Archive for Featured Resources
Review Builders
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Review Builders is an affiliate tool that is used to easily write reviews of art found online. Currently, Great Big Canvas, Imagekind, Loxly Gallery, CafePress and Zazzle are supported.
You can get started writing art reviews or commentaries in six simple steps:
1. Install the Review Builders button.
2. Visit a supported site and click the Review Builders button.
3. Write your art review or commentary.
4. Generate the code.
5. Insert the code into your site or blog.
6. Preview your post!
Squidoo
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Squidoo is a website that was launched by Seth Godin in October 2005. The idea is simple: everyone is an expert at something. Squidoo allows you to build pages (called lenses) for free. Lenses can be about anything that you are interested in: politics, religion, sports, etc.
Anyone who creates a Squidoo lens is called a lensmaster. Lensmasters have several tools available that will allow them to add links, feeds, lists, etc. to their lenses.
Squidoo makes money through ads and affiliate revenue. The company then splits profits with charity and its lensmasters. The first 5% of revenue goes to charity. Of the remaining revenue, 45% goes to Squidoo and 50% goes to lensmasters. Lensmasters can choose to either keep their share of the profits or donate it to charity.
Several POD shopkeepers promote their shops through Squidoo . For example, if you have a shop that features dog designs, you might do a lens all about dogs. Within the lens, feature some of your products that you think your audience might be interested in. The CafePress dog bowls and dog t-shirts would be good choices.
Adobe Photoshop Express Launches
Posted by: | CommentsAfter months of anticipation, Adobe has launched a free, online version of its popular photo-editing software Photoshop. Adobe Photoshop Express is entirely web based and handles many of the common tasks of the original software, such as color correction and resizing.
MyCJReports
Posted by: | CommentsHave you been Teesed?
I’d like y’all to meet Jim. He’s the owner of a great CafePress shop called Teesed. If you have participated in the rowdy chat area of the CafePress forums, you’ve no doubt heard of Jim. He’s one of our valiant mods who struggles to keep things…. er…. uhhhhmmmmm…. contained. (I swear! I’m innocent! It wasn’t me!)
But Jim is much more than a creative shopkeeper and hard-nosed mod….. the man has some wicked-crazy coding skills. Yep, he’s the Cafewish guy who brought WishAds and Categories Script to life!
Now, he’s done it once again!
Welcome, Jim! Glad to have you here today! First of all, what is To My Inbox?
To My Inbox fills a void that most people would consider to be obvious. When you make a sale at CafePress, you can be sent an email to let you know. When you make a sale through Commission Junction as an affiliate, you have to log on to CJ and make a few clicks to see your sales reports. To My Inbox will check every hour to see if you have a new sale, then email you the details of that sale. In addition to the main function, it also can pull in your sales data in order for you to view it in powerful reports.
WAIT! *runs to check the name of our site again*
*whispers* Uhhhhmmmmm…. Jim…. hon….. POD For Youis all about using print-on-demand companies to run your own t-shirt shop, gift shop, or art gallery. Why would shopkeepers be interested in your service?
Shopkeepers that don’t double as affiliate marketers won’t find any benefit in using this service. However, shopkeepers that also do affiliate selling can find that this helps free them up to not worry about whether they got an affiliate sale or not. They can focus on their efforts as a shopkeeper and just get a little smile when a To My Inbox sale email comes in their inbox.
Yes, indeed! Several shopkeepers have branched out into the affiliate arena. I know that I’ve really enjoyed affiliating the designs of other shopkeepers myself. I also use affiliating to offer products that complement my design offerings. So, how is this service going to make my life easier?
This is the real focus of the service. Marketers want to focus on marketing, not wading through data trying to figure out if they are being successful. Through the email notices and the data reports, this saves marketers time and gives them information they need to make more money.
Meh…. we’ll see….
*fast forward a few weeks*
OK, folks! Jim has let me do a test run and give feedback of To My Inbox for the past few weeks. OMG!!! I freakin’ lurves it!!!!
Usually, I keep several tabs open on my browser… one was always for Commission Junction. I would find myself refreshing the reports constantly to see if I had any sales.
Now, I automatically get emails every few hours that tell me whether or not I made affiliate sales. Commission Junction is also really crummy about showing which products I sold. Before, I always had to copy the SKU number, then go to the CafePress marketplace to search for it.
Forget all of that! To My Inbox not only tells me what I sold, but it also has a big ol’ honkin’ picture of the product as well!
So, Jim…. give us a complete rundown of what this baby can do….. will it clean my kitchen and massage my feet?
There are three features available on To My Inbox.
The first is called mailReports. It gives you the ability to have CJ sales come directly to your inbox. And with certain publishers like CafePress, we can include details like the shop name and id, the price, the actual product and even a thumbnail. You don’t get that in the current CJ report. You only get an “sku” that you have to paste into other tools to find out what actually sold. You can set the frequency of reports and even tell the service to email you if you don’t have a sale – just so you know.
The second service is the quickReports. This gives you a specific, unique url to use to view your daily sales or the past several days of sales in an easy-to-read report. With the unique url, you don’t have to log on to CJ or even to To My Inbox to view sales reports. I have mine bookmarked so I can get to it any time I want to see my sales.
The third part of To My Inbox is the ability to download your last 6 months of sales into a database. Because of what these do, we call them powerReports. We provide several different ways to view the data so you can see which of your efforts are being successful. You can sort by pid, sid, date, shop id, and product type and filter them all by date to see where to focus your efforts. The reports show the total orders, items sold, sale amount, commission amount and the sale/commission per order. For example, run the “SID” report to determine which of your tracking SIDs is actually the most effective. You might have a few more sales with one, but find that your commission per order is higher with another. Then you can decide if there are things you can do to bring either of those numbers up.
It will not clean your kitchen, but it might just give you the time to make enough to get someone else to!
*makes mental note that Teesed avoided mentioning my feet*
Spill your guts, mister! How much is this going to cost?
There is a free three day trial for everything except for the powerReports. Then, there are several options for continued service. The mailReports service is available as a stand-alone service and is $19.99 for the entire year. The full package that includes all three services is available on a 1-, 3-, 6-, and 12-month subscription ranging from $9.99 to $39.99. This allows you to evaluate the service for a small fee to see the benefits of the service.
I’m tellin’ y’all…. try the free trial! If you are an affiliate marketer who deals with Commission Junction on a daily basis, you will absolutely fall in love with this service….
*whispers* Even if it doesn’t massage your feet.
Until next time, gang…..
Business Card Cases
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# Determine the current base URL
if(!isset($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'])) {
$psps_base_url = $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'];
if (isset($HTTP_SERVER_VARS['QUERY_STRING'])) { $psps_base_url .= $HTTP_SERVER_VARS['QUERY_STRING']; }
} else {
$psps_base_url = $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];
}
$psps_parameters = '';
foreach ($_REQUEST as $key => $value) {
if (strpos($key,”psps_”) > -1 ) {
$psps_parameters .= ‘&’.$key.’=’.urlencode($value);
$psps_base_url = str_replace(‘&’.$key.’=’.urlencode($value), “”, $psps_base_url);
$psps_base_url = str_replace($key.’=’.urlencode($value), “”, $psps_base_url);
}
}
$psps_parameters .= “&psps_show_search=true”;
$psps_parameters .= “&psps_show_navigation=true”;
$psps_parameters .= “&psps_show_products=true”;
$psps_url = “?psps_base_url=”.urlencode($psps_base_url);
$psps_url=”http://shops.popshops.com/shops/php/45895cae705d42b7bbca14d412db03e5$psps_url$psps_parameters”;
# Include the shop
if (function_exists(‘curl_init’)) {
$shop=curl_init();
curl_setopt($shop,CURLOPT_URL,$psps_url);
curl_exec($shop);
curl_close($shop);
} else {
readfile($psps_url);
}
?>
