Amazon is the parts programme we already have an account for, so wire that one

[ralyodio]

Anthony has no eBay Partner Network, CJ or Rakuten account, and opening one needs a W-9. He does have Amazon Associates. So Amazon is the programme that can actually pay, and it sells more of what a VIN lookup sends people looking for — filters, sensors, brakes, trim — than the retail chains do.

Why it isn't just another AFFILIATE_LINKS template

CJ, Rakuten and eBay hand you a URL of theirs with the destination encoded inside it. Amazon wants its own URL with tag on it. Same goal, different shape, so the vendor row carries its own tagger rather than being bent into the template mechanism:

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=2021+JEEP+Grand+Cherokee&i=automotive&tag=<tag>&ascsubtag=nichedb-vin

A network template still wins if one is ever configured for the same vendor, so this doesn't paint us into a corner.

This is the shape sh1pt's affiliate-amazon-associates adapter already builds, ascsubtag included. That subtag is a reporting dimension rather than a second account, which matters here: the tag is shared with another property, and the subtag keeps this traffic separable in the Associates dashboard anyway. It's sanitised on the way in, because Amazon silently drops a subtag with punctuation in it.

i=automotive keeps a search for "2014 Honda Civic alternator" inside the Automotive store instead of returning a book about one.

No tag in code

AMAZON_ASSOCIATE_TAG is the env-var name the rest of the fleet already uses (nicheforge-wordpress/.env.example). There is deliberately no default in the source: no tag configured means no tag appended and nothing described as sponsored, because it wouldn't be. The deployment carries the value.

Disclosure

Amazon's Operating Agreement requires one sentence, in its words, wherever an Associates link appears. The disclosure now says it — and only when an Amazon link on that page is actually tagged:

Some of these links pay us a commission if you buy through them. It costs you nothing and it does not change which vendors are listed or their order. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Also

?part= on the page, which the JSON endpoint already honoured and the page was dropping on the floor — the same way it used to drop the odometer reading.

Verified

• 122 tests pass (4 new: tagged-in-place, subtag sanitising, no-tag-no-claim, and Amazon present in the vendor list), biome clean
• Rendered in Chrome with AMAZON_ASSOCIATE_TAG=parklookup-20:
  • Amazon → www.amazon.com with tag=parklookup-20, ascsubtag=nichedb-vin, rel="sponsored nofollow noopener"
  • the other six → their own hosts, no tag, rel="nofollow noopener"
  • the Amazon sentence present in the disclosure
• With no tag set, the Amazon link is plain and sponsored: false

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

https://claude.ai/code/session_012BzJdwiBGU9hmMGE5fBxjA