Affiliate Marketing

Using the Amazon Product API with AS3 – #FreeCodeSunday

Sunday, July 11th, 2010 | #FreeCodeSunday, Actionscript 3, Affiliate Marketing | 1 Comment

This is really an update to an earlier post on how to use the Amazon Product API search and retrive products, all tied to your Amazon account. Using this information you can present information about each product, and drive traffic to the product page on Amazon. If the user then purchases the Product then you recieve a small amount of commission.

The problem with the old post was that Amazon changed their API requiring the request be signed and have a timestamp, so really the main new part is the included .php file, which you will of course need to edit to include your Amazon secret api key. To get one and see their documentation click here…

So if you can intergrate this information into a fun game or app and drive engagement through to the Product on Amazon in a way that is useful enough to your users that they then purchase the product, then you can make a few pennys. Well… maybe enough to buy lunch.

The source code goes into how to change the filter to search dvds instead of music, and there’s full API code to parse the XML for each Product into a Class instance to code against.

Credit for how to intergrate the Amazon signature methodology must go to www.ilovebonnie.net

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Using Amazon Products API and Flash

Monday, January 12th, 2009 | Actionscript 3, Affiliate Marketing | No Comments

Update: – Due to the Amazon API changes requiring Signature and Timestamps which breaks this post, i have created a new post which updates this process here….

EDIT:There was a bug with the demo when showing a product with no customer review as i’m using that as the flavour text in this demo. Fixed in demo and source code.

Continuing the theme of Affiliate marketing, here’s a free source code demo of how to use Amazon products in flash. It uses similar process’s I’ve demoed before, signing up for the API, creating a php page to receive the keywords then search the Amazon API, and then return the data in XML format to the Flash front end.

To get started yourself, register for Amazon associates account – http://aws.amazon.com/associates/, then download the example code, change my code for yours so you receive the percentage, and play away.

Here I’ve just parsed the response xml for the products into instances of my AmazonProductData.as Class. This makes it easy to code against, and be confident in the ability to retrieve basic data about each product without spelling or case mistakes. As long as you’re using FlashDevelop, FDT or FlexBuilder that is.

I will make a full scale tutorial on how to use the API, parse the data and create a simple front end like this when i get a chance and finish creating LearnToFlash.com .

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Replace Mochiads with Affiliate Ads – More Cash for the Creative

Friday, December 5th, 2008 | Actionscript 3, Affiliate Marketing | No Comments

I like Mochiads, it’s a great way for flash game developers to earn cash for their games, along with using the Mochibot tracking platform to track their games usage around the web.

But in the revenue stream, there’s a lot of people taking a slice of the action for every user you get to watch or click on an ad. Now for CPM – cost per thousand, where all the advertiser is after is eyeballs then you haven’t got a lot of choice. That usually pays $0.30-$0.45 per thousand people who play your game.

CPC – Cost per Click is usually slightly more, but you are usually prevented from custom styling these ads to attract more clicks, or decide on what ads would suit your game/app.

A way to make the big money is the CPA model – Cost per Acquisition, you get a user to click an ad, open the merchants page, then make a purchase. Usually a cookie will be placed on the users machine so if they return to the merchant again within say 30days and make the purchase you will still be credited.

CPA makes on average anywhere between 5-15% of the value of the item.  $100 Dollar item means 5-15 dollars for you. Much more than CPM model, but much more risky. You’ve got to manage it yourself, and if the customer returns the item, you don’t get paid.

I look on it as a huge chance for any creative flashers to make a lot of money by doing it themselves.

Say you’ve made a Golf Flash game like this one from Elecrotank, you could show ads for golfing products over your game, even use the name and image of the product as equipment in your game!

Here i’ve signed up to Commission Junction, made a php file from their example to proxy the request for products. This is needed to protect your developer key – how you get paid. And parsed those products into standard vanilla style Google Ads. Imagine using the data for these products as resources in your game. Unlock new equipment for your character in game which are real life products with images, name description and links to buy.

There are loads of Affiliate networks out there, all have different speeds of their API’s, different merchants, and different levels of support. I’ve picked Commission Junction here as they are big in the states, and they happened to have loads of golf merchants. They are however slow, and not that easy to start with. The source should help  with that. If speed is a real issue you could store a load of products in your own database and serve them from there.

So pick a merchant, sign up, join some merchants, and start using their API’s to get some products. The source code includes everything you need to get started with Commission Junction and Affiliate Window, and is easily extended to parse data from other Affiliate Networks.


I’ve worked with most of the Affiliate networks, so if you need a hand finding out which one is good for you get in touch or check out the Affiliates4u.com forums.

List of some of the Affiliates out there -

Commission Junction – http://www.commissionjunction.com

Affiliate Window – http://www.affiliatewindow.com

Affiliate Future – http://www.affiliatefuture.co.uk/

Buy.at – http://www.http://buy.at/

Cleverat – http://www.cleverat.com/

DGM Affiliates – http://www.dgmaffiliates.com/

Linkshare – http://www.linkshare.com/

NetKlix – http://www.netklix.com/us/

OMGUK – http://www.omguk.com/

Paid on Results – http://www.paidonresults.com/

Premier Affiliate Network – http://www.premieraffiliates.com/

Slivertap – http://www.silvertap.com/

Trade Doubler – http://www.tradedoubler.com/pan/cms/

Trade Tracker – http://www.tradetracker.net/gb/index/index

Webgains – http://www.webgains.com/index.html

Zanox – http://www.zanox.com/us/

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