Stores and affiliation
For an offer to generate a commission, the published link must include your affiliate code: Amazon's affiliate tag, AliExpress's tracking identifier or the one from whatever network you work with. On Amazon, your tag is enough: it is added to every link to your region's store, whether or not you have access to its API. If you also set up your Amazon and AliExpress credentials, their product pages will be extracted without spending credits and automatic publishing will be able to search for products in them; on AliExpress, these credentials are also what applies your code. For any other store, an affiliate rule takes care of adding your code to the link. You can set it all up in Settings, in the Stores and affiliation group.
On this page
The essentials
- For Amazon, go to Settings › Amazon, type your tag in Your affiliate tag and press Save. If you have credentials for its API, paste them in Amazon Creators API.
- For AliExpress, go to Settings › AliExpress, paste the key, the secret and your tracking identifier, and press Save.
- When you save your credentials, the connection is automatically checked.
- For any other store, in Settings › Affiliates press Add rule, choose the store and type your code in After the link or in Before the link.
- Press Apply and then Save.
- The product link, without the parameters it came with.
- Your code: the one from an affiliate rule, if the store has one; if not, on Amazon and AliExpress, the one from their settings.
- The link that gets published: the product's with your code.
- The offer's button carries that link.
Amazon
The Settings › Amazon section contains two cards, both reserved for the owner.
The first card, Your affiliate tag, secures your commissions. In Affiliate tag (Partner Tag), enter the code from your Amazon Associates account, such as your-tag-21 (you will find it at the top right of their dashboard). With this tag, every Amazon link in your region will include your commission, whether or not you have access to the Amazon API, unless there is a rule for Amazon in Affiliates. Right below, the Affiliate tag per channel collapsible block lets you assign a different tag to a specific channel: see A different code per channel.
If you do not have a tag yet, How to Create Your Amazon Affiliate Link explains how to sign up for Amazon Associates and where to find it.
The second card, Amazon Creators API, is optional. With your credentials, Amazon product pages are read through its API without spending credits, and automatic publishing searches its catalog for products. If you have just registered your Amazon Associates account, you probably do not have API access yet: in the meantime, your tag is enough to earn commissions.
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Use the Amazon API | The switch that decides whether Amazon is asked. On by default. |
| Credential ID | The one from your Creators API credentials, such as AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE. |
| Credential Secret | The one from those same credentials. |
| Amazon region | The country of your Amazon store, with twenty to choose from. By default, it uses your organization's; if that country has no Amazon store, it assigns the one where its affiliates register (Germany for Austria and Switzerland, the United States for Latin America…), or Spain. |
| Amazon API version | The Creators API version your credentials were issued with: 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 3.1, 3.2, or 3.3. Until you save credentials or select one, the default version Amazon assigns to new accounts in that region applies: 3.1 in the Americas, 3.2 in Europe, the Middle East, and India, and 3.3 in Japan, Australia, and Singapore. |
The API also needs your tag. When you save credentials, the connection is checked, and you can press Test connection to test it again whenever you want; see what each response means in Checking the connection. Saving only the tag does not run any checks.
Getting the Amazon credentials
They come from your Amazon affiliate account. The help column, How do I get the credentials?, sums it up:
- Go to Amazon Creators with your affiliate account.
- Create API credentials and copy the identifier and the secret key. Paste them in Credential ID and Credential Secret.
- Choose the region of the store you publish in and, in Amazon API version, the version that matches your credentials.
- Press Save.
If the check answers that the account has not been granted access yet, that is usual on a newly registered Amazon account: there is nothing to correct, test again later.
AliExpress
The AliExpress Portals API card, in Settings › AliExpress, stores the credentials with which AliExpress products are read and searched. It belongs to the owner.
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Use the AliExpress API | The switch that decides whether your credentials are used. Off, pages are still read, but they spend credits. On by default. |
| App Key | The one from your app in AliExpress Portals; it starts with 33_. |
| App Secret | The one from that same app. |
| Tracking ID | The one from your AliExpress Affiliate account, normally default. It is used unless the channel has its own. Without it the API is not used. |
| AliExpress language | The language in which product data is received. By default, it uses the organization owner's, which matches their channel templates. |
| AliExpress currency | The currency used for prices. By default, it uses the currency of your organization's region. |
| AliExpress ship-to country | The destination country used to calculate prices and availability. By default, it uses your organization's region. If a product does not ship to that country, Create offer will let you know, and that read will not spend credits. |
If AliExpress does not operate in your region's country, the country and currency default to Spain and the euro (if only the currency is missing, only that changes to the euro). If the owner's language is not available, the country's language is selected. The options you choose are saved, even if they match Spain, the euro, and Spanish.
Without credentials, or with the switch off, each read of an AliExpress page spends the credits stated in this section, and product search does not work. If at some point that reading is not available, the section does not promise it: it says that, without your credentials, you will have to type the title and the price yourself.
The Tracking identifier per channel block gives a particular channel its own identifier, like Amazon's tag per channel: it is covered in A different code per channel.
Getting the AliExpress credentials
They come from your AliExpress affiliate account. The help column, How do I get the credentials?, sums it up:
- Go to AliExpress Portals with your affiliate account.
- Copy your app's key and secret (App Key and App Secret) and paste them in App Key and App Secret.
- Paste your Tracking ID, the tracking identifier your links must carry, in Tracking ID.
- Check the language, the currency and the ship-to country, and press Save.
If the currency you choose is not that of your organization's region, Region warns you.
Turning a store off without deleting its credentials
The switch at the very top — Use the Amazon API or Use the AliExpress API — turns that store off leaving the credentials where they are. That is the difference with Withdraw the credentials: to turn it back on you do not have to go and look for them again in the store's console.
With the store off:
- Pages are still read, but they cost credits: What spends credits when reading a product page covers it. Amazon's are then read from its website, which is less reliable: it can fail or return fewer fields.
- Product search stops working: the test one and that of the automatic publishing profiles.
- On Amazon, the link still carries your affiliate tag, unless you have a rule for Amazon in Affiliates, in which case it uses the one from the rule.
- On AliExpress, the link comes out without your code: the tracking identifier is only added to the link when the store is switched on; otherwise, it will only include one if you have created a rule for AliExpress in Affiliates.
While it is off its connection is not checked and Test connection does not appear; when you turn it on, it has to be checked again.
What spends credits when reading a product page
When you paste a product's link in Create offer — or send it to the bot —, the application reads its page and fills in the title, the price, the list price and the image. It works with any store that has a public product page, without configuring anything. What changes from one store to another is what it costs in credits:
- Reading a store page without your credentials spends credits: usually 20 per read, and a few more for the most complex stores.
- Reading Amazon or AliExpress with your credentials spends nothing.
- Publishing, leaving a message in the queue, the queue sending it and the searches of automatic publishing, the test one included, spend nothing.
Case by case:
| What is read | What it spends |
|---|---|
| Amazon or AliExpress with your credentials | Nothing, on any plan, the free one included. |
| AliExpress without your credentials, or switched off | The credits stated in Settings › AliExpress. |
| Amazon without your credentials, or switched off, and any other store | Usually 20 credits per read, and a few more for the most complex stores. |
| The same page again, within the next hour | Nothing. |
The credits included in your plan are spent first and then the purchased balance. How many you have left and how to get more is covered in Subscription and credits.
When you run out of credits, below the link you read these words: “You have run out of credits for reading product pages. Enter the title and the price yourself, or see Subscription for how to get more.”. You can keep publishing.
Reading a page does not put your code in the link. In a store other than Amazon and AliExpress, a rule in Affiliates does that.
Fine print: when it is charged, when it is returned, from which country it is read and who answers for the reading
A read spends its credits whether or not the product is found on the page. They are returned only if the read does not happen or gets no answer, and none is spent when AliExpress does not ship that product to your organization's country. On AliExpress without your credentials, if the page cannot be read at that moment, none is spent.
For Amazon and AliExpress not to spend, your credentials have to be complete: with the affiliate tag on Amazon and the tracking identifier on AliExpress.
Reading again for free applies to a page that brought data within the previous hour.
The pages of stores without their own integration, and those of Amazon when you have it switched off or without credentials, are read on their public listing, through a provider specialized in reading web pages, from the country of your region: they arrive with the price, the language and the availability that a buyer in that country sees. A store that does not sell there may not let us read the page; then type the title and the price yourself. There are two exceptions, in which the page is still read from Spain: the few countries not covered by the service that reads the pages (Serbia or Montenegro, for example) and, in the less common countries, the stores we have not yet prepared one by one.
Some stores do not allow automatic reading of their pages in their terms, and you decide which addresses you ask to read and are responsible for having the right to do so. A store may also block reading at any time.
Affiliates
Settings › Affiliates generates your affiliate links without using the store's API: it is enough to add a text before the link, another after it, or both. It is useful for affiliate networks that offer no API and for stores the application does not know how to query. The owner and the managers can reach it.
Creating a rule
Press Add rule, in the card header. A search box opens: type the store's name and you will see the catalogue ones that match; pick one and its domains come already filled in. If yours is not there, the first option is Add “what you typed” as a store of your own, and then you type the domains yourself, separated by commas. You can have only one rule per catalogue store, and a store already used is no longer offered.
On adding it, the editing window opens by itself, which is where the fields are:
| Field | What it is | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Store name | Only in your own rules; the catalogue ones come with it filled in. | PcComponentes |
| Domains | Only in your own rules, separated by commas. | pccomponentes.com, another-store.com |
| Before the link | Placed before the link, which goes encoded after it. It has to start with https://. |
https://affiliate-network.com/go/?url= |
| After the link | Added as a parameter, in the form key=value (several, separated by &). |
tag=mytag-21 |
Below, the window shows the link that would come out with what you have typed. With Apply you go back to the list; the changes are not saved until you press Save in the header. A badly written field marks the row red with the reason.
If you leave both text fields empty, the rule still acts: it publishes the product's clean link, without any parameter. To use the original link unmodified, delete the rule.
How the link is built
It always starts from the product's link without anything after “?” or “#”, even if in some stores that identifies the product.
- The product link, with what the store adds after it.
- Clean: without anything that comes after “?” or “#”.
- With the After the link text added at the end.
- With the Before the link text in front and the encoded link behind: it is the one that is published.
Domains that have no rule are not touched: their link comes out as it is from the store.
The list of rules
Each rule takes one row: the store's name, the domains it applies to and, in one sentence, what it does. It can carry a chip: Inactive, if the catalogue store has been withdrawn; Deactivated by the plan, if a plan downgrade left it out; or 2 per channel, if it has exceptions. On the right it has three buttons:
| Button | What it does |
|---|---|
| Copies to the clipboard an example link built with that rule, so you can paste it in the browser and see where it lands. | |
| Opens the editing window. | |
| Deletes the rule, warning that the links of those domains will come out without this rule's text and about the per-channel exceptions that are lost with it. |
What the plan says
The free plan admits two rules; the paid ones, as many as you want. When you downgrade, the surplus ones are not deleted: they are marked Deactivated by the plan and stop applying until you have room again.
If you have a rule for Amazon or AliExpress
Amazon's affiliate tag and AliExpress's tracking identifier are still used to query the product's data. When you have an active rule for that store, the link that is published comes from Affiliates, and those sections remind you of it with a notice.
A different code per channel
If you have more than one channel, each one can carry its own affiliate code. The channels you do not customize use the general one. It is set in two places, depending on where the link comes from:
- In Amazon and AliExpress, in the collapsible block Affiliate tag per channel (below your tag) or in Tracking identifier per channel (below the fields). The channel code is included in that channel's link and, when using the API, is also used to query product data.
- In Affiliates, in the Exceptions per channel block of the window that edits each rule. If you have a rule for Amazon or AliExpress, the link that is published comes from it, so it is this exception that counts.
In both blocks, each empty field says below it which value it inherits. In a rule's window, the See the example for dropdown shows the link that would come out on a particular channel.
Fine print: when you downgrade
The per-channel codes you already had are kept, but the general code is published in all the channels until you go back to a plan that includes them. In Affiliates, the exceptions cannot be added or changed outside Creator and Agency either, although you can keep saving the rest of the screen.
