Stores and affiliation
For an offer to earn you a commission, the link that gets published has to carry your affiliate code: Amazon's affiliate tag, AliExpress's tracking identifier or the one from whatever network you work with. Amazon and AliExpress are connected with your own credentials, and then their product pages are read without spending credits, the link carries your code and automatic publishing can search for products in them. For any other store, an affiliate rule puts your code in the link. It is all in Settings, in the Stores and affiliation group.
On this page
The essentials
- For Amazon, in Settings › Amazon, paste the identifier, the secret key and your affiliate tag, and choose the region.
- For AliExpress, in Settings › AliExpress, paste the key, the secret and your tracking identifier.
- Press Save: the connection is checked by itself.
- 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 Amazon Creators API card, in Settings › Amazon, stores the credentials with which Amazon products are read and searched in automatic publishing. It belongs to the owner.
| 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. |
| Affiliate tag (Partner Tag) | The one from your Amazon Associates account, such as your-tag-20. It is added to the links that come from the API, unless the channel has its own. Without it the API is not used. |
| Amazon region | The country of your Amazon store, among twenty. Spain by default. |
| Amazon API version | The version of the Creators API your credentials were issued with: 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 3.1, 3.2 or 3.3. |
On saving, the connection is checked, and Test connection repeats it whenever you want; the answers are covered in Checking the connection. Below the fields, the collapsible block Affiliate tag per channel gives a particular channel a different tag: it is covered in A different code per channel.
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.
- Also paste your Amazon affiliate tag, the one that ties sales to your account, in Affiliate tag (Partner Tag).
- Choose the region of the store you publish in and, in Amazon API version, the version of 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 the product data arrives. Spanish by default. |
| AliExpress currency | The currency of the prices. Euro by default. |
| AliExpress ship-to country | The destination country used to calculate prices and availability. Spain by default. If a product is not shipped to that country, Create offer tells you so and that read spends no credits. |
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.
- The link comes out without your code: the affiliate tag and the tracking identifier only reach the link with the store on, so it carries your code only if you have a rule for that store 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's page without your credentials spends credits: one per read, a few more in the stores that cost more to read.
- 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 | One credit per read, or a few more in the stores that cost more to read. |
| 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.
The first time you open Affiliates, a guided tour points out its parts. You can skip it, and start it again whenever you like from the button in the header, with Repeat the tour.
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 or Tracking identifier per channel, below the fields. The channel's code is used to query the product's data and goes in the link that comes from the store.
- 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 Creador and Agencia either, although you can keep saving the rest of the screen.
