I started using Amazon Affiliate links to see if I can earn a little money from my websites and when you go to get a link for a product, you end up with something really long and hard to understand like this:
But I wanted to know what part of this link is actually important and figure out the fastest way to create a working affiliate link. Thankfully Amazon provides a tool to check links.
It turns out that all I need is:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00M1NEUKK/?tag=adahar09-20
where adahar09-20 is my Amazon Associates tracking id.
So all you have to do is take any amazon link and add ?tag=adahar09-20 (or &tag=adahar09-20 if there is already a ? character in the url). Of course, use your tracking id instead of mine.
And if in doubt, just use the link checker.