I use affiliate codes to make extra money.
What are affiliate codes?
Basically, affiliate codes are used to track sources of traffic for e-commerce and other websites.
In layman’s terms — it tells websites who exactly is sending them customers and rewards them for doing so.
An affiliate code is commonly either entered as a promotional code during checkout, or, is attached to a link, as a tracking id. A tracking ID is like a dog tag — it tells websites who sent a certain dog to their website. Woof.
This is a short affiliate link to the book ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bear Shifters.’ The link was automatically shortened by Amazon. Note that you cannot tell whose affiliate code is associated with the link. Here is an example.
Here is the full length link. Squarespace won’t let me embed the entire thing, so I am just going to post it as plaintext [plaintext means, not a link]. The circled text is my affiliate tag — in this case, sablesylvansquare-20.
I have multiple affiliate tags. I use the different tags to track where my sales are coming for. For instance, it would be helpful to know if my affiliate codes on my catalog page are more successful than the codes on the home page.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B010ZFRUQQ?th=1&psc=1&linkCode=ll1&tag=sablesylvansquare-20&linkId=d6a22f082d7e144a7e30ec67c9c7e1a4&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl
How do the payments work?
If someone clicks a Sable Sylvan affiliate link to view one of my books, goes to Amazon, buys $100 of cat food, I would get a cut of that — even though I did not originally post a link to cat food.
The last person whose link is clicked is the person who gets the affiliate credit.
For instance, let’s say my very real friend, Bozo Dingus, posted a link to a bag of peanuts on Amazon costing $200. It’s a huge bag of peanuts.
Somebody clicks the link. They add the peanuts to their cart.
They go elsewhere on the Internet, find one of my websites.
They click one of my links to one of my books on Amazon. They don’t find any they like. They go to checkout and buy the $200 bag of peanuts.
Because I was the last person whose Amazon affiliate link was clicked before Amazon checkout, I would get the affiliate cut of their $200 purchase — not my friend Bozo Dingus. Even though I didn’t recommend that original item, if my link was the last one clicked…I get the cut.
Similarly, if someone clicked a Sable Sylvan link to a $500 violin, added it to their cart, and then clicked a Bozo Dingus link for $5 of jelly beans, and then checked out…Bozo Dingus would get the affiliate fee and I would get nothing.
Amazon Affiliate Code Disclaimer
Sable Sylvan is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. Disclaimer source: affiliate-program.amazon.com/help/operating/agreement