Amazon Image Links – Build Your Own

July 22, 2010 by EnnisP
Filed under: Blogging, Computing

I am an avid reader and since I also blog it seems only natural that I should write about the books I read.

I only review the technical stuff. Fiction does little to expand one mentally, other than hone reading skills and that, only if you make an exercise of it.

Yes, reading of any kind can improve vocabulary but only with a dictionary in one hand and a writing tablet in the other and the classifications are really not that broad: well researched or not. The categories are fairly general also: children’s, mystery, romance, science fiction, horror, fantasy, thrillers, westerns and so on.

Non-fiction, however, covers an endless range of topics and often makes a point that can change your life or at least the way you think about life. For that reason I read non-fiction quite a lot and I find it helps if I write down ideas to take away from the read. Blogging is a good way to share it with others.

It also helps to let people know where they too can buy the book. For that reason I include images and links to a site – usually Amazon – where they can purchase the book inexpensively.

The problem is, Amazon image links don’t always work very nicely. To say they are “uncooperative” is an understatement especially in the platform I use, WordPress. Blogger is much more compatible with Amazon links and is a great platform for blogging but it comes with limitations. I chose to develop a stand alone blog and you can find my reasons here.

WordPress is, of course, a very powerful platform and has more than 25 million users but every system has its bugs. Amazon and WordPress don’t exactly mesh where image links are concerned but fortunately there is a solution.

Actually there are several suggested solutions but the one I find useful is building your own links. Being a novice codie, I couldn’t do this without help so I usually consult those with more experience and Steve, an experienced web designer and WP code manipulator has been my go to guy for over a year now. If I have problems or need instruction I talk to Steve.

Recently I asked Steve to tell me how I can build Amazon image links without relying on Amazon’s internal link builder or handy plugins – neither of which work 100% of the time. Following is the outcome.

Go to a previous post that has an image link that works.
In the HTML view of the WordPress editor find and copy the code for the link. In this case the link was at the top of my page so it was easy to find.
Copy all the code as in the example below and transfer to a blank page in your word processor or to any other place your comfortable working. You can easily go straight to your html editor. I rarely used my html editor before but am learning to do so now.

The link I copied was:

<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product
/0849946018?ie=UTF8&tag=XXXXXXXX&;
linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative
=9325&creativeASIN=0849946018"
target="_blank"><img class="alignleft
size-full wp-image-1062" title="Jesus
 Manifesto" src="http://nowthinkaboutit
.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Jesus-
Manifesto.jpg" alt="" width="74" height="110"
 /></a>

Amazon affiliate account

If you don’t already have an Amazon account go here and follow the easy on screen instructions to set one up. In this case you won’t have code to work from but you can borrow code from someone else and follow the next series of instructions.

The good thing is once you are affiliated to Amazon you can begin linking to products you have used and can personally recommend. If someone, on the strength of your recommendation, decides to buy the product you get a small commission, provided they use your link.

Change the Amazon product code – 0849946018

The product code is included twice inside the link. This will have to be replaced in your new link. You can find the code for the new item on the Amazon affiliate site.

Make sure your tracking ID is correct – XXXXXXXX

The X’s represent my tracking ID and you will find yours in the same spot. If you have an account already and are working with existing links – which function properly – the tracking ID will be there already. If you use code from another person’s site this will have to be changed. Your tracking ID can be found on the home page of the affiliate site once you sign in.

Change the title – Jesus Manifesto

The title appears when the mouse is rolled over the image but not clicked. Changing is simple. Just delete the old title and type in the new. If you don’t care about the title showing – it’s usually obvious anyway – just delete the entire title portion of the code – title=”Jesus Manifesto”.

Change the image URL – 2010/06/Jesus-Manifesto.jpg

The image URL will tell your browser where to find the image to display. Do a Google image search to find the image you want and then take the following steps to save it to an address your link can find.

Note: Please do not use copyrighted images without getting permission. Amazon doesn’t mind you using any of their product images but it is always best to be sure. If there is any question email the owner of the site where you found it.

Right click the image and select “save image as…” and then follow the instructions to save it to your hard drive giving it a name you will remember.
Go to your WordPress editor and click on the insert image button – just over and on the left side of the visual/html editor screen.
On the window that pops up find and select the “Media Gallery” tab at the top. Mine is all the way to the right.
From the list of images that appear find the one you uploaded and click “show.”
A screen will open showing the details of that image. Scroll to the bottom and you will find the URL field.
Copy and paste the information into the image link you are building.

Note: The only portion of the address you need is the date and name of the new image. Everything else stays the same.

I used this method to build my first Amazon image link and it works beautifully. Following is the code:

<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product
/0840775024?ie=UTF8&tag=XXXXXXXX&;
linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative
=9325&creativeASIN=0840775024"
target="_blank"><img class="alignleft
size-full wp-image-1062" title="Ancient
 Records" src="http://nowthinkaboutit
.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Ancient-
Records.jpg" alt="" width="74" height="110"
 /></a>

You are welcome to work from this code. To copy it roll your mouse over the code window and click on the copy symbol. The code will be pasted to your clipboard.

Note: I was advised by a second code master that the following portion of the code – wp-image-1062 – is not necessary and can be deleted. To test this information I removed it. It worked great!

In closing I want to give credit to two code manipulators who helped me.

One is Steve, a coder I have referred to many times over the last year. I have learned a lot from his input and can recommend his services highly. I wrote about Steve in a previous post here.

A second person is Liz, who I recently met online and have found to be very responsive and full of helpful information. She has several sites but the first one to get my attention is here. She has another “how to” site here and her husband, Russell, maintains a site here. All three sites offer useful information for people interested in furthering their web mastery skills.

Between the two, they represent a wealth knowledge and experience and they graciously share with others. In fact, through the experience of this post in particularly, I learned that displaying code in the text is not easy to do even with a plugin. Liz, however, walk me through this learning experience successfully.

Now all that is left is for you to try out your skill at building an Amazon link. And, if during the process you have questions, ask Liz.

THINK!AboutIt