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Recent PostsCan I See an Example of Your Website?How to Add a Tracking ID to Your Amazon Product ReviewWhat a Week It’s Been! – A Quick Wrap UpThe eBook is Finished…Special 72hr Introductory OfferHow to Weave a Story into Your Product ReviewsPopular PostsHow Much Did We Make on Amazon This Month? How Many Product Reviews Do You Need to Write to Start Making Money Online ? How to Write Product Reviews That Convert How to Write a Product Review When You Don’t Own the Product 20 WordPress Plugins to Increase Blog Traffic Amazon WordPress Plugins – Our Review of WP Zon BuilderMonday, May 31st, 2010at4:57 am 

Just recently we were lucky enough to be given a copy of an Amazon WordPress plugin to review. To be honest, we had never heard of this plugin so when the owner asked us to review it, we really weren’t expecting too much. After all, we have used the ReviewAzon plugin for quite some time on a few of our blogs and are very happy with it. We didn’t think anything could match it….that is until we actually tried WP Zon Builder.

This is one feature packed plugin and at this point we think it just nudges out ReviewAzon as our top Amazon plugin….not by much mind you, but just enough that we can say that we prefer WP Zon Builder over ReviewAzon. And I actually don’t like saying that because ReviewAzon is such a great plugin and you won’t regret buying it but for us the WP Zon Builder has a few extra features that have won us over.

As anyone who has read this blog knows, we make a nice income from promoting Amazon products and we are always on the lookout for anything to make our lives easier. And although we don’t really use these types of plugins in a big way, we still like them because they allow us to add reviews that automatically include all of that extra data from Amazon like images, prices, specifications, weights, measurements and so on. This means we don’t have to manually add this data ourselves.

You can use these types of plugins in one of two ways:

1. Adding products using the content from Amazon without making changes – This involves adding Amazon products to your blog without you making any changes to the content that comes over from Amazon. You can literally spend an hour or so using this plugin to add thousands of Amazon products to your blog and take the rest of the year off as the content is drip fed  to your site. I’ll show you how this works a little later in this article.

2. Adding products using the content from Amazon BUT you make changes – What this means is that you use this plugin to bring over the content from Amazon but you make changes to that content and replace it with your own product review. This plugin allows you to do that so the content isn’t just a duplication of what is on the Amazon product page.

We use both options but we definitely prefer the second option. If you can add your own review then you will be streets ahead of the rest of others using these types of plugins.

How Does the WP Zon Amazon Plugin Work?

You can add Amazon products in one of two ways with this plugin:

1. The first method involves creating a new post

You pretty much create a new post as you would any other post on your blog and add the product details there. I actually like this method because it gives me a little more control over what is in the post. What I do with this method is simply click on Posts –> Add New and under the text box is a section that I can enter an Amazon ASIN (each product on Amazon has an ASIN number) and then I click Insert. This automatically places a piece of code in my text box which displays an image of the product, a title of the product with a link to Amazon using my affiliate link, the average rating and the total number of reviews. This is what it would look like:

Then once I add my own unique content my post will look like this:

2. The second method involves adding posts en-masse.

With this method you can add hundreds, if not thousands, of posts in less than half an hour. Not my sort of style personally but great for those wanting quick, massive amounts of content added to a site.You can even stagger those posts so that they go up randomly for any period of time you set. You can even back-date them so that they are posted with dates in the past.

You can also use this method, as we do, for finding products based on a specific criteria that you set. This is one of the features we really love about WP Zon Builder. The filtering system is excellent and allows you to narrow down the search based on category, keyword, maximum and minimum price, average rating and the number of customer reviews. You can also sort those results by Featured Items, Bestselling, Relevance, Price, Newest Items and items On Sale.

This is a view of the Find Products page in the WordPress dashboard.

From this page you select your products and add them to a Queue. Once you’ve added 1 or more items you then click on the Post Products link from the dashboard menu and select the dates you want those posts to go up on. You can let them all go up straight away or select from and to dates so that they go up randomly during that period. There’s also a check box that you can select which prevents duplicate products from being posted.

This is what the posts look like if you select this method. If you notice it has brought all of the details over from Amazon. I haven’t changed a thing. However, the beauty of this is that I can change it if I like. I just go in and edit the post and add or change what I like.

Notice also that it has also automatically brought over the consumer reviews from Amazon and added them as comments. I really like that feature. You have the option of turning that off if you like or if you decide to keep the customer reviews you can change the settings so that you can select how many comments are displayed and only show comments that have a minimum rating. You can also sort those reviews by rating, most helpful, and submission date.

There are so many features that this post could go forever so I am just going to summarize the main ones below:

You can automatically use Amazon tags as your post tags or alternatively create post tags from the Amazon product title or use neither if you like and just create your own.There is an option for creating ‘pretty’ links so that your links to Amazon look like regular links and not long affiliate type links.The plugin links with the All in One SEO Pack plugin so that it will automatically set your All-In-One SEO Pack post titles, meta keywords, and meta descriptions for any Amazon product posts. Y0u can turn this option on or off.An update button within each post so that you can update the product details that have come over from Amazon at any time. The creator of this plugin tells me that he will be adding an automatic update feature in a future release of this plugin.You can make the links to Amazon nofollow if you like.This plugin will work with any theme. We use the Flexsqueeze theme for most of our sites but this will work on anything according to the creator of this plugin.This works with any Amazon country affiliate program.It includes widgets so you can add products to your sidebars.Click Reporting which provides stats on which products are getting clicks through to Amazon.You can use more than one Amazon Associate ID and if you need to you can easily change the Associate ID for the entire site.It integrates with other plugins like phpOStock, phpBay, Auction2Post, and other plugins that display Overstock.com and eBay products. We haven’t tried this function as yet so we can’t advise on how it works.You can search for and add Youtube video reviews from within the post itself.

This is a great plugin and we highly recommend it whether you want to add mass product posts or individual unique product reviews.

For more info click here – WP Zon Builder

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We have a number of affiliate marketing websites. These are a hangover from when we first came into affiliate marketing when we felt that having more websites meant making more money. If we were starting out now we would only have a couple as it is so much more manageable. But having lots of websites means we have lots of product reviews and we realized early on that if we were going to keep track of where sales were coming from that we needed to start using Amazon tracking ids.

If you have begun to add product reviews to your own website and are using Amazon then you should really be doing the same thing. This will make it so much easier to check your sales on Amazon as you will be able to see exactly from which pages on your website the sales came from.

Choose Your Tracking IDs Carefully

Be very selective in how you want your tracking ID’s to look as you cannot delete or change them once they have been approved by Amazon. Bummer I know.

We found this out the hard way, we had started using a set of ID’s and then found it didn’t really help us when we came to determining which products were performing the best and we had to start over, but the original ID’s could not be deleted or changed, and keep in mind that you can only have 100 tracking ID’s per account. This may sound a lot but once you get started you will find it doesn’t take long to start using up your quota.  Having said that, we haven’t used ours up yet but that is because we track a mix of websites and products.  So we only bother about tracking products that meet our product review criteria.

We use one tracking ID per product review page so it will be used for both the images and the text links on that page. However, if you want to go even deeper and see which individual links are performing the best, you can use a tracking id for each individual link. So you might have a tracking id for the image link, a different tracking id for the first link in your product review, a different tracking id for the second link and so on. But as we said previously, you only ever get 100 tracking ids per Amazon account so doing it this way will mean that you have the potential for running out of tracking ids fairly quickly.

So how do you Create a Tracking ID in Amazon?

1. Sign into your Amazon Associates account.

2. Click on Account Settings in the top right hand corner of your screen.

3. In the Account Information Section find the bullet point “Manage your tracking IDs” and click on it.

4. Click the Add Tracking ID button and you will be presented with a page where you can add a tracking ID (see image below). Add the tracking ID that you have decided to use for a particular product or website in the blank box. We usually type in a word that relates to the product we are promoting. So for instance, say that we have written a product review for the iPod Touch. If we wanted to create a tracking ID for that page we might enter the words “ipod-touch” into that tracking ID field. So the tracking ID would look like this – ipod-touch-20 (Note that Amazon IDs end in ’20′ in North America).

5. Click the search button and Amazon will do a search to make sure the Tracking ID is unique. Amazon will let you know straight away whether the ID is available and if it is you can start using it on your product review page.

How to Add the Tracking ID to the Product Review

1. Open your product review post in WordPress. Also open your Amazon Product page in a new tab or window, whichever suits the way you work with multiple internet windows.

2. On the top line of the product page in Amazon you will find the words “Link to this page”. Click on that link. This will open the ‘Customize and Get HTML’ pop-up.

3.You will see two drop-down boxes – one says “Signed in as” and the other says “Tracking ID” Click the down arrow and select the Tracking ID for the product review you just created (see image below). Amazon will automatically change the code in the HTML code box so that it now includes your tracking ID.

4. Now, you can simply grab the code and add it to either your image or text links as you would normally do and the tracking id will be included. (For instructions on adding Amazon links to images click here.)

So there you have it a quick and easy way to keep track of where your clicks and conversions are coming from as your Tracking ID will show in your Amazon Tracking ID Summary report.

You will be able to see at a glance, how many clicks, items ordered, items shipped, shipped item revenue and commissions or Advertising Fees each product is producing.

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Permanent Link to “>Posted by Jackie on Aug 3, 2010 in Modules | 5 comments

I had a question today about adding products to amazon modules. It’s really simple. You need to find the product(s) you want to include at Amazon and find the ASIN number which you will add to your module. The ASIN is the number Amazon uses to identify each product in their store.  Here’s a walk through of two of my favorite Amazon modules.

Amazon Spotlight

This amazon module allows you to feature ONE product. It makes for a pretty good call to action. Once you’ve added the module to your lens you have to get to the edit area.

You can see the space available for the ASIN number. This is a number provided by Amazon. Find your product page and scroll down until you find the product details area. You’ll see the ASIN or ISBN (if it’s a book) number there. Copy the ASIN number.

Then all you have to do is paste it in the module where it asks for the product you want to feature (as shown in the above image)

Basic Amazon Module

This module allows you to choose a few products to show in your lens. You have two options here. You can allow Amazon to pick the products or you can choose the products.

If you let Amazon pick you can choose what category of products you want it to choose from as well as a keyword to match the kind of products you want to show up.

If you decide to choose your products to show up in this module you’ll need to go find the ASIN numbers just as you did for the spotlight module.

Make sure you add one ASIN per line.

There you have it. That’s all there is to adding products to your amazon modules. If you have any further questions please ask in the comments and I’ll do my best.

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Permanent Link to “>Posted by Jackie on Aug 10, 2010 in Choosing products | 6 comments

I’ve been getting this question quite a bit since Amazon decided to not allow affiliates from certain states due to stuff I don’t anything about. What I do know is if you don’t have Amazon as an option… all is NOT lost!

There are many other affiliate networks available for you to use. Some of them house some of the biggest names in “real life” shopping, like Target, Walmart as well as many very very niche stores that are perfect for finding specific products to promote.

Two of my favorites, and the ones I find easiest to navigate and use are

Linkshare

ShareaSale

I like these because they don’t seem quite as complicated to get around and find what you’re looking for as say CommissionJunction ~ which is another affiliate network you can use… and I still find it confusing to get around and find what I’m looking for.

You will have to apply to both of these programs. You’ll need a website ~ so if you don’t have a blogger blog yet, now’s a good time to get one.

They will ask you some questions, just answer them honestly. I think one of the questions will be about how you’re going to drive traffic… just write in SEO or search engine traffic ~ something like that, because that’s how we get our traffic.

You do not need to tell them you’re going to use your code on your lenses ~ the application pertains to the site you’re using on your application.

Once you’ve been accepted to the network you’ll have to apply individually to each merchant (store) to be an affiliate for them.

This is where having a general “gift” or “deals” blog comes in handy. If your blogger blog, the one you used on your application, is about teeth whitening, and you find a great keyword on a high chair and decide you want to apply to Baby Universe over at LinkShare you may not be accepted because your site about teeth whitening is not really relevant/related to baby stuff.

That’s why I love to do holiday gift sites, or get the best deal sites, because no matter what niche physical products of any type can be given as a gift or you can get a great deal on them. A general site like this gives you better reach for a wider variety of merchants, and products to be able to promote.

Some merchants in these networks will be automatic approval… some won’t. It may take some time to get approved by some of the merchants. Some are more lenient than others and will approve just about everyone. Other merchants will check your site stats and if you don’t have the traffic level they’re looking for in their affiliates they won’t approve you.

Don’t get discouraged if you don’t get approved by a merchant. It’s no big deal. There are probably 5 or 6 other merchants that can give you the same or similar product, so just find another merchant and apply with them.

Once you’ve been approved by a merchant there is a possibility that depending on your sales level they will dismiss you as an affiliate. It doesn’t happen very often, but it does happen so I just want you to be aware.  If you are dismissed by a merchant it is not the end of the world, just find another merchant that carries similar/the same products.

There are many options when it comes to where you can find products to promote. While I teach Amazon mostly ~ because it’s the easiest, and they have EVERYTHING, they are not the only show in town. So if for some reason Amazon is no longer allowing you to be an affiliate don’t worry. You have options.

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