May 17, 2016 / 12 comments

Associate App: You Can Finally Generate Amazon Affiliate Links on iOS Devices

Icon-83.5@2xWith the just-released Associate app for iOS, you can finally generate Amazon Associate affiliate links from iPhone or iPad.

Words on the Goods receives a tiny commission from Amazon on anything you readers purchase through affiliate links–no extra cost to you, and it keeps ye ole blogs going.

But creating an affiliate link on iOS devices is surprisingly difficult. Safari can’t handle it, for some reason, and you have to go to Firefox on iPad and Request Desktop site for it to work. Even then it’s cumbersome.

That’s no longer true now with the dedicated Associate app. It has the single purpose of quickly generating affiliate links for you based on a search query–just as Blink does the same for iTunes/App Store affiliate links.

So far I use mostly plain text links, and copy-paste them where I need them, but you can also instantly generate a Markdown-ready link.

There are just two setup screens to work through:

 

 

 

You may have to hunt a bit to find your Identifier, but it’s easy to get from your Amazon Associate log-in page.

From here you can use the app easily to create affiliate links. I typed in “from a liminal place,” (this is one of the best books ever), and it came right up as an option to select:

 

3_Select Product

 

From here I get either a plain text or Markdown link option, with a number of easy ways to export it:

 

 

Bonus: there’s a Share Sheet extension! If I’m searching Amazon in the Amazon app or in Safari, like what I see, and want to make an affiliate link, I can do so from there:

 

6_Share Sheet

 

The only thing lacking in this well-polished and gets-the-job-done app is the ability to “Shorten URL with amzn.to,” which you can do from the Amazon Associates Web page. I prefer this shorter URL because it keeps hyperlinks cleaner, but it’s not a huge deal, and it’s a limitation from Amazon’s end anyway, not the app developer.

If you’re a fan of Blink or use Amazon Associate links anywhere in your writing, you will probably consider the $4.99 Associate app worth the ease with with you can keep working on an iOS device. Check it out here.

 

 

Thanks to the good folks at Squibner for the app download via TestFlight for the purposes of review.

 

 

12 Comments

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  1. Magnus Hedemark February 6, 2018 — 9:14 am

    The app was abandoned shortly after this review was published.

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  2. LC September 14, 2018 — 8:00 am

    Thanks for this review. I replied to one of your other commentators (Magnus) but wanted to report that the app works. When I checked my links on Amazon’s link checker, they check out fine as a verified working links. https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/home/tools/linkchecker

    I still don’t know what Magus is talking about that the app was abandoned earlier this year. I just bought it last week. One thing it doesn’t do is generate links on sponsored products, which is basically a seller that is promoting their product for sale on Amazon, however you simply have to scroll down to find the same product as a regular listing.

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  3. AmALfi App March 6, 2021 — 6:29 am

    For Android users there is AmALfi.

    AmALfi supports creating official amzn.to short links directly from the app as well as all of the features listed for the app reviewed here.

    It is still in active development, integrates with the Amazon app and your devices web browser and can also create image and iFrame (image+text) code.

    Find out more at https://AmALfi.nooriginalthought.com

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