I wrote previously about Wordpress set up and forget Affiliate Sores and followed up on an excellent plugin .. the AWin WP Plugin.

I thought that I would demonstrate its use on one of my new domains … Go Go Toys which incidentaly features one ogf what I think may be the 2009 top selling toys, the Go Go Hamster range.

The Pages relating to the Hamsters are created by manually adding the aWin short codes and the product data is fetched dynamically via the Affiliate Window Shop Window Interface.

The other pages (category pages) e.g. relating to the Go Go Crazy Bones are created using a different plugin … the Amazon Autoposter which allows you to schedule posts from selected Amazon products by defining keywords and WordPress categories that these should be filed under.

This means that you can set up as many new entries in advance as you like. The free version is limited to reviewing and adding 16 products at a time; however there is a paid for version which removes this limit.

I have also added the WP-Spamfree plug in to the site. I have found this to be extremely effective at stopping spam in its tracke, not even allowing it to enter the database … which means that I don’t need to spend time reviewing it either.

If I choose, I can also add the aWin tags to the Amazon Autoposter entries to pull in additional product choice.

So .. is the site set up and forget? To my mind, I think that it pretty much is.

For the aWin products, the aWin plugin will email me if my query returns an empty set; the developer is already working on producing an equivalent for other major UK Networks (Webgains (DB solution – no API), Affiliate Future (API), Paid on Results (DB Solution – no API), Linkshare (Already Available via API) & Zanox (API) are in his plans) with possible integration.

For the Amazon products, Amazon doesn’t tend to de-list pages, but instead will offer recommended alternatives and I therefore don’t worry if those pages should go a little bit stale.

And as for Spam, the WP-Spamfree plug in keeps my site free from unwelcome comments … and I will still be invited to moderate any that pass through.

All I need now is for the hamsters to be the success that I think they will be.

What plug-ins do you use on your WP site to automate your sites? Can you do better?

Now announced at Pan Fashion, the developer’s showcase for his plugins for Affiliate Window, Webgains, Linkshare, Zanox and Paid on Results plugins.

I am delighted to recommend the Affiliate Window plugin. It costs £23 for unlimited domains and for lifetime upgrades …. and I can testify to the support offered. If you prefer, you can have it for free, but on a revenue share basis (80 you:20 developer) … though the free version will take a bit of time to catch up on upgrades applied to the paid version first.

If you read my earlier post, you will see that I made a couple of suggestions for improvement very late on Friday evening :

1. Treat empty sets of results more sympathetically, rather than issuing an error message, and
2. Email Admin to advise when a post or page has an empty resultset, allowing you to ignore the queries, only updating when needed.

What can I say? Half a working day later and both requests have been coded and delivered. Now this truly is a SET UP and FORGET solution … YOU can forget about your products, because the plugin doesn’t. It is a constant watchdog and the first time that someone opens a post or page that returns an empty result, it will send you an email telling you which post or page has the issue, allowing you to update it as necessary to keep your site fresh.

All we need now is a way to continually stream fresh content by adding new posts in a scheduled manner by using the plugin … maybe upload a csv and populate some custom fields in draft posts that the plugin could recognise for future scheduling of product data … maybe with categories and tags for search and indexation? And a reminder when the scheduled list of posts is about to run out? That would probably complete my wishlist, but even without, the plugin works and looks great.

You can obtain either version of the Affiliate Window plug in at Pan Fashion.

There are loads of claims that you can buy in to ’set up and forget’ Wordpress cash machines, but rarely do they live up to the promise.

In the last few days I have been looking at a suite of plugins for the Wordpress platform that might just be able to meet that promise.

The particular plugins that I am looking at pull products into Wordpress posts or pages to create a well-structured article. There have been many such products in the past, but they often shied away from including price .. mainly because the post was not refreshed in any way and the price became out of date. The new plug-ins are different.

So far, plugins are available for the Affiliate Window and Linkshare Affiliate Networks with Webgains and Paid on Results to follow.

The difference with these is that products are fetched back on the fly, based upon a query string you enter for the post. That way, the post will live for ever with very latest product data, including pricing.

The Linkshare plug in is available for free as is the Affiliate Window Version.

Whilst the Affiliate Window version works on a revenue share basis (your affiliate ID is used 80% of the time unless you purchase a paid-for version at £23 for as many domains as you like and lifetime updates), the Linkshare version is available for free with no revenue share.

I have been using the paid-up Affiliate Window version and it works just as well as the Productserve API … no great surprise because that’s what it uses (the author’s API on the free version or your own API if you opt for paid-for).

My initial impressions are very good … and you can see the authors own results at http://www.panfashion.co.uk.

I was initially disappointed that the plug-in did not handle empty results very well, displaying an ugly and unfriendly error. However, trading emails at 11pm on a Friday evening with the author (how sad is that?) suggesting some controlled and softer management of empty resultsets (e.g. product discontinued or merchant leaves the network) as well as an email to the admin to advise of the empty query results met with a prompt and positive response, suggesting that it would be top of the agenda This Morning.

I was going to wait until I heard back before telling you about the tool, because I felt like it was not quite finished. However, nosy as I am, I followed the developer site across this weekend and saw that the error is now handled with an alternative suggested product … an email to admin advising that the post needs updating will be a trivial next step; and with that step, this will truly be a set up and forget affiliate site …. you only need to change something if the site tells you that you need to or if you wish to add new product.

The perfect addition for me would be if the plug in could auto-insert posts over a period of time to keep fresh content landing on site to keep the search engines happy and maybe I can twist Tony’s arm to do that.

If you want to see the latest Affiliate Window plug-in results with an empty resultset, then have a look over at http://www.wiixiiw.com.

Tony has Paid on Results and Webgains in his sights, but the problem with those networks is that they do not currently have a product API … there are potential workarounds (e.g. build his own API by importing all the feeds to a server), but these may take longer to materialise because of the issues to overcome.

I definitely commend these tools as a great weapon in your affiliate arsenal. Anything that saves you time in getting a site up with relevant products has to be worth it … and with maintainance being minimal, it has got to be worth some small configuration time to walk away and let it generate your commissions.

EDIT: Get the Awin WP Plugin here.

If you use the Amazon Webservices to pull product information to your database or website, you need to ensure that your scripts will be compliant with changes being introduced in the near future.

Until now, it was sufficient to send Amazon Web Services Access Key ID. The problem with that is that it is sent ‘in the clear’ and others could copy the access ID to use the webservices. That isn’t too much of a problem when services are free, but Amazon is definitely looking to avoid any hi-jacking of services and get a clear picture of who is using what.

In future you will also need to send a digital signature which is calculated your client side using such things as your Amazon AWS Secret Key and timestamp. When the request is received by Amazon, that signature is recalculated by Amazon and compared to the key sent by your client.

You have until August 15, 2009 to authenticate requests sent to the Product Advertising API. After August 15, 2009, messages that aren’t authenticated will be denied.

You can read more about the requirements here in the email notice :

Dear Product Advertising API Developer,

We wanted to remind you that all Product Advertising API developers will be required to authenticate all calls to the Product Advertising API by August 15, 2009. We noticed that requests with your AWS Access Key ID are not being signed and, while you have more than 60 days until the date on which authentication is required, we are, as a courtesy, sending you this email to remind you of the new authentication requirement. Please remember that calls to the Product Advertising API that are not signed will not be processed after August 15, 2009.

We’d also like to take this opportunity to point out the resources available to help you make this change to your applications:

* The Developer Guide [ http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AWSECommerceService/latest/DG/index.html?RequestAuthenticationArticle.html ]has details on what signed requests are and how to construct signed requests.
* Sample Code [ http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/kbcategory.jspa?categoryID=14 ]for Signed Requests is available in Java, C# and Perl.
* Our technical staff and other customers are available to answer questions on our Community Forums [ http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/forum.jspa?forumID=9 ]
* More resources can be found at the Product Advertising API [ https://affiliate-program.Amazon.com/gp/advertising/api/detail/main.html ]home page

Thank you for advertising our products and we look forward to sharing the revenue from these sales.

The Product Advertising API Team.

To manage your e-mail preferences, update your account settings (https://aws-portal.Amazon.com/gp/aws/developer/account/index.html)

Note: This is not relevant to Amazon widgets or aStore as these are served directly from Amazon rather than through an API. It is theoretically possible that some proxy scripts will also use the product API.

If you use Third Party tools and scripts to import Amazon data, you would be well advised to check with the authors that they have updated the script to code for these changes and that you apply the updates in time.

Plus of course, you need to ensure that you have your secret key from Amazon (obtainable through your AWS account).

Further to my post yesterday, I can announce that I have now made an Affiliate Marketing wiki live on this domain at http://www.affiliate-stores.co.uk/wiki.

Every year, thousands of new people are entering the Affiliate Marketing space, but it can be confusing to understand how to get started, from acquiring a web domain to hosting and ultimately ro be running a site and monetising it.

The intent of this wiki is to invite contributors to help produce comprehensive how-to affiliate marketing and monetising information based upon FACT not individual opinion (opinion should be reserved for discussion forums such as the Affiliate Stores Forum).

Therefore, if talking about purchasing PPC advertising, it is perfectly acceptable to talk about the mechanics about how it is actually transacted and whom the various advertising platforms are(FACT),but it is not appropriate to discuss optimisation strategy or which advertising platform is best (OPINION).

You can now feel free to start new pages on the wiki, but please do try to make them as detailed as possible for newbies to follow. I would hope that Qinetix APM (successor to Affilistore Enhanced) will be one of the first manuals to appear on the wiki, but please feel free to add documentation for your own favourite tools, scripts and website usage.

If you run into problems using the wiki, maybe functionality hasn’t been switched on yet? Then raise a request through the Affiliate Stores Forum.

We are new to using MediaWiki ourselves and may take a little bit of time to tune it to our needs – I intend to reskin it and come up with our own design in due course, but as this is the same software that powers Wikipedia it should be capable of offering all the flexibility that we need.

One thing …. as an encouragement to you to write up your pages and potential reward for contributing, I will allow your own affiliate links to be added by users where appropriate and for them to remain for the foreseeable future. One rule in that regard … you MAY NOT EDIT other users affiliate links to substitute your own UNLESS they are proven to be non-functional or the entry is now inaccurate or out of date.

I want to keep the rules simple :

1. Pages should be instructional and informative, not advertorial and related to monetising websites, particularly in the affiliate marketing space
2. Affiliate IDs may be used by the original author (provided that the page is of good quality .. racking up pages and pages of affiliate links with content to follow will not be tolerated)
3. Editing authors may only substitute their Affiliate Links where an original affiliate link is now outdated or non-functional
4. No duplication. Use disambiguity pages to resolve potential duplicate phraseology rather than cloning pages.
5. Guidelines for wiki content may be changed by me at any time and these will be updated on the main page of the wiki.

As admin, I do reserve the right to substitute my own affiliate links, but will not do so for a minimum of 12 months (if ever .. decision subject to running costs) unless I am also fixing an inaccurate entry.

I hope that you like the idea of the Wiki and can contribute. I look forward to the community creating one of the biggest Affiliate resources on the planet with our wiki.

You may know that I am pretty much a one man band here, with Anyname responsible for the major coding efforts whilst I come up with quite modest hacks.

I am also responsible for the Affilistore Tutorials that you see here as well as running the blog and the forum.

Whilst I like to think that I bring you all lots of useful tips, tricks and industry news, I do feel that there are still areas that the Affiliate Stores site could help with more, if only we had the manpower to do it.

So …. with a bit of headscratching, I have decided to create a wiki for all you avid readers to contribute to.

I would love for Affiliate Stores to be able to serve up the biggest affiliate ‘how-to’ and comprehensive set of affiliate script user manuals in the UK, if not the whole www.

So, whether it is ‘How to advertise using PPC’ or ‘What does this menu mean in script xxx’, I am inviting you all to participate if you wish.

I haven’t worked out exactly what I think should be within the wiki, but I would love your own ideas on whether you think it to be a good idea and if so, what you would like to see explained and maybe indicate whether you feel that you could confidently contribute to something … maybe you you use Data Feed Studio, Price Tapestry, Amazon aStore (or Proxy versions), Storebrander affiliate scripts or other affiliate tools like OpenX adserver and could contribute to developing more detailed user manuals and helpful tutorials.

I would be grateful for all your feedback to help shape the future of this idea.

You may be surprised at our latest news about severing links with Affilistore.com.

This is for practical and competitive reasons. Too many people have been confused bt the similarity of the script names and inferred compatability and common support arrangements which has caused a great deal of confusion which the rebranding of Affilistore Enhanced to Qinetix APM should resolve.

This does not change our strategic development plans … some which I have already shared … and some great stuff that is still under wraps.

Unfortunately, what it does change is our release timetable.

Qinetix APM was planned to be distinct from the Affilistore and Affilistore Enhanced products, but not intended to be built and released so soon. The need to rebrand at this stage means that Anyname will be implementing some further exciting new features NOW in order to make the products even more distinct.

Inevitably, extra work means extra time and with the rebranding requirements, we will no longer be able to meet the planned release schedule for Affilistore Enhanced 2.6 this month.

However, the good news is that we anticipate that the slippage will be only one month, with the target for a first release of Qinetix APM being by end July 2009.

For the avoidance of any doubt, I will also be continuing to help users with their Affilistore issues both here and over at Affilistore.com.

Affilistore Enhanced (based on Affilistore 2.01) has been made available for free over the last 12 months with kind permission and license arrangements between Steve Balfour (Author of Affilistore) and David Cameron (Affiliate-Stores.co.uk).

In order to eliminate brand confusion and to allow each script to develop in its own direction, a mutual decision has been made to rebrand Affilistore Enhanced effective with the next release (the already announced 2.6 release). The new script will be subject to user license conditions that are still to be determined, but will have no license tie-up with Affilistore.

The new product name replacing Affilistore Enhanced will be Qinetix APM (Affiliate Product Marketing).

There will be no further announcements regarding Qinetix APM via Affilistore.com. Further information on Qinetix APM will only be made available via http://www.affiliate-stores.co.uk and any questions regarding the rebranded script should also be raised via http://www.affiliate-stores.co.uk.

I am trying out a new more exciting looking Wordpress theme celebrating the new Wordpress 2.8 release today.

Personally, I felt like I had made the old theme a bit too busy and therefore have gone for a theme with a single sidebar and the ability to tweak the colour settings quite a bit.

The new theme is Ahimsa and I hope that you also think that it is a whole lot cleaner to view … feedback welcome.

I still have a bit of customising to do, but I hope that the new theme didn’t throw you off the scent … you are still on Affiliate Stores.

This is a new release of my hack that will allow you to view product counts against each feed in Admin.

NOTE: This release works with the June 2009 version 2.1 which added gzip download support.

Unzip fd.inc.php and ftp to your Affilistore admin/includes folder for a direct drop-in replacement.

BIGGER NOTE: THis is NOT compatible with Affilistore Enhanced. However this will be supported officially from ASE 2.6 onwards.