Link Localisers - Are they worth it?

ordobey

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Hi all,

I've been thinking of taking advantage of all my non-US traffic recently and implementing some kind of link localisation so that my users are taken to the correct referral page when they click through from my sites.

I've heard of EazyAzon and Genius Link but I've also read about how they simply do not work or are in some form or another a waste of time/money.

Has anyone had any success with these kinds of services or found better ways to utilise un-utilised traffic?
 
I'm interested in this too... Have both, but haven't implemented them in mass. I suspect a 12% ROI as a guestimate. (for every $10k US earnings, $1,200 - $1,500 international from geo links)
 
chanilla said:
I'm interested in this too... Have both, but haven't implemented them in mass. I suspect a 12% ROI as a guestimate. (for every $10k US earnings, $1,200 - $1,500 international from geo links)
Click to expand...

How do you find they function where you have implemented them?

I read that some people find that the links end up going to the wrong place fairly frequently. Any experiences where they've gone so far as affecting US sales (by sending to the wrong place for example)?
 
It's based on geo-targeting the IP address. I'd say for the most part most people are using normal IP's and not international proxies. They should land where you send them.

The problem with these Amazon ones is that each Amazon site (US, UK, JP, AUS, etc) are built differently. Each item you're selling goes in and out of stock at different times, their URL structures are different, the ASIN numbers (I think thats the term) are different.

I'd say the best thing you could do is to send all of the non-local traffic to a search page and have it autofill the item you're pushing. Otherwise it'd be a nightmare to try to keep up with which links were "live" or not. You can't even crawl for 404's or anything else because Amazon keeps the pages live with 200 codes.

I need to do this too, but at this point I simply haven't. I've given it a lot of thought and those are the hurdles I anticipate and how I'd overcome them.
 
Ryuzaki said:
I need to do this too, but at this point I simply haven't. I've given it a lot of thought and those are the hurdles I anticipate and how I'd overcome them.
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...stupid question, does an Amazon tracking cookie for .com translate over to another Amazon extension like .co.uk?
 
Nat said:
...stupid question, does an Amazon tracking cookie for .com translate over to another Amazon extension like .co.uk?
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No. It's a different affiliate program entirely for each site, with different cookies and dashboards.
726 x 138​
 
Ryuzaki said:
No. It's a different affiliate program entirely for each site, with different cookies and dashboards.
726 x 138​
Click to expand...
Damn... I've only focused on the US just assumed Amazon sites were an Amazon umbrella... So yeah, if someone's site gets tons of mixed country traffic it would be very worth it to have a geo ip link changer
 
ordobey said:
How do you find they function where you have implemented them?

I read that some people find that the links end up going to the wrong place fairly frequently. Any experiences where they've gone so far as affecting US sales (by sending to the wrong place for example)?
Click to expand...

Well with most of these plugins, it's hard to say/an individual basis. If you were going with a custom solution/php, you'd want to use a geo ip db service like maxmind... and then set a script every so often to keep it up to date.

Prob better off just using something like Genius in the short term.
 
Ryuzaki said:
It's based on geo-targeting the IP address. I'd say for the most part most people are using normal IP's and not international proxies. They should land where you send them.

The problem with these Amazon ones is that each Amazon site (US, UK, JP, AUS, etc) are built differently. Each item you're selling goes in and out of stock at different times, their URL structures are different, the ASIN numbers (I think thats the term) are different.

I'd say the best thing you could do is to send all of the non-local traffic to a search page and have it autofill the item you're pushing. Otherwise it'd be a nightmare to try to keep up with which links were "live" or not. You can't even crawl for 404's or anything else because Amazon keeps the pages live with 200 codes.

I need to do this too, but at this point I simply haven't. I've given it a lot of thought and those are the hurdles I anticipate and how I'd overcome them.
Click to expand...

Yeah that's a good idea. It definitely feels like it would be a custom job and unfortunately my coding skills are lacking so would have to bring someone else in. Definitely something on the horizon as a project for me too though.

chanilla said:
Well with most of these plugins, it's hard to say/an individual basis. If you were going with a custom solution/php, you'd want to use a geo ip db service like maxmind... and then set a script every so often to keep it up to date.

Prob better off just using something like Genius in the short term.
Click to expand...

Yes as I mention above probably looking to be a custom solution if you want the job done right, oh well! Pretty sure Genius links are against the Amazon TOS too afaik.
 
chanilla said:
Prob better off just using something like Genius in the short term.
Click to expand...
Woah, I'd never heard of Genius until now. Pretty slick.
ordobey said:
Pretty sure Genius links are against the Amazon TOS too afaik.
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It looks like Genius was designed primarily with iTunes and Amazon in mind. Why would it be against the TOS? You're allowed to use pretty links and redirects with Amazon as long as you clearly state where the link is going.
 
Nat said:
It looks like Genius was designed primarily with iTunes and Amazon in mind. Why would it be against the TOS? You're allowed to use pretty links and redirects with Amazon as long as you clearly state where the link is going.
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Well I actually used Genius way back in the day on one of my first sites and got rejected from the Amazon program because of them. They weren't specific as to the closure reason but the links were the only thing I changed and was later accepted after reapplying.

Digging through the TOS this could be the reason:

"You must include your Associates ID or “tag” (appearing as XXXXX-20, or such other format as we may designate) as a parameter in the URL of each link you place on your site to the Amazon Site. In addition, you must not use a link shortening service in a manner that makes it unclear that you are linking to an Amazon Site."

If I remember correctly the Genius links don't have any indicator of your tag and don't make it clear you're heading to Amazon.
 
Hi!
For testing and to see how much extra money I can make with other countries aff programs in Amazon I used a geo localizer plugin that based on CloudFlare location inserts a CSS class in the body with the country code on it.

Based on this I can hide buttons and images that have the .com links and add .ca buttons for example.

Maybe it's not the best idea, but for testing proposes, I think it's ok.

But then I realize that I was duplicating the affiliate links on the page. Because the link is still there (with display: none attribute) and the bot will see it (I think)

Do you think this can affect rankings?

Thanks
 
Don't know if they update the geo database often.. but I used this on a few spammy sites couple of years ago to send canada and uk and other European visitors to different offers than US visitors.. you can "pretty link" your aff links and set geos within each. Sorry if it's not ok now, was a while ago when I used it, but it worked ok back then.

https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/wp-dynamic-links/
 
Before you decide to invest time in these sorts of things, check your analytics to see where your visitors are coming from.

I do use it on a few of my sites, but still 95% of my earnings come from Amazon US, despite only 60% of my visitors being from the US.
 
I prefer to use CloudFlare geo localizer since I trust it to be accurate.
I used this one for that: https://wordpress.org/plugins/geoip-detect/

Yes, around 7% of the visitors come from Canada and the UK.

It didn't take so much time, but now I'm worried about duplicating the number of affiliate links in the page now. I mean the ratio between content and aff links.

Thanks
 
@Rodrigo, I'd worry about that too if SEO is a concern of yours. You need some kind of jQuery option to replace the links after the page is loaded, rather than make one invisible and one visible yet both readable in the source code.

I need to get this done as well as it'd probably be an immediate 10-20% pay raise. I'm not happy with any existing solution and likely will have something coded. Another nightmare is the growing use of proxies and VPNs among "normies" these days. People could get mismatched fairly easily. And then needing to rent a reliable IP database... I've just ignored it for now and am scaling otherwise.
 
Thanks Ryuzaki! That was exactly my concern. I will ignore it too then.

I don't like the existing solutions either. I don't like giving them the control of the redirect. I just can't trust them with that.
 
@Ryuzaki yeah if you are going to code it yourself, and need it to work properly, maybe weigh up whether to buy the maxmind geo database subscription. I used to get it for a ad cloaker I built a few years ago. Costs a few pennies but worth it if you are talking an extra xxx+ a month. (I think it's about $30 a month sub)
 
Does EazyAzon and Genius Link use the Amazon Advertising API? Cos that's really restrictive at 1 request per second. You have to account for caching specifically around that condition.
 
Cash Builder said:
Just seen this now, going to implement it soon.

Am I correct in thinking that there's no need to replace each link, it's just a matter of linking the different country accounts together and then inserting a piece of JavaScript into the footer?
Click to expand...

That's how I interpreted it. I read the Intro, Implementation Guide, FAQ... seems like that's the case.
 
I set it up. Was straightforward. I only get small amounts of UK and CA traffic but hey, mo money is good money.

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