Last week, I purchased a WordPress plugin (WPZonBuilder), which is tailored for Amazon Affiliate Marketing. I found out about this plugin on Alex Whalley’s blog. After investing 13 minutes of my time watching his video :), I did not think twice and grabbed that plugin as fast as I could. Am I happy? Oh yes, very happy. Thanks Alex. Since I purchased the plugin, I have already set up two websites that are powered 100% by WPZonBuilder. If you want to take a look, here is one that I set up last week (seven days ago), about Yoga and Pilates.
Now why am I telling you all this? Well, if you already know a bit about me, I am a strong advocate for all things free, provided they are reliable, safe and actually delivers. Justin of DragonBlogger recently wrote about an Amazon affiliate plugin that is an excellent alternative for WPZonBuilder. Affiliate Easel for Amazon is a new plugin that is very good, if you are into marketing Amazon related products, and I can vouch 100% for what Justin says. If he says it is good, trust me, it is good, period.
What is Affiliate Easel for Amazon?
Essentially it is a plugin that makes your life easier when you are marketing for products at Amazon. If you read my post about how to use your most viewed articles for better conversion, you can easily use this plugin to insert an Amazon related product and hopefully convert to a sale. To get started, all you need to do is install Affiliate Easel Plugin, activate, insert your Amazon associate ID, access keys and you’re done. As an example, I have already installed the plugin in one of my websites and with just a very small short code, it gives you this (see below).
Cool! There are several forms in which you can customize the appearance of the Amazon products. You can even create a custom search page within your website and the lists goes on. I won’t be giving all the details on the technical aspect of it, as I prefer if you went over to Justin’s blog and read the two part series he wrote about this plugin. You will learn what you need to know about Building an Amazon Store in WordPress for Free, there.
Finally, the developer of this plugin only requires that “we” provide him some support to maintain this awesome plugin for free. Please take a moment to visit his website and if you can, give it the highest rating on WordPress.org, because he totally deserves it.
What say you? Ever heard of this plugin before? If you are an Amazon associate, this plugin is a must. Is it better than WPZonBuilder? They are really different in my view. I think that it depends on what your ulterior objectives are. WPZonBuilder is very, very powerful and I totally recommend it, but unless you are thinking of creating websites that are 100% Amazon driven, then, Affiliate Easel for Amazon plugin will definitely do the job for you.
To your success!
Caleb
There was an extreme amount of code tweaking I had to do using a much older script for building a full mall with Amazon as the product database but this plugin made things so much simpler!
And now I have a more elegant looking mall site with less coding over at WezeeMall.info and have incorporated it into my MultiSearch options on MSB..
btw,
Your yoga site really looks great (although I may be a bit biased because I’m in to Yoga!) what template did you use for it ❓
Hi Caleb. Good to know that these plugins can do you good. I have checked out your wezeemall site and if I may make a suggestion, I think that you should remove one of the “sharing” options you have over there. I would probably leave the one on the right side bar and remove the rest (header specially). They are very intrusive in my opinion and if you can, maybe you can rework your nav menu. Either than that, it looks great. good luck and sorry for snooping around, lol. Hope you don’t take that as a negative critique 🙂
Caleb
Yea, I got rid of the one beneath the header as I was already thinking of different ways to make those changes 🙂
My main accomplishment on that site was getting all those shopping category pages published correctly which makes it difficult to reshape the nav menu because that is where those various shopping pages are linked from providing quick shopping access.. but any other suggestions are welcomed.
Dana
Thanks for the info. I think it is perfect for my cell phone blog. So far, I only use the manual amazon affiliate link integration way but I found that manual way is not so effective. I will check this plugin for sure.
Hi Dana. Manual integration is very complicated and it does not even “look” good, hence the reason why I loved both of these plugins. They are a real time saver and makes the post very professional looking. You can tweak it as mush as you can, such as include ratings, customers review, and more. Give it a try and let me know what you think. I’ll love to see how it goes. BTW, I too have a “mobile phone” website and this plugin is already in action over there. We’ll see how it performs 🙂
Hey DiTesco, this is a cool thing that you’re doing by offering us a side-by-side comparison of these two plugins for Amazon. I do have an affiliate account with them but I don’t put too much effort into it. These sound like time savers though. Thanks for sharing the info!
Hi Ileane. you are welcome, and YES, these plugins are indeed time savers and great for marketing Amazon products. they integrate very well inside a post, page or even your sidebars, for that matter. I’m using both now and my CTRs have increased dramatically, although I am yet to see conversions rolling in, lol. That’s a different story, but getting more clicks is already a small achievement, right?
laptop cases
Your yoga site looks cool and has a friendly design , i like it , you really know how to make a site. I wish i could make what you’ve done there. I need those plugins that you are talking about. Do you know from where i could take them?
Thanks for listing my article and for the praise, I take pride in being able to give thorough and detailed review of products and particularly WordPress plugins. I don’t impress easily and I had actually worked with the developer for 3 weeks to have him implement some features before I would review it.
Hi Justin. For all of what you just said is the reason why I stand by your judgment on this one. I have read both of your post, installed the plugin and tested it as you have suggested. Worked like a charm and really an excellent alternative for WPZonBuilder, despite both being somewhat different. Thanks for stopping by and for making that awesome review. Nice work you had with the developer too.
MK Safi
Ah, so you collaborated on improvement for 3 weeks — that makes sense.
I was contacted by the developer of Affiliate Easel initially requesting that I list his plugin in my WordPress Amazon plugin page. I listed it, but honestly I wasn’t very impressed with it. It didn’t do more than the basic things that are already covered by existing plugins. But when I saw your review of it, I was impressed, too.
I just got started with marketing Amazon products and the Affiliate Easel Plugin seems like it would be useful. I think I will head over to Alex’s site and check out the videos for WPZonBuilder myself. Thanks for sharing the quick review.
Hi Jason. Do check out Alex’s video as it convinced me rather quickly to get WPZonBuilder for myself. It is really a great plugin and Easel is also a great alternative (free) if you want to play around with it.
Alex
Hey man, this is an awesome article and review of the two plugins side by side.
Thanks for the honorable mention my friend, glad you enjoyed the plugin, and of course – thankyou for supporting my blog by purchasing it through me in the first place.
I am definitely glad I have it now, although I am kicking myself that I did not know about this other one.
Your point about including links to posts with high views is a good one, and although there is not too much I could think to focus on through Amazon, I never thought to look!
Maybe thinking of adding the plugin to my own blog and sticking a few products after some more popular posts ….hmmmm.
Thanks for the link love too DiTesco!
Hi Alex. Good to see you here. The honorable mention is well deserved my friend as it literally convinced me to jump over WPZonbuilder’s site and grab that magical plugin in no time. Like you, I am really glad that you opened that gate for me as I was looking for alternatives to monetize some of my “dormant” domain names, and the plugin fits the bill nicely. Hopefully it will gain more traction with Amazon products in there. The other plugin is also good, specially for in-post marketing. This is where I leverage on high search traffic on other websites I have. We’ll see how it goes.
Michele Welch
OK, super cool DiTesco! This definitley seems like a new little side project for me to take on (as if I don’t have enough to do 😉 ).
I haven’t heard or used either plugin, so it’s going to be fun checking them out. What an awesome idea to create an affiliate site and just let it be!
You’re the best. 🙂
P.S. Very impressed with your Yoga. Up in 7 days, huh?… Nice!
Hi Michele. Yeah these plugins are really great and good to set up “virtual” sites than almost run on its own, without violating any policy 🙂 Yoga site was actually set up very quickly once I got that super cool domain name. I also set up another one last week and I am going crazy with WPZonBuilder. I found a way to leverage on my domain names that were parked and not bringing in any money. Maybe now it will get more traction. We’ll see. Easel is a charm and it is running live on other sites, in posts where there are high search traffic.
BTW, and not a sales pitch, the link above + the code “zongaz” will get you a 30% discount. The “Gazette” theme (The Yoga & Pilates theme) is included free in the package. Now how cool is that 😉
Dennis Edell@ Direct Sales Marketing
I haven’t started promoting them much yet, but they are on top of my affiliate list.
It’s a little overwhelming though, is this not the 4th or 5th Amazon affiliate plugin now?
Hi Dennis. Saw your email and replied to it. Are you still experiencing that problem of page load time? Hopefully everything is working well now. Would love t know your feedback on that one.
As for other Amazon plugins, I really don’t know if these are the 4th and 5th respectively. I do know that there are others and I have tried a different one that did not work as well as this ones.
Thanks for stopping by
Michele Welch
Cool! Thanks for the coupon code. 😉 Every little helps right?
Every bit helps indeed 😉 haha
nazimwarriach
Hi DiTesco,
You are always on top of my list for blogging tips. It is also another good addition on your blog.
Would you please write some posts on creating a WordPress blog for coupon codes blog.
Hi Nazim. I’ll give it a research and see what I can come up with. There is an older post here though that has something related to that so check it out if you want. There are some useful insights. Discount Code Websites
Windows 8
I have earlier tried monetizing my site with Amazon but wasnt successful now going to try this plugin and would let you know how it works out.
Hi there. I would love to hear your experience with these plugins once you have tried it out, specially to that of Easel. Just want to know form other sources if everything works well. Thanks for stopping by
lawmacs
I believe that that plugin is worth a look at especially easel since it is free thanks for the heads up Ditesco.
Hi Gary. Yeah, both have their own advantages and disadvantages, and Easel is definitely a good choice not only because it is free, but because it works well, compared to other alternatives I have already used. WPZonBuilder in my opinion is geared more towards “standalone” type websites. Thanks for stopping by
Alex
Hello DiTesco, I was impressed by the plugin in Alex’s demonstration too. I think there wont be much until we press a button and a new online store full with amazon products will be built for us.
But I am concerned about the this plugins ability to be SEO, because this actually is copied content from amazon which will most likely be indexed way before your website will, and your pages will be considered duplicate thus dropped from index.
So, at least until now, have you notice something like this happening with your websites?
Hi Alex. That is a valid question and one of the reasons I built a dedicated (standalone) website just for that (e.g. yoga ). The SEO issue is a valid point and I will not suggest you to use WPZonBuilder on a website that is already established and with good organic traffic. That is never a good idea, unless you are creating a complete new section or using a sub-domain.
Since Google stance on “duplicate” issue is targeted more towards “scrappers” and spammers, I think that this will not be affected because Amazon actually autorizes you do that, by giving you access keys. Their iFrames is one example. Also, as far as I can tell, and I may be wrong here, there is really no content in the post but rather a “shortcode” that picks up what is on Amazon and displays it. Look at it as a mirror instead of having the same words and content. The posts are actually “updated” as often as Amazon updates them. Now, the autoblogs are an issue because they copy material without authorization, benefit from it and normally use “black hat” SEO techniques to rank well. Obviously I am not saying that Google will vouch for that, they can do whatever they want.
My Yoga site has been steadily improving in Alexa, down to 2 million in just a short time. It has a PR0 which indicates that it is indexed. Type this on Google and you will see – site:www.yogapilates.co. Ultimately, you can always add in some “other” articles to help on your SEO. Remember that there are other engines, and keyword rich URLs, using adequate SEO tactics and plugins, good promotion on the social sphere are just but a few ways to get your site noticed.
Lastly, if you are thinking, of inserting just a few Amazon products on your already established site and do want to run any risk, Easel could be a good alternative. Hope this helps..
Alex
Thanks for you reply, Francisco! I was thinking of something similar, writing actual articles and then at the end to add the products, this way I help the page rank with the help of the article while I supposedly should make sales with the ad.
Google doesn’t really know that amazon authorizes you to use their content and they might slap anyone that doesn’t conform with their new, more strict, anti-scraping rules.
But I think the strategy you described and mine are somewhat google slap proof 🙂
That’s a good strategy to follow Alex and “slap proof” it is 😉
tonyknuckles
I’ve used this strategy for all of my ebay product pages from the beginning. Keeps the page quality relevant and also the SERP’s stay cached well.
Web video player
“That’s a good strategy to follow Alex and “slap proof” it is ” – DiTesco! What is ” Slap Proof” DiTesco? Thanks in advance 🙂
Hi there. “Slap proof” means that it is less likely that the search engines will get your site banned or removed from the index 🙂
Ryan
I just found out about this plugin a few days ago and it’s saved me so much time on some of my niche sites.
Before this I was manually loading in each product with links from amazon directly which took hours for each site. Highly recommend this plugin to anyone with niche product sites.
Hi Ryan. thanks for sharing with us your experience about the plugin. It is a real time saver and also looks good 🙂 Thanks for stopping by
tonyknuckles@113tidbits
I’ve been using the phpbay version of a similar script/plugin for amazon and ebay pages. I shied away from the zon part because it’s extrmely short cookie length, and like the QCP model that ebay has implented.
Haven’t looked back since the investment 4 years ago.
Hi there. Glad you found something that is working well for you. Would you care to share “what script” you are using? That would be a great addition for everyone.
tonyknuckles@113tidbits
Sure, the plugin/script that I’m using for product pages can be found here:
“http://113tidbits.com/android-phones/samsung-galaxy/”
Above is called phpbaypro. Been using it since its early inception.
Billy
I have just released a plugin that people might be interested in, called Super Amazon Banners – it allows you to insert highly converting product images with a strong call to action and your affiliate link to Amazon products.
Had good feedback so far, and am looking to add new features over the next few weeks.
Matt
Never heard of this plugin before and as an Associate it might be worth looking into, especially as you’re having such success with it. Thanks for the plug!
Jeff Bode
I use WP Zon Builder for my Amazon sites as well, once you know how to use it you can set up a ton of quality content for the most popular products to drip out automatically.
Then you just need to worry about driving targeted traffic
Drew
Hi DiTesco, i found this site while i’m searching for tutorial wp zone builder on gazette themes.
Why i can’t make my site looks like yours? I have try to do step by step like on video tutorial. But thumbnail and rating not appear. Can you help me to this problem??
Hi Drew. I am sure it has something to do with the settings on Zon Builder. I will be more than glad to help. Shoot me an email and we’ll take it from there.