Monthly Archive for July, 2009

Amazon Reloaded for WordPress

Hot Plugin, Cool FeaturesThe Amazon Reloaded for WordPress plugin makes it easy for site authors to quickly search Amazon’s index from their WordPress Dashboard interface and grab text links and/or image links to place with their content. The links can optionally contain an individual’s affiliate tag, if entered on the settings screen.

The Amazon Reloaded plugin is easy to use. You can add a book link to any page or post as you are writing it, right from your WordPress Dashboard. If you have of books/products on Amazon that you’d like to recommend, we can also help you set up a Resources page with a listing of your recommendations so users can find them all in one place (like the Resources page on this site).

The Amazon Reloaded for WordPress plugin is amazingly simple to use:

  • Start writing a post or page and when you need to insert something, scroll down to the Amazon Reloaded meta box
  • Enter your search term and press the Search Amazon button or hit enter
  • You can optionally select a different search index if you’re having trouble finding what you’re looking for
  • To insert a link, click the “Send Link to Editor” button.
  • To insert an image, select the size you want to use and then click the adjacent “Send Image to Editor” button.

Amazon Showcase is a similar plugin which provides a nice sidebar widget for presenting book recommendations in random order from a list or lists you create with the plugin.

Earn Income with Your Recommendations

Including an affiliate ID in the plugin settings will link your Amazon Affiliate account to any potential sales that are generated by someone who: visits your site, sees a book you recommend, and clicks on the link. The link takes them to that product page on the Amazon site, and—if they then follow through and actually purchase the book (or product)—then your affiliate account is credited a small commission from the sale. It won’t make you rich, but if your site users like your recommendations and act on them, it a small amount of passive income that you wouldn’t see otherwise.

The Amazon plugins both require an Amazon Web Services account in order to work. If you want to use these plugins on your site, we can set up an Amazon Web Services account and an Amazon Associates account for you, and link them to the plugin in the appropriate place.

At some point, after you start using the Amazon plugins, you’ll want to login to your Amazon account and set up your payment options so they can send you any affiliate earnings you generate. To do this, just log in, and click on the Account Settings link at the top right on the page. There’s a link under Payment Information for “Change your payment method.” Just follow the instructions and make your choices there and you’ll be all set!

The one thing to keep in mind is that you can’t use your own affiliate link to purchase product. You can offer it up to others, but you, yourself can’t purchase using it. Doing so could give cause  for Amazon to discontinue your affiliate account.

Learn more  on the WordPress.com Plugin page

Published on Saturday July 11, 2009 in Blogging and Recommended tools. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Adding a YouTube Video to your blog

Adding video to your blog is a geat way to engage your audience and create some buzz. The best way to do this is to “host” all of your video on YouTube, where you can also benefit from the traffic you can generate from the huge community there.

The first thing of course is to have a YouTube account, and then some video to post there. Assuming that you already have that base covered, actually adding the video to your blog is simplicity in itself.

Here are the steps:

  1. Open a Page or Post on your blog where you would like to present your video
  2. In a separate browser  window or tab, go to the YouTube video page for the video you would like to present
  3. In the right-hand column, next to the video, there is a grey box with the account name and description, and at the bottom of the box are two fields named “URL” and “embed.” Click into the embed field to highlight all the code there. Copy that code into memory and return to your other open window with the blog post open.
  4. Now, at the top of the editing window for the Page/Post, there are two tabs—Visual and HTML. You want to click the HTML tab to enter the code for your video.
  5. Scroll down to the place on the page where you want the video to appear… Somewhere before or after an appropriate paragraph. When you find the right location, simply hit RETURN to create a new line, and then PASTE the code you collected from YouTube into that empty line.
  6. That’s it! Switch back to the Visual tab of your editing window, scroll to the place on the page where you added the code, and you should see a blank yellow box representing the video. You can click next to it and use the Center tool if you want it centered on the page. But otherwise, you’re done.

Here’s an example of a video on a post…

Published on Thursday July 9, 2009 in Blogging and Helpful References. 0 Comments