Are you an excellent copywriter? Have you written landing pages for best-selling products?
I need a killer sales page for my Affiliate Mashup Store.
I’m offering a $100 prize, plus a FREE copy of the mashup store (worth $199), plus a JV affiliate rate of $100 per sale (normal affiliate rate $50) for customers you send to the page.
Full details of the competition can be found in this forum post.
Closing date: Friday 28th March.
Good luck people!
This thing’s taking on a life of its own.
I just got an email from a guy who’s been using the free sample of the Affiliate Mashup Store, saying he’s already made three sales in the last week without even doing any promotion.
Which is pretty awesome.
I’m beginning to wonder if having only 20 copies on offer in the pre-launch tomorrow is enough.
I mean, I don’t want too many people getting it all at once - I’ll be overwhelmed trying to support the product (I want to offer as much help starting up as possible, seeing as it’s essentially a beta test).
On the other hand, I’ve had so many people asking to get it early that I know some of you are gonna be disappointed.
It’s a burden, I know. But I had no idea it was gonna get so popular. I just hope I can live up to the expectations.
In fact, I’ve already encountered a potential problem.
The CJ API, which the mashup uses to populate its catalogues, seems very contrary. A couple of the people testing my script have had trouble getting it to work on their webservers.
This is obviously an issue, since if you can’t create a catalogue the mashup store’s pretty useless!
So I’ve come up with a workaround. If the API doesn’t work on your server, you can run a script on my own website which will create a csv datafile of products for your catalogue. You can then upload this datafile to your own site and create your catalogues that way.
It’s a bit cumbersome so it’s not ideal. I still insist that you try the sample script before purchasing the Affiliate Mashup Store. But if it doesn’t work and you still really want your own mashup store then it may still be possible.
If you’re looking for a webhost which will work with your store, then I can confirm that HostGator has no problems - I use them myself for most of my sites.
It’s been a while since I last posted, mostly because there hasn’t been much to say; I’ve been working non-stop on the ol’ affiliate mashup store script (and taking some time out to develop a super-secret landing page tool), but now it’s ready to start pushing out to the world.
Here’s the plan:
I’ve given out a couple of copies to some colleagues of mine for testing. This week I’ll be updating the sales page. And on Friday (14.03.08) I’ll be launching a ‘pre-release’ beta test of the store to a select group of inside users.
I’ll be offering the beta test version (essentially the full product, but with scope for improvement after feedback, and with a guarantee of updates to future versions) to my list members for $99.00 - that’s a saving of $100 on the final retail price of $199.00
If you’re on my list (and if not, you can sign up here) I’ll be sending out details of the pre-release later this week. The special offer launch will be open for 24 hours OR until 20 copies have sold - whichever occurs first (and judging by the size and responsiveness of my list I suspect it’ll be the latter).
Then we’ll play with the store for a week or so, make sure everything’s OK and implement any suggestions and improvements (assuming they’re feasible) and then the retail version will go on sale to the world.
So stay tuned - this is gonna be an exciting ride.
OK here’s another example of the Affiliate Mashup Store in action, and as you can see it sports a totally different theme from the previous example.
This theme is adapted from Free-CSS-Templates.com and the cool thing about it is that I didn’t need to change ANY of the underlying store code to get it to work. I only had to edit two files: the stylesheet and a layout file.
What this means is that, if you don’t like the themes that come with the mashup store, you should be easily able to make or adapt your own - without worrying about delving into the programming portions of the code.
If you haven’t yet signed up for an early-bird alert for when the Affiliate Mashup Store becomes available, click here to do so - and be in with the chance of an inner-circle pre-launch discount.
Well I’ve been working on it for some time now, and it should be ready for launch in a week or two, so here’s a preview of my Affiliate Mashup Store:
You’ll notice the homepage defaults to a video page, which is one of the options available (you can set any page to be the homepage) and is more appropriate than a list of products in this instance.
If you like what you see and you want to get in on the launch early, head over to AffiliateMashupStore.com to register and download a free ‘lite’ version to play with while you wait.
I thought I’d give a little update on my forthcoming Affiliate Mashup Store.
So far I’ve got the admin panel up and running with tools to create and edit Category links within the mashup site, set up Default Catalogues and Country-specific catalogues, and create and edit Custom Pages (with a simple form for html input).
I’ve also updated the layout with a wider right-hand Content Box area, with the ability to add search boxes and external RSS feeds for extra dynamic content. Oh, and the site will generate its own RSS feeds for any page with products on it, including search results.
I’ve made it really easy to add and edit new themes too, because I’m not much of a graphic designer so I wanted to make it as simple as possible for people to customise their own layouts. All you have to do is copy an existing theme’s folder, rename it and edit the style sheet and layout file (and any graphics you want to change). The new theme will automatically be added to the admin panel for selection.
I’m also working on some extras like Youtube and eBay integration, just to add even more value and diverse content to your mashup stores.
I’m still evaluating a price-point for the whole package, but it’s likely to be at least $200. This will include lifetime updates and an unlimited site licence so you can create as many mashup stores as you want.
Loads of people have already signed up to the waiting list in the last couple of weeks, which is great. They’ll be among the first to know when the mashup store product is released for sale and I’ve decided that a proportion of people on the list will also be offered the chance to buy at a significant discount. So if you haven’t signed up yet, click here to do so and grab a bargain before the rush starts.
I’ll probably be selling the mashup store package through PayDotCom which means there’ll be an opportunity for people to become affiliates of the Affiliate Mashup Store program. If you have a blog or list and you think you can drive significant traffic let me know and we can work out an appropriate commission rate.
I’ll be posting some screenshots and maybe video in the next few days. A tentative release date is some time around the middle of March, depending on how the beta testing goes, so stay tuned!
Yes, that’s right. I’m releasing a ‘lite’ version of my own affiliate mashup store script for anyone to download and use.
Loads of people have asked me if I could make them a custom mashup store. While my skills aren’t quite up to the level of producing from a design spec, I’m quite confident I can build a pre-packaged affiliate store website application.
So I’m offering a free sample script for download. If you use it and like it, perhaps you’ll be interested in purchasing the full version when it becomes available.
Why do I need an Affiliate Mashup Store?
Because you can promote thousands of products at the flick of a switch. While your competitors are busy writing sales pages for dozens of individual affiliate products, you’re churning out dozens of massive websites with thousands of affiliate products all automatically optimised with their own keywords.
To get a better idea of what a mashup store is and how to promote it, click here and read ‘How to Rock Out with an Affiliate Mashup’.
To find out more about the giveaway, to download the script, and to try out a demo site, CLICK HERE. And let me know how you get on.
P.S. Get your free eBay Youtube Adsense Mashup as well. Plus keep informed of new posts by subscribing (use the box on the top right of this page).
Sweet! I’ve got BuyJewelleryOnline.com into 4th place on Google for the keyword valentine’s day necklaces, which I noticed by virtue of Google Analytics. And by doing a little searching of my own I’m number one for valentine’s day earrings!
It’s quite a relief actually, since the site had been doing pretty poorly in search engine rankings for the last couple of weeks. I think perhaps the last owner of the domain name may have adversely affected its pagerank, as it used to be one of those directory landing page sites with no value and some spammy backlinks.
I’ve been getting a fair bit of traffic from the social networks like digg, squidoo and scribd, but most of that is US traffic. I should probably make a US version of the site but it would be a lot of effort - trouble is my database has to be very broad because it’s hard to specify a datafeed with ‘jewellery’ as a keyword - it just doesn’t work for product names. Hence why there are still things like chainsaws in the UK site. I really should sort that out one day.
Yes, it’s a month till Valentine’s Day; probably one of the most expensive ’special’ days of the year. And I’m planning on doing some exploitation.
I’ve been investigating mashups, as I’ve mentioned before. Last week I began to get to grips with Commission Junction’s developer API. It’s the flakiest, most frustrating piece of shit I’ve ever had to program with, but after days of sweat I managed to bodge together some code to grab all the products from my affiliated merchants.
Of course, it wasn’t even as easy as that. The CJ API keeps crapping out with Internal Server Errors and suchlike. You really don’t want to attract thousands of visitors only to show them zero products! I’ve therefore had to learn how to populate a local database with the product list to improve reliability. A couple of incidental benefits are of course that the app responds much faster and I’m able to perform more powerful searches.
Anyway, so now my merchant product lists are all saved, what can I do with them? Well anything really. But in this case I’ve decided to build a jewellery website, on account of Valentine’s Day being around the corner.
Interestingly, the domain name I bought, Buy Jewellery Online, turns out to have been active in one way or another for the last 5 years or so. It’s already got a Pagerank of 2, which isn’t spectacular, but should make it a lot easier to get search engine ranking once I start promoting it.
So how does the site work? Well at the moment it’s pretty simplistic. All it does is have a category list which grabs lists of products from pre-defined searches from the database, plus some basic click tracking. As I flesh it out I’ll probably develop such functionality as ‘popular products’, custom searches, links between similar items etc.
Next up comes the promotion, though. Obviously all the standard link-building applies, like using hubs (squidoo, hubpages), blogs (blogspot, ebay blogs) and social bookmarking (digg, delicious).
Choosing keywords to promote could be tricky. After all, Valentine’s Day is highly competitive. Fortunately there are such tools as GTrends Made Easy and Google’s Keyword Tool which should provide some insights.
After that’s all sorted out the money should start rolling in. I mean, 10% of a £4000 diamond ring would certainly be a nice commission…
OK so I’ve finally got round to publishing my ebayoutube mashup script for anyone to use. I’ve also added another dynamic product feed courtesy of Affiliate Future. You can see the latest version in action at http://smartphonereview.co.uk
ABOUT:
A simple mashup script based around RSS product feeds.
Generates a keyword-themed website with Youtube Adsense video, Adsense text ads, eBay products, affiliate products, and news feeds from Google and Yahoo. All links to products generate affiliate commissions.
I’m offering the script as a free download to anyone who wants it. Installation is as easy as I could make it. All you have to do is customise a few variables and insert your own adsense code.
(I should point out that the script is keyed to UK products and news only. If you want to gear it to another country it shouldn’t be too hard to edit the RSS feed data and affiliate programmes.)
To get hold of your copy just enter your email address below. Don’t worry - I won’t spam you or try to sell you anything. It’s just away of keeping you informed of script updates and any new scripts I come up with.
Get it here:
If you have any problems (or suggestions) feel free to leave a comment on this post. I’m not offering much in the way of official support, since it’s free, but I’ll do my best to help out.
Note: If you’re not a member of Affiliate Future you can just cut that section out. However, I included it in there to avoid being Google-slapped for duplicate content. By having both the AF and eBay products in there you end up generating ‘new’ content. That’s also why there’s both Google AND Yahoo news feeds. The more content sources you can pull in the better your ranking will be.