Category Archives: technology

Downloading Product Images from Amazon

Posted on by

If you have happen to have a list of ASINs and you want the product images from Amazon, it’s a lot easier than I expected to grab them. Their consistent naming structure makes it easy to put together a list of URLs to their Amazon’s product images of different sizes.

All images are available at http://images.amazon.com/images/P/

Then, you tack on your ASIN, in this case, we’ll use B0018QUCL2 (the excellent Rome 1960: The Olympics That Changed the World), a “.01″ to designate the US country code, and one of these final suffixes:

  • Large size: _SL500_.jpg
  • Medium size: ._SL160_.jpg
  • Small size: ._SL110_.jpg
  • Thumbnail size: ._SL110_.jpg
  • Tiny: ._SL75_.jpg
  • Very small (swatch) size: _SL30_.jpg

The final URL looks like this:
http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B0018QUCL2.01_SL500_.jpg

Once you get your list together, throw it into wget, and in minutes you’ll have the images you need for every single ASIN. For bonus fun, to add a “30% off” (or any percentage) badge to an image, append “_PE30″ to the URL, right after the “.01.” http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B0018QUCL2.01._PE99_SL500_.jpg

My upcoming article in Website Magazine

Posted on by

Website MagazineI recently wrote an article for Website Magazine that will be published in the August issue.  The article covers deal negotiation with Internet ad networks and affiliate programs, maximizing your site’s earning potential, and how to conduct the legwork to put you in good positioning for a higher revenue share from your ad provider.

The article will be out in a few weeks, so head over to their site now for a free subscription.

Website Magazine is published quarterly in both print and digital editions, and focuses exclusively on the business of running a website.  It is read by over 135,000 industry professionals and has the largest audience of website owners and managers in the field.

Spam hits Twitter

Posted on by

I doubt I’m the first to see this, but I certainly won’t be the last – a spammer just started following me on the popular micro-blogging service, Twitter.  With a name of diecastmodelcar, I immediately thought this was the case,  and clicking on the account’s link confirmed my suspicion:

A Twitter spammer.  The language used certainly conforms to the unwritten guidelines that all email spammers tend to adhere to:  Very poor grammar, repetition, excessive nonsense, and lots of links to buy stuff.

My remedy is to block this cat, but I hope this doesn’t become a common occurrence.  To my friends working at Twitter, you better get ahead of this issue before it blows up and destroys your service.