Question
My question is: How is the best way to set up an Amazon affiliate link on a WP website? We are Canadian, but most sales come from outside Canada. With all the eBooks and products on Amazon, how do we set up an International Amazon account and maintain it?
Answer
In short, there is no international amazon account. Unfortunately it does not exist. Amazon, while connected, runs compartmentalized on a per country basis. Because of this you have to have affiliate accounts in each country that you wish to have an account for.
In terms of a solution, after you have multiple affiliate accounts, the next step is to develop a plugin that detects the origin country of a user and swaps the correct affiliate ID. Imagine it like this:
- If: a users country = Canada
- Then: insert “Canada Affiliate Variable” into the code
The only way it won’t work if a visitor is blocking a browser from detecting that information, for example by using a proxy server.
There are a number of ways to program this, but we do recommend investing in a developer to create a custom plugin for you.
There are a few plugin services popping up that do this, but use caution. All it would take is some creative programming to hijack your affiliate ID, allowing a plugin developer to take your commissions. While not all plugins are bad, nor their developers – always use caution.
Finally, keep an eye on Amazon affiliate news – this could always change in the future.
I wonder if something like this could be accomplished by using a translation plugin like WPML… Same basic idea is to load specific words, in this case links, to specific users based on language or country. Still requires multiple affiliate accounts though.