Affiliate links in personal site question

Hello, I've started playing around with Squarespace and I have a few questions. I'll mostly be writing as a way to clarify thoughts on topics, but once in a while there may be a product that I genuinely use and like.

1 - I'm wondering if it's allowed to put affiliate links in personal site blogs?

2 - Do the links look messy, or is there flexibility in the ways they can be displayed in a blog post?  

3 - Is this easy to do natively with Squarespace (personal / business?), or does this require  3rd party coding? Wondering what's a good option?

1. Yes You can

You can read detail here: https://support.squarespace.com/hc/en-us/articles/206545597-Can-I-place-advertisements-on-my-site-

2. How do you plan to insert the affiliate link?

3. Edit blog, and insert link =))) 

Regarding that second question, what I was planning to do is just turn certain text into an affiliate link, is that possible? I could also live with being able to put a shortened URL next to where a book or whatever is mentioned. Will look into the pages you linked now 🙂

Hi @Heytherethanks, best practice is to make affiliate links nofollow links.  In Squarespace that means using a Markdown block which is available on the Personal plan. Here's an example of what you'd put in a Markdown block for an affiliate link:

<a href="http://affiliatelinkhere.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">your link in text</a>

You can use rel="nofollow" to let search engines know that your link shouldn't count in ranking the linked page. And target="_blank" opens the link in a new window, which is best practice for linking to sites outside your own.

The code is too long for the window above, but if you click inside the code block and select all you can paste it into a text editor to see the whole thing.

Hi Christy, 

Thanks for that, very helpfull. I was just looking for that information for a new website that I want to get live shortly (haven't started yet) about how 'we' are gonna get back to work in the office environment and keeping social distancing in place. This will be a new website in the UK where people can share practical solutions for the 'six feet office' environment, so it will get a lot of external links.

I will do a little test now to see how it works!

Vincent

Thank you so much Christy! I was looking everywhere for this information!

To follow up on this question, I have a blog post that shows the 5 steps you should take when adding affiliate links to your Squarespace website:

https://christyprice.com/squarespace-tips-tricks/how-to-add-affiliate-links-in-squarespace

I've followed the advice and created a nofollow link but it's not underlined to show that's its a hyperlink. You can click on it on the front end but it just shows up as regular text so readers wouldn't know its hyperlinked and that they can click on it. Is there a way to do that. An example code is:

<a href="https://rstyle.me/+N2AsET-u3GXaFZIVtQvivA"target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> ASOS South Beach Exclusive Oversized Boater Hat</a>

The 1st sentence of the attachment is how this link shows on the frontend versus the regular links below it (not added via code and without the nofollow).

@christyprice What is I wanted to have an affiliate link on my page so that anyone who purchases my program from my affiliate will allow me to a) give them a discount code but also pay the affiliate a percentage of the sale? It is my understanding that Squarespace doesn't do this and you have to use a third party. Any thoughts on best company to use that is most affordable?

@JessDupont, 

Perfect timing! I just published this blog post five minutes ago: How to Track Affiliate Sales in Squarespace

@christyprice - just read your two blogs that you wrote about that you suggested above. I've got a potential client who may be interested in advertising on my site, however I could also potentially suggest my being an affiliate to promote their product. Do you have a recommendation between the two? Trying to decide what might be the best course of action. I'm guessing if I placed an ad for them, that maybe I'd need to use Google AdSense? My first time through this so trying to figure out the best course of action.

Hi @mhoelzer, this would really depend on both your businesses. Think about what would 1) be the most beneficial for your site visitors and 2) what would bring in revenue for you. I tend to approach these sorts of questions looking at how I can provide the most value for my site visitors and also make a living. 

If they wanted to simply place an ad on your website, another option would be to charge them directly for the space. So $X/month. Or they could pay you for a review and sharing on social media. You'd just need to be clear that it is a paid ad. You could weight that against potential affiliate income and decide what works best for you, your site visitors, and your business model.

I haven't done paid ad placements myself, but I am an affiliate for companies and products that I use in my own business and think others may find helpful.

Best of luck!

Christy

Thanks for the info, christyprice.

I wanted to know a bit more about this too so i'll check out your blogs.

On 6/5/2020 at 3:58 PM, needshelp said:

created a nofollow link but it's not underlined

You would need to add some code to Custom CSS to force an underline if it doesn't show up automatically:

If you are using a Code Block use something like:

.code-block a {
       color: #ed834a;
	padding-bottom: .05em;
    border-bottom-width: 1px;
    border-bottom-style: solid;
    border-bottom-color: rgba(237,131,74,.3);
}

You can change out the colors for the text and the underline to be whatever you want.

For a Markdown Block, you can use something like this: 

.markdown-block a {
       color: #ed834a;
padding-bottom: .05em;
    border-bottom-width: 1px;
    border-bottom-style: solid;
    border-bottom-color: rgba(237,131,74,.3);
}

Still not working? Try adding !important before the ; symbol.

@christypriceI wonder if you can help me with this. I am trying to set up an Awin store on my SS site. So far the only way I have been able to do this is with a workaround:

Ive added the images and description as a product, coded a link to work as a button which then sends the customer to the advertisers product page direct to buy the product.

But because the products are not being bought on my site, Awin can't track it. 

Is there actually a way to set up the products so that they buy them on my squarespace site? Squarespace won't talk to me about it - I guess they must have a deal with amazon as they'll do it for them?

I'd be very grateful for your help because at the moment, Im considering leaving squarespace and starting again

Hi @Beautifully-You. For affiliate marketing, you typically create links using a link builder at your affiliate and use those on your website to link out to the product. You wouldn’t host affiliate products on your own website. This is independent of website platform. Awin (or any affiliate platform) will provide you with special tracking links to add to your site so if someone clicks that and then makes a purchase on the affiliate site, you’ll be compensated. 

3 hours ago, christyprice said:

Hi @Beautifully-You. For affiliate marketing, you typically create links using a link builder at your affiliate and use those on your website to link out to the product. You wouldn’t host affiliate products on your own website. This is independent of website platform. Awin (or any affiliate platform) will provide you with special tracking links to add to your site so if someone clicks that and then makes a purchase on the affiliate site, you’ll be compensated. 

Hi Christy, I do believe I've done it. How do I know the tracking is working? Ive inserted the code injection in the footer and order confirmation page. Is there anything else I need to do?

Thanks for this thread!  @christyprice I read your articles, thanks for the affiliate platform suggestions.  Is there a way within Squarespace to create a discount code then create a link from said discount code so that a customer clicks the link then the discount is already added to their cart?  Or is the only way to do this through affiliate software?

Hi @KristinSzerszen, thanks for your kind words! I don't know of a way to accomplish that in Squarespace... the checkout process is kind of its own universe. Maybe someone else will have an idea though!

Hi @christyprice, I've spent weeks designing my website to host good content and an online store that will host products I'm affiliated with. I just need to figure out how to add these products to my online store with their corresponding links. Please send help.

Hi Sabrina. Typically you’d use a store for e-commerce where you yourself are selling things.

For affiliate sales, you’d simply link out from an image, text, or button to the affiliate product on the seller’s website.

Since you won’t be doing the product fulfillment, there’s no need for a shopping cart or checkout on your site. 

@christyprice What's the difference between rel="sponsored" and rel="nofollow"? The former you suggest using in your blog post and the latter in the thread above? Which one is most appropriate to use for marking affiliate links? Blog post is very helpful. Thank you!

Also in response to question by @SabrinaTayla90 - I understand affiliate does not require having a shopping cart or check out. However, being able to create products in Shop would make it a lot easier to upload and organize products that I want to link to. So I was hoping there might be a hack where I could upload product details to Shop, then link the Products to outside URLS (with affiliate links) - rather than sending them to PDPs. I can show you the website if it would be easier to see the context. Thanks again!

@Melbaspence great question! Google now prefers "sponsored" tags instead of "nofollow" for affiliate links. From what I understand, it's not worth going back and updating all the old links, but best practice moving forward. 

Quote

 In general, using affiliate links to monetize a website is fine. We ask sites participating in affiliate programs to qualify these links with rel="sponsored", regardless of whether these links were created manually or dynamically.