Quote:
Originally Posted by ATDrake
No actually, Sony and Kobo links are incredibly easy, because in order to affiliate with them, people have to basically warp the URL all out of recognition to what they normally look like on the site, and most places don't bother.
Inkmesh's Kobo and Sony links are actually direct-links with no affiliate tagging as far as I can tell, and yield the exact same URLs as I find when I direct-search on Kobo and Sony's own websites for the exact same products in a different browser.
It's really just Amazon and B&N which are mildly problematic that way, since they have so many potential variants in their URLs, and I'm afraid I may have been overly verbose in demonstrating them.
In any case, for most e-book selling places, you don't actually need to do most of the deep-cleaning steps and can just get by with cutting off everything after a certain point in most forms of the URL, and it's pretty easy to understand the underlying pattern of how to do it.
Amazon: just look for the "dp" portion in the link, keep the ASIN number right after that, and delete anything else which follows. You don't even have to look up the ASIN on the product page; just start cutting once you see a non-number such as & or % or ?, which is where the referrer/tracking info starts.
B&N: depending on what form of the link you have, cut right after the "e" followed by the long number or the EAN= and its number. Again, any non-numeric character such as ? right after will be the start of the useless stuff.
Kobo: cut everything after the -1.html part which will follow after a rather long jumble of mixed-case letters which itself is after the book title.
Sony: cut everything after the long number which follows the /_/R- after the book title.
Smashwords: same thing; you only have to keep the short number after the /view/.
Basically, for most e-book places it'll work if you just dump everything after the first number string you see after the book's title (if the title is included in the URL) except for B&N where you may have to wait for the EAN marker before you can start chopping.
You don't really have to remember anything more than that.
Assuming you're posting links which start with the .com address of the website the deal's at, and not reposting a doubleclick.net or bit.ly redirect version, of course.
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Thanks, and again clear instructions.
BUT, my point was that I used to be able to just copy and paste a link into a post on the rare occasions when I was the first to find a bargain. I could test it in the "preview post" screen to make sure it still went to the bargain, and then just post. Now I have to edit the link, and worry about whether I missed some tag, and risk being called a liar if I do miss something. Only speaking for myself, and especially since I'm not a prolific poster of bargains and would have to dig out your nice instructions every time, it's probably just not worth it.
I don't know, the next time I find an as-yet-unposted bargain, I may just post it without a link, and put enough info (hopefully) in the post that folks can Google it themselves and find the deal. Although, now that I think about it, maybe I'd better not say "Google it" either, since that might be regarded as sending folks to Google, who I know make money off anyone clicking through from one of their links, and that might qualify as a hidden affiliate link. (And, sarcasm alert - the last sentence is only partly tongue-in-cheek.)
Sigh!