With the growing popularity of SmartLinks and our various Widgets more people are starting to ask “where are my affiliate IDs?”
Here’s the short answer: if you enter your affiliate ID when you install the product then your affiliate is passed through to all appropriate links, 100% of the time.
Now, here’s the longer answer to explain what’s going on:
The concern is regularly that one of the more prominent links in the SmartLink doesn’t show the Amazon Affiliate ID when you click through. This is caused because Amazon ends up encoding the original link that we pass through to them.
Here are some screenshots that should alleviate your concerns.
First of all, if you see your Amazon Associated ID connected to one of the links within the widget then it means that everything is working well. We pass the unique Amazon Associate ID through to the Amazon links 100 % of the time.
Here’s how you can check out what’s up (click on the images to see the full image)
1) If you hover your mouse over the bookcover or the title link and then look in the bottom left-hand corner of the browser you can see your ID being passed into the link
2) If you hover your mouse over the Amazon link in the bottom right-hand corner beside “Books:” you will see your ID
3) If you hover your mouse over the little Amazon icon in the bottom left-hand corner you will see your ID being passed into the link
4) If you hover your mouse over the Amazon link that’s beside “Similar:” you will see your ID passed into the link
5) If you hover our mouse over the “This Book on Amazon” button on the left-hand side you will not see a link appear. That’s due to the issue described at the top of this post and how we present the button and then pass the link through to Amazon. I assure you that the affiliate ID is passed through into the link, it’s just “hidden” by the way that Amazon encodes it.
If you do not see your Amazon Associated ID connected to any of the links described in this post then it means that you have not connected your ID to the plugin and no Amazon links will receive your Amazon ID. To ensure that you’ve associated your Amazon ID with the SmartLink or Widget check out this help page.
