Geniuslink Review – How Their Tools Help My Sites Earn More

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Originally Posted On: https://digitalassetguy.com/geniuslink-review/

One of the great things about building affiliate websites nowadays is that there is no shortage of tools and services out there to help your site earn as much income as possible.

With all of the different softwares out there, it can be hard to tell which ones add real value and which ones aren’t worth the time.

Geniuslink is most definitely a tool that falls into the “definite value add” category, and it’s one that I utilize on almost every single website in my portfolio.  Their core offering is a link localizer that detects a user’s country, language and device then routes them to the appropriate destination for them.

I know plenty of people who use Geniuslink for that exact functionality, without more, and still get incredible value out of the service.

For me, the link localizer is a definite must, but I think some of their more advanced features have definitely had a positive impact on my affiliate sites.

In this post, I’ll discuss my personal Geniuslink review and detail my experience with the software, along with some ways that I leverage their tools to help my sites earn more.

Try Geniuslink for 14 days FREE right here

Geniuslink is a link localization software that is most often utilized by affiliates who link to products via Amazon Associates, iTunes, and Microsoft affiliate programs.  They have gradually increased their affiliate program connectivity over time and you can now integrate their service with the following programs:

• Amazon Associates
• Best Buy
• Chewy
• HP
• Lowe’s
• Microsoft
• Newegg
• Target
• Walmart
• Wayfair
• More

If you have any sort of an international audience, Geniuslink is for you.  Personally I use Geniuslink on niche affiliate websites, but their service is also great for bloggers, social media influencers, Youtubers, and any other businesses serving an online audience.

The bread and butter of Geniuslink is link localization.  For Amazon Associates, iTunes, and Microsoft affiliate links, Geniuslink will automatically detect the user’s country, language, and device, then send them to the appropriate page with accuracy.

So for example, I could create a blog post that reviews Cuisinart toasters and place a normal Amazon Associates US affiliate link on the page.

Without Geniuslink, any user not based in the USA (let’s say in the UK) would click the link, be directed to Amazon.com, and almost certainly not order anything because it’s the wrong Amazon storefront for them.  Even if the user browsed to Amazon.co.uk and made a purchase, I wouldn’t earn a commission for the purchase.

With Geniuslink it’s a different story.  The UK user would click the Amazon US link, be routed through Geniuslink’s cloud infrastructure, and sent to the corresponding Cuisinart toaster listing on Amazon.co.uk with my Amazon Associates UK tag intact, meaning I would earn a commission from any subsequent purchase.

Some of you astute affiliate site builders might be thinking to yourself that Amazon Associates has a program called OneLink that sounds almost exactly like that – and you would be correct.

On paper, it sounds like Geniuslink and Amazon OneLink are essentially the same thing, but in reality they are not.  They highlight all of the differences on their website, but the highlights to me are:

• Geniuslink supports 18 countries in the Amazon Associates program whereas OneLink only supports 7
• You can use multiple international tracking ID’s with Geniuslink, and you cannot with OneLink  This one in and of itself is a deal sealer for me.  Anybody who owns more than one site has absolutely no way to tell which sites are earning how much in commissions with one link because they don’t support multiple international tracking ID’s
• Geniuslink has a WordPress plugin integration and Non-Javascript options, whereas OneLink has neither
• Geniuslink provides out of stock alerts (even on your home country’s links), OneLink does not
• Geniuslink does a better job localizing.  There are lots of situations where an international Amazon store might not carry the exact same product you linked to on Amazon in your home country.  When that happens, both Geniuslink and OneLink try to send the user to the most relevant product possible – and Geniuslink does a substantially better job of it.

Back when Amazon Associates cut their commission rates in April 2020, I was looking for new ways to monetize my sites and make up for the income that had just been taken away by Amazon.

A lot of the products I promote on one of my sites are high ticket items ($500+ sales price) sold by fairly well known brands with affiliate programs.  I had never needed to send traffic directly to the brands because I was earning 8% commissions on Amazon.

But when the fees got cut to 3%, I was much more willing to try referring traffic directly to the brand.

Initially I went through my site, and simply swapped Amazon affiliate links for brand links.  I figured I would probably make fewer sales but getting a 6-10% commission on a few big sales would make up for the lost revenue from Amazon’s rate cuts.

I was wrong.  I think I totally underestimated just how high conversion rates were, and while I definitely earned some commissions with brand affiliate links, it didn’t by any stretch replace the earnings my site was getting before.

That’s when I gave Geniuslink Choice Pages a try.

Choice Pages are landing pages you can create in your Geniuslink dashboard which allow users to choose which store they want to shop on.  They look like this:

Instead of linking to Amazon and/or a brand on your site, you can insert the link of a choice page and the user will be directed to a page that looks like this one where they choose which store to shop in.

It might seem a little bit counter-intuitive to make your user click an extra time before your affiliate tag gets you credit for anything they might purchase, but I was willing to give Choice Pages a try, and I’ve come to find out that they can be a powerful revenue booster when paired with the right products and affiliate programs.

I think the first reason for that I think is that Choice Pages add value for the shopper by making it easy for them to compare prices.  Nowadays most shoppers like to do comparison shopping, especially for larger purchases, so presenting them with a choice can actually lead to higher conversion rates.

Second, I think a user choosing a store and clicking through to an affiliate is a micro-conversion that can provide valuable insight about the audience I am serving.  For example, I can tell in my Geniuslink dashboard that about 70% of my users click to Amazon and the other 30% click to brands – which was an indicator to me that I probably needed to keep Amazon Associates as part of my site’s strategy vs totally abandoning it.

Last but not least, Choice Pages allow for me to add links to images on my site where I otherwise would not be able to.  Amazon Associates terms of use forbid adding affiliate links to images unless the images are pulled from their API.  Geniuslink Choice Pages are a work around to this (at the time of this writing) because they send the user to a landing page first where they can clearly see that they will be sent to Amazon from there.

When I started implementing Choice Pages on all of my niche site’s pages promoting high ticket items, something beautiful happened.  My earnings per click on BOTH Amazon Associates and my brand affiliate links rose, and revenue between both monetization channels were more or less the same as the time period before Choice Pages when I was ONLY sending traffic to either the brands or Amazon.

I know that probably sounds a little wordy and confusing, so here’s a chart of my site’s users, clicks, and earnings to hopefully help paint the picture:

The second half of April was when I changed all of my Amazon links to brand affiliate links, where applicable (the earnings per hundred clicks (EPM) is high in April for Amazon in because I was still on the old commission rate for most of the month).

You can see that in April and all of May, my EPM with brands wasn’t great at all.

I implemented Choice Pages on all of my pages promoting high ticket offers on the first week of June, and you can see what happened from there.

My earnings per click with brands skyrocketed, and my Amazon Associates earnings per click went up pretty drastically too.  It’s hard to tell exactly how much of these bumps can be directly attributed to choice pages, but the numbers rose way too much for Choice Pages to have not been a part of the impact.

• This is admittedly a small sample size.  Maybe on another project I will do a more robust A/B test of pages with Choice Page links vs pages without them and how it impacts site earnings.
•  Note that I primarily implemented Choice Pages on my pages that promote expensive products, which is why I still had decent click volume in May after the Choice Pages were implemented.

The link localization software on its own justifies the price for my use (but more on that in a moment).  And Choice Pages are probably going to be a part of my repertoire for the foreseeable future.

But Geniuslink has quite a few extra tools and functionalities though that I feel like fly under the radar, and I’d like to highlight a couple of especially useful ones right here.

Amazon, Microsoft, and iTunes all have built in integrations with the platform, but you aren’t limited to just those programs.  You can create custom geo-targeted links for any affiliate.

That means if you have a brand affiliate with different programs in the USA, Canada, and the UK, you can easily create custom links that will send users from those countries to their respective stores

Another incredible feature of Geniuslink is that you can assign tracking pixels to any links that you create.  That means if you want to retarget users that click your links with a Facebook campaign or via another advertising platform, you can easily do that with Geniuslink.

The standard Geniuslink comes in a format that looks like this:

https://geni.us/xxxx

Custom domains are an add on ($50/month), but they allow for you to create affiliate links that look like this:

https://digitalassetguy.com/insertaffiliate

This allows for you to really brand your affiliate links – I don’t think this feature necessarily makes sense in all situations (I don’t use them for my niche sites) but there are definitely some businesses that would see increased engagement using a custom domain.

The pricing model for this tool is really simple – a base plan costs $5 per month and includes 2,000 clicks.

From there, they charge $2 per every 1,000 additional clicks.  Between the extra earnings my sites get from international Amazon Associates programs along with Choice Pages, I’ve found the $2 per 1,000 click price point to be very worth it, to say the least.

If you regularly get over 100,000 clicks or have a large operation, it might be worth looking into a business plan that comes with a custom domain and better pricing on clicks.Try Geniuslink’s 14 Day FREE Trial

Site speed has been a confirmed ranking factor in Google’s search algorithm for a few years now.  Slow websites mean poor performance, worse rankings, and less visibility.

So with that in mind it’s a concern worth addressing any time you are considering adding some sort of functionality to your website.

The good news here is that Geniuslink has almost zero impact on your page load times because they only load a minified Javascript file on your site.

The link routing process is also extremely fast, so you are unlikely to lose clicks in between the point in time where they click one of your affiliate links and land on the destination page.

The short answer, yes.  They have built their business around providing service to Amazon Associates affiliates for years across thousands of sites.

Some people do get in trouble from time to time using their service but it’s really through no fault of Geniuslink.

Amazon REQUIRES that you tell them each and every website that you refer traffic to them from.  As far as Amazon is concerned, geni.us is a different website than whatever your niche site is (to be fair, it definitely is a different website).

You can do this in your Amazon Associates account by going to Account Settings –> Edit Your Website Information —> Add geni.us to your website list.

This is one of those things that is so silly but could absolutely get your account into trouble.  Be sure to do this as soon as you install Geniuslink on your site.

If you have a WordPress site, the process is super quick.  On some sites I have flipped in the past, I’ve installed Geniuslink completely within 5 minutes of taking full ownership of the site.

You have to connect your Geniuslink account to your Amazon Associates account, which can easily be done by adding your Amazon API keys to your Geniuslink dashboard.

All you have to do from there is install the WordPress plugin on your site and connect your site to your Geniuslink account through the plugin via API keys that can be found in your dashboard.

And just like that, you are off to the races.

Geniuslink offers a 14 day free trial to get you started out.  If that sounds good, click the link below to get started today.

I hope my Geniuslink review and experiences helped to highlight whether or not it’s the right tool to help take your site to new revenue highs.

It has become a staple for me and my niche site portfolio thanks to the inexpensive pricing, ease of use, and advanced features that come standard with a core subscription.