Amazon.com released website widgets!

Amazon.com announced yesterday that they are releasing widgets for websites and blogs to make it easier to promote their products on websites.

Amazon.com has had the option to include web advertising on websites however it has not been as good as it could. The banner ads were garish and the product linking options felt a little limiting.

With Astore advertisements working, we see that they can be make to match the colors of your website, but only astore products. Now they have finally announced 7 new widgets for Amazon.com products.

Make Money as an affiliate

While you won't be able to quit your day job, but it is great to have a few dollars to save, or get paid with gift certificates so you won't spend as much of your own money on Christmas gifts. We all know how that adds up. Although you don't have to have an Amazon affiliate account to use most (6) of their widgets, there is no reason why you shouldn't. There is no membership fee.

Display Amazon products more easily

The following widgets are currently available:

• Slideshow


• My Favorites


• Wish List


• Product Cloud


• Amazon Unbox Video Previewer


• Quick Linker


• Search

Slideshow

Slideshow takes product pictures and turns them into a slideshow. You can ad captions to each picture. You can do a search by keyword in each Amazon product group. You can't use a category. This would require periodic maintenance since products would eventually be dropped or discontinued. I think this would be great for a micro-website.



Amazon does not yet have its own plugin for Wordpress blogs like this one. Copying the code in HTML view didn't work so I added it as a 'direct code' ad using the Adsense Manager plugin.

My Favorites

My Favorites lets you select your favorite products and have them show up in an 'I recommend' box along with details. You can change the title, colors and width starting at 160px which is a typical sidebar size. If you have your website color's hexcode you can use that for a color so everything matches perfectly. You can make it 'taller' by increasing the number of rows, so more products fit. You have to select individual products not a category, so this will require some maintenance as well.



Amazon does not yet have its own plug in for Wordpress blogs like this one. Copying the code in HTML view didn't work so I added it as a 'direct code' ad using the Adsense Manager plugin.

Wish List

Wish List takes your Amazon favorites and includes them in a widget for your family as well as blog visitors with similiar tastes. To use this widget, you'll have to use an e-mail address that currently has an Amazon Wishlist set up. It could be your own, or belong to someone else. The system will check for you. Wish lists could be for you or help you plan an event for someone else like their wedding gifts. Don't forget to make the list public or it won't be available.

Even though I had set up my wish list, Amazon could not find my list.

Product Cloud

Product Cloud takes keywords and makes them show up as keywords in a jumble called a tag cloud. When someone 'mouses-over' a keyword, a small pop up appears with information about a product with the same keyword. This could be effective on a website that focuses on a specific issue. When a visitor clicks on that pop up, they end up at the amazon product page. I'm very excited about this widget. This widget lets you change all the colors, width (160px+), height, and it does let you select a category so you'll be able to set it up and forget it.



Amazon does not yet have its own plug in for Wordpress blogs like this one. Copying the code in HTML view didn't work so I added it as a 'direct code' ad using the Adsense Manager plugin.

Amazon Unbox Video Previewer

Amazon Unbox Video Previewer shows movie studio and TV network previews for a range of new release and classic movies or television shows available from the Amazon Unbox video download service. You can select which attributes to use in selecting new video previews. This lets you adjust the size with a minimum of 510x425. You can also select by genre and studio. Do you want only movies or TV and movies, no problem!



Amazon does not yet have its own plug in for Wordpress blogs like this one. Copying the code in HTML view didn't work so I added it as a 'direct code' ad using the Adsense Manager plugin.

Quick Linker

Quick Linker lets you quickly add Amazon search results to your site via HTML code and a keyword.

Search

This new search widget is much more attractive than the old one. I am very excited about it. I did not ever add the old search box to my website because I thought it looked too ugly. I did not want to redesign my website to match it! It is even better because the search results show up in the widget on your website instead of taking the visitor directly to Amazon.



Amazon does not yet have its own plug in for Wordpress blogs like this one. Copying the code in HTML view didn't work so I added it as a 'direct code' ad using the Adsense Manager plugin.

Learn more

You can find more information at http://widgets.amazon.com/

Zilo is another e-store hosted on their servers

Zilo an affiliate shopping site

Zilo is similiar to Amazon.com's Astore. Both of them are hosted on the merchants' servers and both let you make minor changes to the appearance, and both give you a commission on sales.

Adding products

Zilo is different too. Instead of letting you select a category, you have to search for and add products to your store. This obviously makes store creation much more difficult since every product must be individually selected. You can link your Zilo shop to your website and there seem to be a a plugins out there to test.

Once you set up your account and store layout, you can add products. If you don't want to search by a product's name, you can search by category. Once you get a level or two down in a category, you'll see a list of items. You can click on 'express add' to add it to your site.

When you click on 'express add', you get a pop-up that allows you the following options:

• Describe the product


• Tag the product


• Review the product


• Category


• Featured product (check box)


• Favorite Product (check box)


• I have it (check box)


• Add it to my wish list (check box)

There are 'save changes' and 'cancel' buttons to the lower right. If the category is not on the list, you can add it.

Google Adsense

Although Zilo is a store, they offer a very simple implementation of Google Adsense. You don't get to keep all of the Adsense earnings for your store. They keep 40% of the Adsense earnings. Considering how they don't charge you and you don't every have to paste the code, it is a fair deal. It should cover their server costs anyway. Implementing Google adsense on your website is completely optional.

Setup your own customized online store in less than 5 minutes.

Choose products from hundreds of the Internet's top retailers to include in your store and sell at the same rate as the Internet merchant.

Generate commissions through product sales and clicks. Additional income can be made by selecting to place Google ads in your store, and by referring others to join the program.

Amazon.com's Astore is easy to set up

 Amazon.com Astore

Amazon.com has a simple shopping cart option for anyone who wants to start a store selling Amazon products.

Amazon's Astore can be set up by anyone who registers as an Amazon affiliate.  It is easy to do on their website.  You can follow their steps with no extra explanation.

Adding Products

Astore lets you add products by category or individually after doing a key word search.  If you want to have a well defined niche store then having hand selected products will make sure that your customers see what is for your niche.  If you have a site that is about a general theme, it is very likely that you will find an Amazon.com category for the same issue.  Amazon Astore categories have many subcategories, so it would be easy to make a catalog of categories in categories just for your area.  You don't have to follow their category sequence. You can rearrange the order of categories and subcategories according to your needs.

Themes

Amazon's Astore lets you modify several colors and even modify the .css file.  There are only two actual themes to install on the site. You can also change the font size.

Product listings

Products that are added as categories are normally pretty good however I noticed on one catalog how some items were linked correctly.  For example: I saw some women's clothing items show up in the men's clothing category when I viewed a store that I had set up.

Reporting

Amazon's Astore reports one day late. I can see yesterday's report today.  The report is not updated at midnight. It is updated by morning. The reporting options are decent.  You can see reports on sales, type of link, and store code/tracking ID among others. You can set up multiple tracking IDs in the affiliate control panel. Each Astore has to have its own tracking ID.  The tracking IDs can also be used for other kinds of links. It makes sense to give each website that you own and its astore a different ID. When you make a sale, you will know which site sent it.

 How it works

When you are an Amazon affiliate, you earn a commission on any sale is made through your Astore or your Amazon links within 24 hours of a click. This is handled by cookies.  This period is very short and I hope they change it.  I am sure many commissions are lost because the customer decides to wait a day or two to confirm his or her order.  They offer a sliding scale on commissions starting at 4%, but it doesn't apply to all products.  You can read all about the commission rate on their affiliate website when you register.

How to get it on your site

You can have your Astore as:

• A stand alone site (you can link to it from other sites)


• Embed it as a frame (you do remember when people used frames, don't you?)


• Embed it as an iframe (include it inside your site's content for example inside a DIV)

Amazon does not currently offer integration in any CMS or other software.  The easiest way to add it to your CMS is to add it as a link in a menu or sidebar.

Feedback

What have your experiences been using Amazon's Astore?

Amazon.com Astore ads are now working

 Amazon.com's Astore banner ads now display Astore products

Amazon.com Astore ads seem to work now.  I had mentioned in  a previous post that a defect of Amazon.com's Astore was that the astore ads didn't work.  I tested the ads yesterday on several of my websites and they appear to be working. I don't understand the criteria used for selecting which products show. I do get the impression that it might just be taking products from the first category in the Astore related to the website.

One thing that is nice,now that it is working, is that the colors used match the Astore, so if you make your Astore colors match your website, the Astore ads will also match.

Adding Amazon Astore ads to your website is the same as using google ads (without a plugin).  You select your ad size, colors, etc on the Amazon website then you copy and paste the javascript code into your site code.

If you are using WordPress for your website, paste the code into your template files. Javascript doesn't work in pages or posts made via the editor nor does it work with text widgets. Just don't forget to copy the ad code when you change themes.   If you know of a WordPress plugin for Astore ads, please let us know via the comments.

Monetize your website experiment update: NewsRoom, Amazon.com Affiliate, Google Adsense

Here is a mid-month update regarding my experiment on using Amazon.com and Newsroom news videos on my websites.

The News Room

The News Room looked very promising. I wanted to add video to our main site, portallanguageservices.com, so it seemed natural to include their videos however I am so far very unhappy.

I'm unhappy with the news room for the following reasons:

1. Slow updates

The news feeds are updated very slowly. I had added a news feed for world news and I even had it on the front page of my site for 10 days. I only noticed one new video added for that entire period. I don't know if the feed system is messed up or not, but it isn't my problem. There should be an easy way to pick a topic and have that topic appear.

2. One-by-one

It seems that the only way to add text news is to go to their site and select them one-by-one.

Do I really want to spend 30 minutes everyday to go to their site to select news and then post it on my site when I could be working on adding my own content? Only if the compensation is high enough which it isn't.

3. The compensation is low

The idea is that you are sharing ad revenue, but even though there is a video ad, you get very little money. Even though the world news video feed was on my front page on my most important site, it only registered views for a fraction of visitors so I made less than half of a dollar for a third of a month.

I can make more with Adsense ads. They mention that you make money for referrals but there is no code to be found for having referrals. So how to I refer people to use it without a referral link or button?

4. Their reporting system is flawed.

If I have over 60 visitors to my main site on average and at least 20 of them go to my main site then I could expect that at least half of them 'saw' the automatically playing news video. The system didn't even register that many. Since there is no FAQ to explain how all this works I don't know what to think.

The revenue reporting option that appears after logging in only reports about one out of 6 or 7 days. The rest of the time it tells me that it is 'being updated'. I want to know if it is working or not. I have a sinking feeling that these 'being updated' days don't report when videos are being watched.

Because of the above reasons, I don't recommend trying TheNewsRoom even if Problogger.net is advertising it.

I removed the 'video feed' from portallanguageservices.com 's front page and I left it on the 'video activity pages' as a supplemental activity. I'm not giving it a prominent location anymore, since the videos aren't getting updated by keyword as they were supposed to. I will leave the system there for at least a few more months or until I find a better option for giving students and visitors videos for practicing their listening comprehension skills.

If TheNewsRoom improves their services, I'll let you know in another post.

Amazon.com's Affiliate Report

I haven't had much luck so far. I've gotten a few clicks but no sales. I haven't been pre-selling any books yet. I have only made them available.

A-Store advertisements don't work

One problem is that there was supposed to be a way to put advertisements on your site that would show products that you're offering in a blended way and that when clicked on, the visitor would be sent to your Amazon.com A-store. Well that system doesn't work.

I put the ad code on pages in my main site. I thought it would be a good fit since most people who are learning languages also need reading material. They need supplemental books. The ad code only shows a generic Amazon.com ad so I get no traffic and I lose potential Adsense clicks because the visitor has already left my site for Amazon.com.

The generic Amazon.com ad doesn't not blend well. In fact, it is a bit garish. I think it looks like your typical banner ad.

I of course tried e-mailing Amazon.com's Affiliate support. I e-mailed them twice.

The first time the answer was " I went to your A-store, and the links work". I had told them by e-mail that the ad links TO the A-store weren't working not that the A-store itself didn't.

The second time I e-mailed them was a reply to the first reply. I clarified that NO it wasn't the A-store but the ads that were supposed to be blended and referring to your A-store that didn't work. They replied that they were 'aware of the issue'.

If they were aware of the issue, then why didn't I see a warning on Amazon's Affiliate site next to the option for this kind of ad? They could have just posted a message in big bold letters saying. This service doesn't yet work so you'll see a generic ad instead.

I like that they did reply to my e-mails but I didn't like wasting my time configuring the blended A-store advertisements and adding the code to my site to later find out that they 'were aware of the issue'.

I'm not saying I wouldn't recommend Amazon.com but I think you'd either need thousands of visitors a day or you'd need to pre-sell books through reviews or other promotions.

Google Adsense update

So far it appears that I'll get 25% more from Google ads this month. Last month I made about 16 dollars in Google Ads. So far this month I've made $10.96. Yes I know it isn't much but it is increasing every month. I have been getting many many clicks but the money/click isn't very high. I do like Adsense though and I do recommend it. The ads blend with the content so they never look bad.

Check out Google Adsense to earn money on your websites:

Check out Google Adwords to promote your website:

Conclusions

I think that if you have a high volume of site traffic, Adsense could make you a lot of money. I also like Google Adsense because its reporting is pretty accurate and it updates frequently. I can check several times a day and see updates.

Amazon.com's Affiliate program reports once a day and you don't see the previous day's report until the next morning.

I've been waiting several days to see TheNewsRoom update its report.

Earning money online, monetizing the web: Testing with Amazon.com's program, Google Adsense, Paypal donations, and The newsroom

Hello everyone!

I have been trying to pay for my hosting, registrations, and other expenses through Internet programs. Why?
I have always wanted to help others and I want to have many activities online to help my students practice and improve their language learning and business skills. That is why I currently have two websites. http://portallanguageservices.com for people who want to learn English, and http://crucialbusiness.com which is for business and personal finance issues.

I want to mention that I got many of the ideas for this article from problogger.net.

I recommend visiting that site if you are interested in someone who has been making money online for several years.
I'm at the other end. I've been teaching English classes and going Spanish-English translations. So If you'd like to to follow my progress please do so here.

I am currently testing the following programs:

1. Google Adsense

Most people seem to be advertising using it but the returns are low unless you have your ads optimized and many visitors. If you only have a few visitors don't expect to make more than a dollar a day if even that much. It should however with minimal effort pay for the costs of an inexpensive web hosting account.

I signed up in mid-May and earned a few cents.
I made less than 5 dollars in June,
I made a little more than 16 dollars in July.
This also corresponds to an increase in visitors as reported by Google Analytics.
I currently have an average of 60 visits per day for the last 30 days.
You don't get paid until you have $100 dollars or more in your account.
You also have to be careful not to accidentally click on your own ads.

Click the link on my page for more information.

Check out Google Adsense to earn money on your websites:

Check out Google Adwords to promote your website:

2. Amazon.com A-Store

After reading a post on problogger.net I decided to sign-up for Amazon.com's Associates program.

The good thing is that there are many options. The bad thing is that if you choose to receive your payment as a check they'll charge you a fee! They also have an option for getting paid in Gift certificates.

I signed up at at the beginning of August and I added an a-store with books. So far I haven't had any sales.
You can also place advertisements on your web pages but they only pay you for sales not per click or per impression.

3. Paypal donations

You can get paid online using Paypal but you can also setup a donation button using Paypal. Just go to your Paypal account online and follow the instructions. There are also many modules and plug-ins available for the Blog or CMS of your choice that make it easier to accept paypal.

4. The Newsroom

I got this idea from problogger.net

I have http://portallanguageservices.com a website for learning and practicing English as a second language.
I have been in the process of adding many different activities including sound, reading, vocabulary games, etc., but one thing I didn't have was video! Problogger.net mentioned that not only do they distribute free news videos but that they also share the ad revenue with you!
So now my students and visitors can enjoy the listening practice but they also can help me support my site and the time it takes to put everything up!

Update:  You won't be buying your Dell computer any time soon with the Newsroom. I only made about 50 cents in a month with it!

Go to http://www.thenewsroom.com/ to sign up.

Using Drupal after using Wordpress. Part I: first impressions

Hello everyone!

I am trying what I was trying to find out about, and after many hours of searching, didn't find.
What it is like going from using regular HTML pages with some PHP applications and Javascript games to using Wordpress and later Drupal.

Background

First of all, I am not new to using the internet, computers or websites.
I made my first web page in 1995 or maybe 1994 on a free site. I used HTML and I coded it in a basic text editor. It had hyperlinks and photos and some profile info. It was on a university server.
After leaving the university I didn't really make an effort to have a website since for one hosting was very expensive and 2. I didn't have an internet connection at home. I did try once to have an Angelfire free site but the URL was so confusing I would keep forgetting to log in and I didn't bother giving it out so I forgot about it in only a few months.
I am as I said not new to computers. I first used them around 3rd grade. My parents bought an Apple IIgs when I was in either middle or high school (I can't remember), and I got my first computer, an Apple Powermac, when I was 18.
I even had two jobs in the computer industry more than a few years ago. I worked 18 months for Apple Computer when I lived in Austin Texas doing Technical Support. After that I worked for Dell Computer, now just Dell, doing technical support. First in telephone support, then in e-mail and internet based support and I finally got bored and quit and moved to Mexico City where I've lived since January, 2001. I've been teaching English as a second language. I also do the occasional Spanish-English translation.
I put up a website a year ago to promote my classes and mostly to have an e-mail address as a 'company' which I legal have, even if there are only 3 of us working. I have been using Dreamweaver as an editor along with free opensource applications I find and later adapt. So far it has worked well but I decided to make some changes.

1. Getting back to making a website

For a basic website a normal editor and HTML files along with a PHP send mail script are really perfectly adequate if not exciting, but over time things got difficult to update. In fact it was fun at first. I felt like a 18 year old again! :-)
Later It got frustrating. I eventually stopped using tables and started using CSS with DIVs. Keep in mind that CSS and DIVs didn't exist when I started. I now use CSS for everything. It does make things easier but not dynamic.

2. Website programming languages and their frustrations

I looked into Java, Javascript, and PHP but I really am not a programmer. If you don't make it perfect a PHP file just gives you a blank page! I don't see how checking for the missing quote or misspelled variable or extra bracket is supposed to be fun.

3. The need for more dynamic content that can be updated more quickly and easily

I really started to want something more dynamic
I noticed that we have CMS and LMS, and blogs... .whatever those are. I know that they existed but the first time I heard blog was around two years ago when once of my students asked what they were. I thought they were just glorified profile and picture pages for teenagers ... and I was right...
However I was also wrong. Blogs can also be independent programs used for many topics not only your rantings and trip journals but also news and review sites, etc.

4. Choosing Wordpress

I finally took the plunge only a few days ago and I decided to install Wordpress on my hosted server. I did it because I was posting updates to my website on a table which at first sounded good but really it became a pain. I'd have to add a row, type the date, save it and upload the file using FTP through Dreamweaver. First of all that is a slow process and second, it doesn't look very nice.
I thought I could do this with a blog!

5. Taking the blog plunge with Wordpress.... absolutely no regrets

So I had read up on different types of blogs. I knew I didn't want it to be hosted separately. I want to be in control and I want to be able to change the configuration as needed. I also didn't want to have to pay more for it since my funds are limited. I am very happy I went with Wordpress.

6. Wordpress is easy to install and configure. Use widgets to save time and write more!

Wordpress is easy to install and setup. You literally can be 'blogging' in minutes with only minimal configuration. The theme templates use CSS fil es, and there are lots of free themes available on the Wordpress website.
Wordpress also uses widgets. Widgets allow you to add special plug-in programs to modify the code and make it more dynamic. Widgets are great because it means you spend less time editing files and more time doing what you want to do.
It would have taken me all year programming to set up a working blog with many plug-ins in what took only a couple days using Wordpress. Best of all it is free! Using the blog I can post the 'updates' to my website and they automatically appear with the date and the category I choose.

7. Wordpress allows you to make 'pages' which you can link to your main page.

I noticed that you can also create 'pages' with static information and links which got me thinking.... If I can change the appearance, organize my pages, and make it more dynamic using Wordpress, why don't I see if I can do that for the rest of my site?

8. Wordpress has limitations, and other CMS, Content Management Systems, exist.

While I love Wordpress, I can see that it is limited when it comes to website development. I started looking into CMS, Content Management Systems (which also didn't exist years ago). I see that most people use either Joomla, Mambo, or Drupal. Yes, I know there is others, but if you use one that isn't popular, you'll have to wait longer to get updates and plug -ins supposing you get any at all.

9.  Joomla, Mambo, and Drupal ... oh my!

I read that Joomla came from Mambo and that they are very similiar but that the new version is different. Unfortunately the 'new' version that is supposed to fix all the problems I kept reading about, is only in beta. That leaves me with Drupal. Who names these things?

10. Joomla will have to wait since it is still in beta.

I really wasn't convinced by what I read online either. It really sounds like the developers don't care. There isn't a plug-in for integrating it with Wordpress either. I did read it is flexible and small and like Joomla there are many plug-ins. I can try Joomla CMS when the 'new' version is finally released.

The installation

1. Drupal installed using Fantastico

I used the fantastico installer provided by my webhost and it went well. I did have to download the update from the Drupal website and ran the upgrade.php as instructed. This is because the fantastic installer was one minor version off.

2. Minor upgrade and modules were installed.

The minor upgrade went without a problem.
I made sure I could log in and then started looking at the different modules (plug-ins) available for download.
I saw the ones I needed. I needed one for paypal, for donations and for translation payments. I needed one for google adsense to more easily work with that and I needed one for Amazon since I love reading.
I still have to test those to make sure they work. I'll let you know in another post how they go.
The modules seemed to more or less install and I went on to looking for themes. Those seemed to install ok too.

 3. The lack of Drupal themes

There aren't many themes if your compare Drupal with Wordpress.
I couldn't really find a theme that I liked much for Drupal whereas Wordpress has many wonderful themes to choose from. I want my blog and my website content to match even if they aren't integrated.

4. Chosen theme doesn't match but at least the colors do ... for now.

I picked one theme I had installed and stared playing with the CSS using Dreamweaver and I changed the colors to match a blog for the same site. The Theme's layout doesn't match at all. Only the colors match.
I edited the pictures to make a custom picture for the name of the site.

5. Which site is being used for the Drupal test?

I forgot to mention that I am testing Drupal on my new page http://crucialbusiness.com
Don't bother going there yet (if you aren't already) . I'm currently only using it for testing blog plug-ins and Drupal.
If it works, I will configure it Drupal for use on my main website which is http://portallanguageservices.com
which has activities for helping people learn and practice English.

6. Drupal's administrative panel is not very intuitive compared to wordpress.

One thing I don't like is the way you manage Drupal. While Wordpress has an intuitive administration panel that is very fast. I found Drupal's administrative options to be unorganized and unintuitive. It was like going from A Macintosh to IBM compatible computer all over again.

7. Adding links and categories is much more complicated using Drupal compared to Wordpress

While it is very simple to add a link or page to Wordpress I saw that I had to choose more options to add a link to Drupal.
What link? I linked The blog to the Drupal page. I will have to do the same later in Wordpress.

I noticed that Drupal doesn't have a WYSIWYG editor. What is the point of using it if I still have to edit my pages in Dreamweaver?
There was a module for installing one but It seemed awfully silly that one wasn't already integrated.

This message was written originally using Drupal's blog option but I copy/pasted  it to my Wordpress install since I actually know how it works :-)

I couldn't find a way to put in categories for the article in Drupal while Wordpress made it easy to add Drupal as a category.