Amazon Referral Links and You: a guide

A brief guide on all you need to know about Amazon referral links

1) Amazon referral links DO exist, they are part of the affiliates program, located here.

2) The affiliate program is where blogs or other websites can advertise Amazon products on their websites and earn a percentage of the money spent. This is done primarily on widgets as you would normally expect to see on a retail website. All these widgets do is display a picture of the product and link you to the product with a specialized link when you click on them. This is the INTENDED use of this program, and is how legitimate websites and organizations earn revenue.

3) However, a clever person can just take the link from the widget and paste it into forums willy nilly, and earn the cash that way as well, without the need for a widget, or anyone needing to visit their website. All that matters is that people access the product from the specialized link to earn the account holder the cash.

4) An affiliate account does NOT require a professional website or blog. You can literally create a free empty blog, and use that to apply to the program, and be accepted. In fact, I did just that. Yes, that blog has an affiliate account attached to it. I never use the account, and would never throw my link around here, I just wanted to emphasize how easy it is to get an affiliate account.

5) Referral links are NOT (necessarily) links that contain ref= in the link. That, (I believe) stands for "reference" and usually indicates how you arrived at the page, through a sidebar ad, banner ad, or whatever. It does NOT GENERATE REVENUE, it is merely information.

6) Referral links DO contain the phrase tag=(referralaccounthere)-20, obviously with (referralaccounthere) replaced with the name, or shortened name of the referral account. For instance, one that shows up around here fairly often is the Cheap Ass Gamer referral link, which displays as so: ?tag=cheapassgam08-20
Any time you buy a product using a link that has that tag in it, you are giving money to whoever owns the cheap ass gamer account.

7) MOST of the time, you can simply delete the referral tag (the tag= portion) out of the link, and everything works normally. If you see a referral link in a forum thread that disallows referral links (like this one), I recommend you do this at the very least. If you are browsing a blog or website and see a link or click on one to realize it's a referral link, you can go ahead and purchase the product using that referral link. It does not cost you any more money, and it is a way that website owners and organizations earn money. If you wish to support the site/organization, use their link. If you don't... don't.

8) ALL referral links are prohibited on SteamGifts. I asked in a support ticket once about the Child's Play referral link for Amazon, and was told that even though it is for charity, they did not wish any blurring on this issue which is currently black and white: no referral links, period.

I post this here not to call anyone out, but to inform the public. I've noticed a lot of misinformation regarding Amazon referral links (likely because they don't look like normal referral links), and every time I see an Amazon sales/deals/offer thread go up, there's inevitably a referral link in there somewhere. I figure this way saves me some time, and everyone some headache. If anyone has any questions, feel free to ask. I'm not an expert on the subject by any means, but I've done a bit of research. Oh, and a word of warning to anyone thinking they can scam the system... The affiliate account registration requires a full Social Security Number to be set up, and the financial information associated with it gets reported to the IRS (at least, this was true when I set up my affiliate account as a US citizen. May be different for those outside the states). I'd think twice before trying to screw with the IRS. And remember: don't post any referral links on SteamGifts. It's against the rules.