Geo-Targeting for Amazon Associates

Ryuzaki

Ryuzaki

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This came up in another thread and I'm feeling like it warrants a full discussion.

Amazon is my main monetization on a project I'm expecting to blow up to large proportions. Right now, my traffic from 2015-Present looks like...
  • US - 68%
  • CA - 9%
  • UK - 6%
  • AU - 4%
That's all traffic... which I'm most concerned about because a lot of this is going to end up being Reddit and Facebook promotion.

Here's my organic only:
  • US - 45%
  • UK - 7%
  • CA - 4%
  • AU - 3%
So we're talking about 19% English speaking overall traffic I can't monetize with Amazon, and then 14% organic. That's probably a good chunk of money being left on the table.

I started researching this and people were saying that the Canada Amazon store sucks. It doesn't have enough products and they are more expensive. Sometimes its better to buy from US and have it shipped. Of course this doesn't work for UK and Australia.

Does anyone know if the UK and Australia stores have the same issues?

Amazon themselves said it's fine to sign up to all of the programs, as seen here: https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/help/t22/a13 and even give you links to each one.

At this point, you'd have to set up a geo-tracking system based off of IP address and load different links to get your cookie in place.

Here's some problems I'm thinking about:
  1. Amazon.CA sucks
  2. Conversions will be higher by pushing specific products. Most countries aren't going to stock the same things, which means you'd have to stick with banners and crap pointing just to categories or the homepage. Not sure lowering conversions is worth monetizing the rest of the traffic crappily.
  3. Spending the time to restructure every single Amazon link on my site into a new system, especially when products aren't going to exist everywhere.
Anyways... I can envision a scenario where this would have worked but it's way too late. The site is structured differently with 100% text links instead of broad banners and native ads.

Is anyone successfully doing this? Also, considering the things I've said above, do you feel it's worth messing with or should I just focus on US and accept that I can't pick up every single penny? This also bleeds over into Facebook and Reddit, where I'm going to promote and get a ton of people cookied. It's working well so far. Fortunately most of that will be display ad income, but I still want to drop that cookie on everyone possible, not just US visitors.
 
There is a plugin that allows you to input your Amazon credentials for all the foreign Amazon accounts you have. That way you don't miss out on clicks. Don't remember the plugin name but it's a popular one.
 
I suppose dropping the cookie is good enough, even if you link to a product that ends up not existing on Amazon... if they hit a 404 do they still receive the cookie?

Oh lord this is awesome:
Product-Pop-Up1.jpg
 
Don't know about the 404 thing.

If you like that link popup, have you tried enabling that for mobile? You can do that within your amazon profile already for mobile. It's pretty nice and no need for a plugin for that (only on mobile though).
 
I've had EasyAzon for about 2 years... It's got better and better, the site I'm working on at the moment had it set up on today, it added 4 request total, speed wise it's hardly made any difference.

Definitely recommend it.
 
I've found what looks like a better solution than EasyAzon;

http://petewilliams.info/blog/2009/07/javascript-amazon-associate-link-localiser/

"That’s it – job done! You can now just link to any product on any Amazon site with a normal, unaffiliated link and your users will get one affiliated for their country. Initially, the script looks for a product with the same product ID as the one in your link, but if it can’t find one on the user’s local store, it will link to a search results page searching for the name of your product. This means that it will still be found even if international versions have different product IDs, and if it’s not stocked at all, your user will be shown similar alternatives."
Click to expand...

I think the interesting bit is 'You can now just link to any product on any Amazon site with a normal, unaffiliated link and your users will get one affiliated for their country'.


 
As soon as I get time, I'm going to test that through 302's. For instance, I'm doing something like this:

domain.com/out/product -> the US amazon link.

This solution above wants to replace the link directly on the page, but I'm hiding where the destination is through a redirect. I'm hoping to maintain that redirect feature and have it replace my URL out of a txt file instead of live in the HTML... we'll see. I might have to pay someone to do it. If that gets it work, then my problem will be solved! Thanks @RomesFall

The only problem beyond this is that if someone from Canada can't find what they want and they are intent on buying, then they might buy from the US store and I won't get a thing from it. I'll have to test which does better, but I suspect the extra sales around the globe should make up for anything I lose.

Problem 1: Can anyone not in the USA test the example link on that page? I just had someone in Canada check and they were still fed the .com...

Problem 2: Caching and CDN's are going to interfere...
 
Ryuzaki said:
As soon as I get time, I'm going to test that through 302's. For instance, I'm doing something like this:

domain.com/out/product -> the US amazon link.

This solution above wants to replace the link directly on the page, but I'm hiding where the destination is through a redirect. I'm hoping to maintain that redirect feature and have it replace my URL out of a txt file instead of live in the HTML... we'll see. I might have to pay someone to do it. If that gets it work, then my problem will be solved! Thanks @RomesFall

The only problem beyond this is that if someone from Canada can't find what they want and they are intent on buying, then they might buy from the US store and I won't get a thing from it. I'll have to test which does better, but I suspect the extra sales around the globe should make up for anything I lose.

Problem 1: Can anyone not in the USA test the example link on that page? I just had someone in Canada check and they were still fed the .com...

Problem 2: Caching and CDN's are going to interfere...
Click to expand...

I checked that link and it worked fine, I've also got it up on my site now and it seems to be working without a hitch, have a CDN and Caching in place and it's still doing alright.

It keeps telling me on GTMetrix and Pingdom that one of the external files for the geo-location in one of the two scripts is failing, but if it was then it wouldn't be working at all... I'm not sure why it's saying that, but from my side it seems all good.

Pretty amazed something from 2009 is still working in 2016.

Edit: In the JS file, go far far right to find the second array and take out his fallback associates IDs which default if you don't enter one for that country.
 
Last edited:
RomesFall said:
Edit: In the JS file, go far far right to find the second array and take out his fallback associates IDs which default if you don't enter one for that country.
Click to expand...

I noticed that. He's going to lose that account if he hasn't already. Amazon forces you to declare which sites are advertising links in the dashboard. Whole ton of people lost accounts recently.

Another concern with this is checking constantly to make sure the geolocation service is up and running. If it ever goes down, you'll have to API into a different one and rewrite the code to read the answer.

What's the payout situation on all of the other Amazon Associates Programs? Can they all direct deposit to a US bank account?
 
Ryuzaki said:
I noticed that. He's going to lose that account if he hasn't already. Amazon forces you to declare which sites are advertising links in the dashboard. Whole ton of people lost accounts recently.

Another concern with this is checking constantly to make sure the geolocation service is up and running. If it ever goes down, you'll have to API into a different one and rewrite the code to read the answer.

What's the payout situation on all of the other Amazon Associates Programs? Can they all direct deposit to a US bank account?
Click to expand...

Very true about the API... Hopefully that doesn't happen any time soon lol

I'm not sure how it works in the U.S. but here in the UK I can only get a cheque from non-UK Amazon sites.
 
Looks like they've still got their launch promo on:

http://easyazon.com/v4launch/

I don't think there's a difference between the two version. I've bought the developer versions and there's no licence input of any kind.

https://i.imgur.com/zgZ2e4u.png
Just wanted to add don't expect any support. I've once sent in a security question via their "support portal" and never got a reply, otherwise the plugin's good.
 
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