alone if it exists, and append yours to the URL if it doesn't.

Not sure if the structure matters, but it may not work if you just add "&tag=curtpalmecrtp-20" to all URLs. I don't know. This also won't work if you click from someone else's Amazon link as you'd have two tags in there. Not sure who wins then. I'd rather that people don't mess around with URL parsing as it may get us in trouble here if Amazon starts to see a lot of clicks that have two affiliate tags in there and one of them's always us.


Yes, or rather no, or... um, I agree, I am trying to say. When I say, "look for that tag, leave it alone if it exists", I mean if I see /tag\=.+/ (or some similar perl regexp to that general effect, anyway) then I do nothing, but if no tag already exists in the URL then I append yours. There would never be a case where a URL contained two tags, or where an existing affiliate tag was overwritten.

I would also only be applying this to links not served from the the amazon.com domain, as I agree that could and probably would cause weirdness.

As for structure, I would only need to differentiate between a URL with no existing params, where I would append "?tag=", and one that already has some other params, where I would append "&tag=".

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kal
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PostLink    Posted: Wed Jun 04, 2008 12:46 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yup. I think that would work.

But again, I'm not familiar (and likely nobody is) with Amazon's parsing engine (I hear they actually used a home grown HTTP server or at least they did in the early days) so you may do all this but not realize it's not working as you have zero way to check.

Kal

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lyd




Joined: 15 Sep 2007
Posts: 390
Location: Lake Mills, Wi


PostLink    Posted: Wed Jun 04, 2008 10:54 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

kal wrote:
so you may do all this but not realize it's not working as you have zero way to check.


No? Hmm.

Well, since I wouldn't be altering your existing links either, with the above method, worst case would be that nothing would change from the present situation.

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