0 minutes, 52 seconds

Have you ever had a friend send you an Amazon link that was all kinds of long and ugly? Maybe it looked like this:

http://www.amazon.com/Princess-Tiana-Balloon-Bouquet-Balloons/dp/B00BIIAUY4/ref=sr_1_1/187-3169712-6163024?s=toys-and-games&ie=UTF8&qid=1421967348&sr=1-1

Thought you can clearly see it’s for some sort of balloons by the “Princess-Tiana-Balloon-Bouquet-Balloons” part, there’s a bunch of referrer tracking junk in there after that.  It’s very ugly.  As well, maybe you have 3 or 4 balloons you’re thinking of getting and want to send them to a friend with the price and if it’s Amazon Prime or not.  Enter the tip!

You only need 3 parts to the URL for it to work:

1. Domain: http://amazon.com
2. Vanity Name: Princess-Tiana-Balloon-Bouquet-Balloons
3. Product ID: /dp/B00BIIAUY4

The three takeaways are that you A) don’t need all the junk at the end, B) the domain can drop the “www” and, most importantly, C) can put what ever you want in the vanity section. In our case, we could make that ugly ol’ URL all purty and helpful and it still works just fine:

http://amazon.com/11buck.no-prime.tianna.balloon/dp/B00BIIAUY4