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Harold Mansfield
01-17-2009, 06:36 PM
If you are an Amazon Associate, you know about the aStore, a little store front that you can create with products of your choice.

The mission is to get an astore to seamlessly integrate into my Word Press blog so it looks like it is supposed to be there.

First you need to create the astore from your Amazon Associates Dashboard.

If you are not good with CSS, you can simply chose a template from the custom ones provided by other associates from your dashboard. You are looking for a template that will use the whole page, not just one side like most astores.

Open your blog themes CSS files or use a color tool like the Colorzilla plug in for Firefox, to match your astore colors with the colors of your blog.

Do not use a store header.

Once you have all your products set up and finish constructing your astore, you will want the code that your newly constructed astore provides.

You will have three code options, pick this one : Embed my store using an inline frame.

It should look something like this:


<iframe src="http://astore.amazon.com/digitalhomeentertainment-20" width="90&#37;" height="4000" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe>


aStores don't integrate seamlessly because most blogs have sidebars. So you need to get rid of them.

You will need to make a page template file( .php) and install it into your themes files:

So make a file, using Notepad, or your favorite text editor and name it something like "shop".php.

In that file put this code:


<?php
/*
Template Name: Put the name here
*/
?>
<?php get_header(); ?><div id="content"><div id="menu"><div id="wrap"><?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?> <h1><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h1><br /><br /> <?php the_content(__('Read more'));?> <!-- <?php trackback_rdf(); ?> --> <?php endwhile; else: ?> <p><?php _e('Sorry, no posts matched your criteria.'); ?></p><?php endif; ?> </div></div><?php get_footer(); ?>

Of course change "Put the name here " to the name of your file.

Take your astore inline frame code and place it after this :

<?php
/*
Template Name: Put the name here
*/
?>
<?php get_header(); ?><div id="content">
*Put your astore code here*

Save the file and install it into the root of your Theme Files (Not your word press files)

Now. You can go and create a new page on your Wordpress blog. While creating your page, there is a page template option. Your newly made template file "shop".php should appear in the drop down menu. Select it, and save.

If all goes well your new store page should look like this (http://www.124bpms.com/store/), This (http://www.midnightfunkassociation.com/cd-store/), or This (http://www.themansfieldherald.com/book-store/).

Remember that you will not get any SEO love from this page so remember to optimize it (All in One SEO plug in would be of great use here).

You can also play around with the settings for the dimensions to make the page longer or shorter, just remember to leave enough room for the product descriptions when people click on stuff.

You can also place the code below <?php the_title(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h1>, if you want to ad a few words above the astore, instead of below.

This is one of the easiest ways to use Amazon on a blog, rather than product widgets and text links, and one that I struggled with for months until someone else finally helped me with it.

Hope it helps someone.

vangogh
01-17-2009, 08:29 PM
Thanks for the tutorial. Makes sense to use a new page template for your Amazon store.

Out of curiosity do you do well as an Amazon affiliate? I know the payout isn't very high so it's always seemed to me to be about generating traffic to the site or having the right type of product.

Harold Mansfield
01-17-2009, 11:35 PM
I do better with ebay. Having the Amazon stores for me is almost like having an accessory. I don't really do a lot to promote them, but I do like having it when I need it.
I actually have 4 AOM stores waiting for me to do some marketing.

But I like having the astores embedded. They make a few sales here and there, nothing spectacular right now.

Yes with Amazon, you need high traffic, with ebay you only need targeted traffic.

vangogh
01-18-2009, 01:51 AM
Amazon does sell some high end products. Cameras, software. If you built a store around one of those products you could reduce your need for traffic.

I can see where eBay would end up doing better, though in both cases the business model seems pretty simple.

Another question. How do you pick what's in the Amazon store? Is it automatic based on your content or do you have to manually choose the products to include. I'm an Amazon affiliate though I don't do much with it. Occasionally I recommend a book on my blog and when I do I usually add an affiliate link. I do like Amazon though, and I would like to explore affiliate marketing through their site.

orion_joel
01-18-2009, 04:55 AM
I did do something like this for one of my blogs once, but it was more a half hearted effort and i never really think i actually took it seriously.

Also once or twice i have commented about a book in a post and linked it with my amazon affiliate code on my blogs, but has not really had a lot of impact.

vangogh
01-18-2009, 11:17 AM
My thought was to dedicate a page or section of my site to books I've read along with the links back to Amazon. I do read a lot and can easily recommend some good books on different topics within the theme of my site. Books on css, php, javascript, etc. Might be a way to created a nice resource of books and if I can make a few dollars in the process, why not.

Harold Mansfield
01-18-2009, 12:30 PM
Amazon does sell some high end products. Cameras, software. If you built a store around one of those products you could reduce your need for traffic.

I can see where eBay would end up doing better, though in both cases the business model seems pretty simple.

Another question. How do you pick what's in the Amazon store? Is it automatic based on your content or do you have to manually choose the products to include. I'm an Amazon affiliate though I don't do much with it. Occasionally I recommend a book on my blog and when I do I usually add an affiliate link. I do like Amazon though, and I would like to explore affiliate marketing through their site.


My thought was to dedicate a page or section of my site to books I've read along with the links back to Amazon. I do read a lot and can easily recommend some good books on different topics within the theme of my site. Books on css, php, javascript, etc. Might be a way to created a nice resource of books and if I can make a few dollars in the process, why not.

Amazon actually has some of the best tools in the business. When you make an astore, or a full fledged AOM store, you pick your category, subcategory and key word, and you can make as many pages or categories as you want.

There is also a tool that will display items in your side bar that are offered in your astore.

Beside astores, or AOM stores they do offer tons of tools to promote the products of your choice.
I never made one sale from a product widget, but, the funk music astore does make some sales...I think mainly because it's a demographic of people that still have CD players, and CD's are getting hard to find, if you don't know where to look.

I really like the Amazon affiliate set up, they just pay crap until you get to certain level.
Niche is still the way to go. the only other store that I have that is consistent is one that sells Detroit Sports Team Apparel (and the store itself is not much to look at) , but it's a niche and most of the traffic to it comes from the MFA blog about a popular Detroit Radio DJ.

None of my Amazon stores would pay a mortgage (mainly because of me) , but, one alone pays its way and makes enough to support hosting fees for all other sites.

I realized that for others reading this they may not know anything about Amazon Associates, and I am certainly not making a sales pitch or saying that anyone will make a million, but here is the link to check them out:

https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/join/landing/main.html (https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/join/landing/main.html)

They run their own program. Payouts are once a month, with a $100 minimum payment.

vangogh
01-18-2009, 01:26 PM
Thanks again for the info. I am an affiliate and agree they have some nice tools that make setting up things very easy. I think it's the low &#37; of the sale that discourages some from promoting them more, but on the other hand Amazon clearly does a good job selling their products and I would expect a higher conversion rate that other affiliates.

For me the low % combined with the low cost of the products I've recommended turns it into a numbers game and I just don't have the traffic to make much with them at the moment. Still I think there's potential there and I want to further explore working with Amazon. I also like their site and business a lot so I feel very comfortable sending my visitors to their site.

Harold Mansfield
01-18-2009, 02:56 PM
I integrate an astore on just about every one of my blogs just of GP. It adds a little to the content, give me another page to offer to round out the user experience, it doesn't take up any room, and it doesn't cost anything.

I am also starting to offer bloggers (since I am looking for others to write) the astore itself. Since my interest is driving traffic to different programs, offering a contributing blogger something a little more than adsense is a great incentive. So there are certainly other ways that you can use it.

orion_joel
01-18-2009, 07:26 PM
Hmm maybe a question on this.

Do you know if google offer something that will display a content relevant book? For example google offers adsense ads that fit the content. Can you do something similar with adsense? You could then do something like have at the bottom of your blog posts a related book link.

KristineS
01-19-2009, 04:24 PM
Thanks for the tips. I'm looking at doing some work with the Amazon affiliate program and this will definitely be of help.

Joel, what you're suggesting would be really cool. I'm not sure if Amazon currently does that or not, but it would be interesting if they did.

orion_joel
01-19-2009, 06:40 PM
Maybe i will have to have a look at what they can do, what plugins, widgets, or third party scripts there are and what might work together. Really because targeted references to products is probably the best way to get clicks, i would imagine.

billbenson
01-19-2009, 11:05 PM
Allow me to ask a stupid question:

Is an astore hosted on amazon or your blog? By that I mean is it an iframe or something similar or are you easily able to place all camera products on your site in actual html?

Harold Mansfield
01-20-2009, 02:10 PM
Allow me to ask a stupid question:

Is an astore hosted on amazon or your blog? By that I mean is it an iframe or something similar or are you easily able to place all camera products on your site in actual html?

The astore is in an iframe, and is hosted from Amazon, so products are updated just as they are on Amazon's site. Also any changes that you make to the astore from your Amazon Associates dashboard, are seen on your astore installation (almost immediately).

You create product pages by category and subcategories. To control which products show up, you can input a keyword, when creating the page, so for instance if you are displaying "Digital Point and Shoot Cameras", you can put into your keyword "Nikon" to grab Nikon only products. It is about 95&#37; accurate.

The only thing I do not like about the astore is it seems to be set to display 9 products per page. I have been tinkering around with trying to increase that. But I haven't found a way to do it yet.

Harold Mansfield
01-20-2009, 02:15 PM
Hmm maybe a question on this.

Do you know if google offer something that will display a content relevant book? For example google offers adsense ads that fit the content. Can you do something similar with adsense? You could then do something like have at the bottom of your blog posts a related book link.

Joel, if you mean for Amazon, there is an Amazon contextual link plug in that will ad your affiliate links to your content. Or you can manually insert them on your own.
Many people also just place a product widget at the bottom of the post.