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Amazon links on Pinterest

by wsotoolz
35 replies
I know that a lot is changing on Pinterest with the Pinterest Spammer just coming public and claiming to make 1k per day. My question is did Pinterest start stripping amazon affiliate info or am I just being paranoid?

If a pin has this link:
Code:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005QU3FYW/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=affiliateid-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B005QU3FYW
When you click the pin the url bar shows:
Code:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005QU3FYW/ref=as_li_ss_tl?camp=1789&ie=UTF8&creative=390957
So to me that looks like the affiliate info was stripped, because when ever you click on this link from any other location outside of Pinterest the complete link shows.

Am I right? I am just getting started on Pinterest... and was going to focus on amazon as my income method.

Thanks,
Joe
#amazon #links #pinterest
  • Profile picture of the author Paleochora
    Well spotted.

    That will save people a whole bunch of wasted time.
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  • Profile picture of the author megawarrior
    Pinterest has recently been cracking down on the spam on their site.
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    • Profile picture of the author JonnyT
      Originally Posted by megawarrior View Post

      Pinterest has recently been cracking down on the spam on their site.
      ....??...THANKS MAN! :p lol
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  • Profile picture of the author wsotoolz
    So if direct linking to Amazon is dead... what are the best ways to use Pinterest. Just to drive traffic to our sites? I tried bitly and google redirects and I get the same result of the shortened url without the affiliate tracking. Not really sure how Pinterest can have only the redirect link and still somehow strip out the affiliate tracking before the redirect takes place.
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  • Profile picture of the author sbucciarel
    Banned
    THE PROBLEM FOR AMAZON

    Social media spamming also presents a problem for established e-commerce sites. The Pinterest spammer has one crucial cog in his scam: he is abusing the Amazon Affiliate program, described succinctly by Amazon:

    “When website owners and bloggers who are Associates create links and customers click through those links and buy products from Amazon.ca, they earn referral fees.”

    Many of the fake Pinterest accounts Daily Dot discovered use an Amazon Affiliate Associate account named final-fantas07.

    Amazon’s affiliate program has terms of service, and artificially increasing search ranks is one way to violate those rules, so this spammer could very well be defrauding the e-tailing giant.

    The Associates Program Operating Agreement’s section on advertising fees specifies that the program will not pay fees to people who drive shoppers to Amazon using “a link … that is generated or displayed on a Search Engine in response to a general Internet search query or keyword”.

    While Pinterest is not a search engine, and there is no specific reference to social networking referrals, Amazon has described a “search engine” quite broadly, to include not just Google, Yahoo and Bing, but also “any other … portal, sponsored advertising service, or other search or referral service, or any site that participates in any of their respective networks.”

    Pinterest might object to being called a mere referral service, but while the site is broader than simple product lust – the Obama campaign now has a board – a large part of the network revolves around just this type of referral shopping.

    Amazon’s requirements also ban the use of “a robot or software program” to “artificially generate clicks or impressions”.
    Social networking site Pinterest in battle against spammers - The Globe and Mail
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  • Profile picture of the author mosthost
    Pinterest seems a whole lot like a 'honeypot' to me. Look at their TOS, etc.

    Everyone needs to be real careful using that site IMHO.
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    • Profile picture of the author Rashell
      Good catch!

      Don't know if it's being done from Amazon or Pinterest's side but good for them.

      Hopefully ShareaSale, CJ and others will soon follow.

      Rashell
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      • Profile picture of the author wsotoolz
        Originally Posted by Rashell View Post

        Good catch!

        Don't know if it's being done from Amazon or Pinterest's side but good for them.

        Hopefully ShareaSale, CJ and others will soon follow.

        Rashell

        Guess it could be Amazon doing it... never thought about that. Hmm....
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      • Profile picture of the author Mollysue
        Just out of curiosity I decided to post an item (with Amazon affiliate link) onto one of my Pinterest boards. Almost immediately my affiliate link had been stripped.

        So maybe everyone's right - Amazon affiliates have just lost their latest marketing toy/tool. Ah well, something else will come along no doubt
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        • Profile picture of the author LegitIncomes
          Originally Posted by Mollysue View Post

          Just out of curiosity I decided to post an item (with Amazon affiliate link) onto one of my Pinterest boards. Almost immediately my affiliate link had been stripped.

          So maybe everyone's right - Amazon affiliates have just lost their latest marketing toy/tool. Ah well, something else will come along no doubt
          I'm not posting my affiliate links on Pinterest.
          But, for those who are...wouldn't you just use a domain redirect
          instead of using the regular affiliate link? Or link to your own site.

          That seems like common sense to me..who would ever directly
          post their affiliate link??
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          • Profile picture of the author Rashell
            Originally Posted by wsotoolz View Post

            So if direct linking to Amazon is dead... what are the best ways to use Pinterest. Just to drive traffic to our sites? I tried bitly and google redirects and I get the same result of the shortened url without the affiliate tracking. Not really sure how Pinterest can have only the redirect link and still somehow strip out the affiliate tracking before the redirect takes place.
            Originally Posted by LegitIncomes View Post

            I'm not posting my affiliate links on Pinterest.
            But, for those who are...wouldn't you just use a domain redirect
            instead of using the regular affiliate link? Or link to your own site.

            That seems like common sense to me..who would ever directly
            post their affiliate link??
            Someone's already tried URL shorteners only to get the same results-- no affiliate link.

            So what's left is building your own site and linking to AMZ from there.

            Hopefully Pinterest will hit the "pin thieves" (people who re-pin an image and change the URL to one of their own sites) next.

            Rashell
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  • Profile picture of the author johntan17
    It is safer to cloak your amazon affiliate links or redirect using your own subdomain.
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    • Profile picture of the author wsotoolz
      Originally Posted by johntan17 View Post

      It is safer to cloak your amazon affiliate links or redirect using your own subdomain.
      I would like to know this also... I think I may just start pinning to a portfolio style blog and then pin to pinterest from there. Then I have traffic coming to my site that I can do what I want with... Amazon, adsense, capture emails... whatever...
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      DONT IGNORE PINTEREST - IT SENT 4,000+ VISITORS TO MY BLOG LAST MONTH!
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      • Profile picture of the author Alan Petersen
        People should be funneling the traffic like this anyway: Pinterest --> YOUR WEB PROPERTY --> Amazon.

        And ideally, try to get them on your own mailing list before sending them off to Amazon.

        Spammers/scammers go direct because they have thousands of fake accounts, bots, and all that crap so they're going for volume. Then Pinterest figures it out and makes changes and sometimes non-scammers get caught in the crossfire because they didn't know better.

        Happens every single time, Twitter, Facebook, Piniterest, next new thing, etc. Learn people, learn.
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    • Profile picture of the author Samuel Adams
      Originally Posted by johntan17 View Post

      It is safer to cloak your amazon affiliate links or redirect using your own subdomain.
      Another good reason to redirect using your own subdomain is how you control the ultimate destination of the link. So let's say you decide to promote another product in the future (similar to the original Amazon product), then you can simply change the destination URL and the subdomain link can stay unchanged on Pinterest. And, no one will really know.
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  • Profile picture of the author Eleanor
    People should be using sites like Pinterest etc to drive traffic to their own sites instead of linking directly to affiliate URLs. What you do on your own site is your business but using a service like Pinterest to post affiliate links all over the place is a waste of time - and completely out of your control.

    Also, as far as I'm aware it's against Amazon TOS to cloak affiliate links so that's not really an option. It's better to get traffic to your own site and then funnel the visitors where you want them to go.
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    • Profile picture of the author Tjalling
      Yes, you're totally right wstoolz, Pinterest is tweaking the way things work all the time. Using pinterest to drive traffic to your site is way better than directly linking people to your amazon affiliate links. Money is in the list!
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  • Profile picture of the author johntan17
    Originally Posted by johntan17 View Post

    It is safer to cloak your amazon affiliate links or redirect using your own subdomain.
    Originally Posted by wsotoolz View Post

    I would like to know this also... I think I may just start pinning to a portfolio style blog and then pin to pinterest from there. Then I have traffic coming to my site that I can do what I want with... Amazon, adsense, capture emails... whatever...
    I used the free wordpress plugin called affiliate link cloaking to create unlimited subdomains redirects. The plugin also record the number of times your cloaked url is clicked and it is very easy to use.

    You may also wish to try another free plugin call Pretty Links. Many people use it. They have a free and paid version. (I don't have enough post to post direct links. Please google them to visit the websites)

    As many Warriors have mentioned here, it is better to create a site or a blog promoting Amazon Products and then get traffic from Pinterest to your blog. You can go to the WSO forum to search for Amazon plugins that creates a professional website with your cloaked Amazon affiliate links and products.
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    • Profile picture of the author Legit SEO
      You can click edit pin and copy, paste your Aff link back in. However Pinterest is very overrated for marketing because it's hard to get traffic now with the 1 pin per day showing up on the categories and plus the women on there just like looking and not actually buying.
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      • Profile picture of the author Ralf Skirr
        Apart from discouraging spammers - this will be a trend affiliate marketers need to anticipate.

        All sites with user generated content will, at some point, integrate measures to reduce affiliate spam.

        Technology makes it very easy to strip affiliate parameters from pure affilate links. At some point, it will also be very easy to monitor re-direct links and disable or replace those, too.

        Alan Petersen said it right:
        People should be funneling the traffic like this anyway: Pinterest --> YOUR WEB PROPERTY --> Amazon.
        Same is true for all affiliate promotions (not only amazon) on other people's sites.
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        • Profile picture of the author john_kennedy
          Originally Posted by Ralf Skirr View Post

          Apart from discouraging spammers - this will be a trend affiliate marketers need to anticipate.

          All sites with user generated content will, at some point, integrate measures to reduce affiliate spam.

          Technology makes it very easy to strip affiliate parameters from pure affilate links. At some point, it will also be very easy to monitor re-direct links and disable or replace those, too.

          Alan Petersen said it right:

          People should be funneling the traffic like this anyway: Pinterest --> YOUR WEB PROPERTY where the customer clicks one of your links--> Amazon.
          Same is true for all affiliate promotions (not only amazon) on other people's sites.
          Fixed.....
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      • Profile picture of the author wsotoolz
        Originally Posted by talkmeow View Post

        You can click edit pin and copy, paste your Aff link back in. However Pinterest is very overrated for marketing because it's hard to get traffic now with the 1 pin per day showing up on the categories and plus the women on there just like looking and not actually buying.
        From my findings it never is taken away on the pin. When I click edit my affiliate link is still there... but when I actually hover the image or click the link it is removed.
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  • Profile picture of the author spunkz
    I personally believe redirection to be a safe way to get peeps to your affiliate link, especially if you use a theme like PinRedirect, which mimics a store front too.
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  • Profile picture of the author eva dora
    Pinterest earns money by changing the affiliate links. You need to use something less popular than bit.ly or owl.ly.
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    • Profile picture of the author JonnyT
      Originally Posted by eva dora View Post

      Pinterest earns money by changing the affiliate links. You need to use something less popular than bit.ly or owl.ly.
      Iv already tried that. If you shorten your Amazon link with any url shortener, Pinterest won't find any images in the link.
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  • Profile picture of the author Maui Joe
    isn't there a second way to tag the link that doesn't require the tag variable? I know I recall reading an article about it after pinterest started stripping the tag...
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    • Profile picture of the author wsotoolz
      Originally Posted by Maui Joe View Post

      isn't there a second way to tag the link that doesn't require the tag variable? I know I recall reading an article about it after pinterest started stripping the tag...
      I am not sure about that but what I started doing was modifying the tags in my links. Like adding in extra data into the tag and then use a redirect script on my site to strip the extra stuff from the tag and redirect to amazon. Worked like a charm for months now and I can change up the extra data whenever I want to not leave a footprint.
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      Brand NEW pinterest tool launched - Repininator - Thousands of visitors to your site per month!

      DONT IGNORE PINTEREST - IT SENT 4,000+ VISITORS TO MY BLOG LAST MONTH!
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  • Profile picture of the author protvneo
    Banned
    [DELETED]
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    • Profile picture of the author wsotoolz
      Originally Posted by protvneo View Post

      Could somebody tell me why is not legal Pinterest -> Amazon, but is legal Pinterest -> Blog -> Amazon? Thnx!
      Don't take my word on this because I have not read the affiliate terms... lol... but generally you are not allowed to place affiliate links on sites that you do not own. In this case you own your blog, but not Pinterest.

      I do both Pinterest -> Amazon and Pinterest -> blog -> Amazon and have had no issues yet but that is not saying that I won't someday.
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      • Profile picture of the author marco005
        Hi folks,

        but how does etsy.com makes money with pinterest???

        It is an affiliate store,does he has only his own link in the pics on ijnterest like; etsy.com?

        So you have more to work on you affiliate store,so that your affiliate id is not in the image (only your root domain url)only in the buy now button,so that you can pin that image to pinterest...??

        I myself don't know how do make money with this pinterest model, I need little explain or tutorial.
        Amazon allowed his affiliates to pin amazon product images to pinter?

        marco005
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  • Profile picture of the author xpesos
    I had learned earlier that pinterest was using skimlinks, which converts affiliate links to theirs
    Originally Posted by wsotoolz View Post

    I know that a lot is changing on Pinterest with the Pinterest Spammer just coming public and claiming to make 1k per day. My question is did Pinterest start stripping amazon affiliate info or am I just being paranoid?

    If a pin has this link:
    Code:
    http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005QU3FYW/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=affiliateid-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B005QU3FYW
    When you click the pin the url bar shows:
    Code:
    http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005QU3FYW/ref=as_li_ss_tl?camp=1789&ie=UTF8&creative=390957
    So to me that looks like the affiliate info was stripped, because when ever you click on this link from any other location outside of Pinterest the complete link shows.

    Am I right? I am just getting started on Pinterest... and was going to focus on amazon as my income method.

    Thanks,
    Joe
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  • Profile picture of the author hostdare
    Pinterest is officially in the big leagues and the battle against spam is on. Spammers won’t give up easily, not on a website that’s growing as quickly as Pinterest is.
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  • Profile picture of the author MichaelBartley
    I am still doing fairly well by linking like this: Pinterest to Youtube to Affiliate link. Ejunkie is great for celebrity advertisers which would make it alot easier to convert users who already follow these people. All i post on pinterest are videos and lead them to youtube or my blog.

    They do click and go though so just think outside the box and keep brainstorming my friends. can't lose in this forum!
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  • Profile picture of the author marco005
    Hi,

    I see there are marketers who has 9000 pins or more on interest.

    They do that manual by the hand? That is like showel sand on a truck=middleage.

    Are there free plugins where I can automate this process

    A) pin a bulk number of images from my website to pinterest and

    B) free plugins where automated the process to repin other peoples pin to my board?

    ???
    Tips and recommends please.

    marco005
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