Do you have a WordPress blog that is starting to get quite a few hits and you’re wondering if there is a chance you can make some money out of it? Have you tried Amazon affiliations yet? Amazon has an extremely rich affiliate program because you have the ability to sell all the products featured in this gigantic e-commerce.
Amazon provides several tools for affiliates but the procedure for inserting links to products and banner ads takes a long time and often the game is often not worth the candle. There are many WordPress plugins for Amazon that trying to make your life easier by simplifying the procedure for inserting links to the Amazon circuit within your articles.
Today I want to talk about a WordPress plugin for Amazon that I’m sure you will love if you use the Amazon affiliation because it greatly reduces the time spent inserting links to Amazon products on your pages and is also able to create product lists in less than a second starting from a category or a search criterion; I’m talking about Amazon Auto Links a formidable WordPress plugin for Amazon available both in a free version with some limitations and in a paid version.
In this guide, without wasting too much on useless chatter, I will explain how Amazon Auto Links works and how you can use it within your WordPress blog to create articles full of links to Amazon products in a few seconds.
Index
- How Amazon Auto Links Works
- Amazon Auto Links installation
- Insert a single Amazon Product into an item
- Insert Amazon product listing in an item
- Insert a Button
- Amazon Auto Links license
How Amazon Auto Links Works
So let’s start to see how Amazon Auto Links works and how to get started using it. Amazon Auto Links is a WordPress plugin for Amazon that as a main feature allows you to easily and quickly insert Amazon product lists within WordPress sites; in addition to this, it allows you to insert advertisements for individual products through short-code and buttons for connecting to Amazon products.
The operation of this fantastic WordPress plugin for Amazon is actually very simple; Amazon Auto Links allows you to create real Amazon advertising sections containing a series of products (called Units in this plugin ) of Amazon products linked to your Amazon Affiliate account. The units are therefore a kind of advertising box for Amazon products.
You can create units in 3 different ways:
- Adding a list of Amazon products for a certain category ( Units per Category)
- Adding a list of unique Amazon ASIN codes ( Units per Search)
- Adding an Amazon Product List from an Amazon URL ( Units per URL)
- Add a list of relevant Amazon products to the page content ( Contextual Unit)
The list of products created by this WordPress plugin for amazon will then be completely customizable; you can decide the quantity of Amazon products displayed, the order criteria, the number of images displayed for the product and their size, the length of the title and description. As if all this were not enough you can also customize the layout of the lists, to do this however you will have to try your hand at HTML and CSS codes.
One of the great advantages of this fantastic WordPress plugin for Amazon is that the created lists of Amazon products will always stay up to date with the data provided by Amazon starting with the price; you will no longer have to worry about revisiting your items because Amazon advertisements will always be updated.
Amazon Auto Links also allows you to create fully customized buttons that you can insert in your items to buy or add to the Amazon product cart.
Furthermore, the advertisements do not use Iframes or Javascript so they will never be blocked by any filters set on the browsers; I believe this to be a considerable strength because filters are activated in more and more stations that inhibit advertisements of Amazon affiliations, with Amazon Auto Links you will not have this problem.
Amazon Auto Links supports 17 local versions of Amazon (including Italy, of course) and fortunately also PA-API version 5; the plug-in is also available in Italian. It also supports RSS feeds. You can then insert the Amazon product lists created in your articles using a simple shortcode or widgets, but I will explain this to you later.
Amazon Auto Links installation
This WordPress plugin for Amazon can be downloaded and installed as usual from the wordpress plugin section.
To install Amazon Auto Links in your WordPress blog, press the Plugin item in the right menu and then select the Add New item ; in the keyword field write “ Amazon Auto Links “; Click on the Install Now button to download this wordpress plugin for Amazon.
Once downloaded and installed, from the installed plugins page activate it by pressing the Activate item .
At this point, to use Amazon Auto Links you will first need to proceed with a quick configuration of the plugin. From the right menu of WordPress press on the item Amazon Auto Links and from the menu that will be displayed select the item Settings . There are tons of items in the settings that allow you to fully configure the plugin but at first you just need to set the country and the Affiliate ID.
From section Authentication Settings and then select the field country Server voice IT- websevices.amazon.it if you use the Amazon store for your Italian affiliations; in the Associate ID field enter your Amazon Affiliate ID. At this point you are ready to use Amazon Auto Links and create the first unit but if you also want to use Amazon product searches (via Amazon Product Advertising API ) then you will need to enter the Access Key and the Sergreta Access Key (you can get them from the Amazon Affiliate siteselecting the tools menu and then Amazon Product Advertising API and pressing the Add Credentials button); once you have inserted the keys in the plugin press the connect button and if they are correct you will see the word Connected
Once connected you will be ready to use Amazon Auto Links and create product lists to add to the pages of your site.
The settings screen of this wordpress plugin for amazon contains these sections:
- Authentication: to configure the plugin with your Amazon Affiliate account
- Embedding: to configure oEmbed content
- General: to set filters (blacklists), feeds, widgets and other general settings
- Converter: to convert Amazon links into article content
- Default: default settings of the units
- Cache: settings for the cache
Insert a single Amazon Product into an item
Let’s start by looking at how Amazon Auto Links works for single product listing. It is actually very simple, just paste the autolink short-code anywhere in your article:
For example, if we want to insert an advertisement for an echo dot device, just enter the ASIN code B084DWG2VQ in the link
[amazon_auto_links asin=”B084DWG2VQ”]
and the result will be this:
Obviously the Amazon listing will already have your Affiliate ID in the tag and its layout can be fully configured from the Default section of the Amazon Auto Links plugin settings .
Insert Amazon product listing in an item
Here we are at the strong point! Now let’s see how Amazon Auto Links works to insert Amazon product lists within WordPress articles. The procedure also in this case is quite simple:
- A unity is created
- Paste the short-code of the unit inside the article
Let’s take an example to make the operation clearer; we are writing an article that talks about digital watches and we want to include a nice list of Amazon in the article with the hope that visitors will go and click some products. Without any plugin available you should go with SiteStripe to search product by product for items from Amazon, copy your link, create links on the page and put all the photos… an endless job! With Amazon Auto Links you just need to create a unit and then insert its short-code into the article.
As I told you at the beginning of the article, you can create a list of Amazon products by directly entering the category and sub-category ( Unit by Category ) or by entering one or more product search keywords or the list of unique Amazon ASIN codes ( Units per Search ) or even entering the url of an Amazon page to show products visible in that url in the list ( Units per URL ).
Obviously, to have maximum control of the Amazon product list, it is advisable to use Units for Research by entering all the ASINs of the products we want to include in the list.
Let’s now try to create a unit by category; from the wordpress menu select the Add Units by Category item in the Amazon Autolinks menu. At this point the name of the unit must be entered (the name displayed in the unit management window); the rest of the fields are used to configure the list. Be careful not to activate the Automatic Insertion field which, if activated, will automatically insert the list in all your articles. Once done, press the Proceed button .
On the next screen, select the categories and sub-categories you want to use from the left menu and press the button at the top right that says Add category . You can also add multiple categories in one unit. When you are done click on Create .
Once the unit has been created, just go to the Unit management , copy the short-code of the unit and paste it into your WordPress article to automatically insert the Amazon product list in the article.
In this video, you will see Amazon Auto Links at work creating different types of Units
Insert a Button
This wordpress plugin for amazon also allows you to create fully customized buttons to buy from Amazon. Also in this case, just insert the short-code of the button on your WordPress page to insert it automatically.
To create a button go to the Manage Buttons section of the Amazon Auto Links plugin and press the button at the top that says Add New Button . At this point enter a title for the button, the label (ie the text of the button); then configure the graphics settings, color, size, borders, background etc. and when you are done press the Publish button .
To insert the button in your articles go to Manage Buttons and copy the Shortcode of the button (taking care to update the ASIN code with that of the Amazon product you want to link).
Amazon Auto Links license
This awesome WordPress plugin for Amazon is made by Miunosoft . The free version has some limitations, the most important being the ability to create only 3 Units. These limitations can be removed by purchasing the Pro version at a price of 48 euros.
Now that you know how Amazon Auto Links works, you can see how much easier it can be for you to place Amazon products in your articles. Using Amazon Auto Links to create ad sections will save you hours of work both creating your ads and keeping them up to date