Django-Skimlinks

What is Skimlinks

Skimlinks is a clever technology that helps you easily monetize online content by converting normal product links and product references into their equivalent affiliate links. As a result, you can earn a commission effortlessly every time a visitor clicks through one of the links, visits a retailer’s site and makes a purchase. Basically, we’ve made affiliate marketing easy - registering with us means you’ll never have to sign up to networks or merchant programs, or create and maintain affiliate links. We do all the hard work for you, helping you to harness the potential for affiliate marketing on your site! Still can’t get your head around it? Check out this simple [video explanation of Skimlinks](http://youtu.be/4a9aRDcCZJ0).

What's the advantage of signing up to Skimlinks?

Of course you could spend time and effort creating, tracking and maintaining your own affiliate links and signing up to thousands of merchant programs, but why would you when you can get us to automate the lot? - Create content and link to merchants as normal and we'll convert your links into affiliate links on-the-fly - Our tech can pick up product references you have included in your text and turn those into affiliate links too - With one sign-up to Skimlinks, you get instant access to 17,000+ merchants' affiliate programs - Use our comprehensive reporting suite to keep track of exactly which merchants your users like to buy from - First-class account management around the clock from our US and UK offices - Free access to our powerful publisher tools to optimize your earnings With Skimlinks, you can aggregate all your affiliate marketing in one place - one account with us, one set of reports, and one check at the end of the month. Simple!

see more on [skimlinks.com](http://http://skimlinks.com/)

NOTE

This is very experimental, I do not guarantee this will work and is only a small project I made to get a better understanding of [skimlinks.com](http://http://skimlinks.com/)

How to install Django-skimlinks

Skimlinks already provides an excellent javascript snippet to insert in your template skeleton, but sometimes you do not want to rely completely on Javascript. For this reason Django-Skinlinks uses the Link API to automatically generate affiliate links seamlessly and transparently.

1. Get a valid Skimlinks account and PRODUCT_ID

2. copy the skimlinks directory in your project

3. Add social_auth to PYTHONPATH and installed applications:

   INSTALLED_APPS = (
       ...
       'skimlinks'
   )
   

3. Add your product ID in settings.py:

   SKIMLINKS_PRODUCT_ID = "xxxxxxxxxxxx"

4. Load the skimlinks tags in the desired template/s (if you have a skeleton template, add it in there):

   {% load skimlinks %}
   

5. Use the template tag in the following ways:

   {% skim "awesome printer" http://www.amazon.co.uk/... %} will just output a hyperlink
   
   {% skim http://www.amazon.co.uk/... %} will just output the URL generated by the API
   

6. FEEDBACK! Please fork and give suggestions!

AUTHOR: [Daniel Pyrathon](https://github.com/PirosB3/Django-Skimlinks)