Day 5 – Struggling with Amazon Auto Posters

Spent the day today getting one of my satellite sites looking nice for the users! Lots of messing around with plugins and a good sized first post as an introduction to the site and to get the SEO going.

Now I know that I said I would be making these much more like authority sites than just raw niche sniper sites, but I have to say that I am in awe of those folk who can churn out one a day (or maybe even 2 in some cases!)  My simple editing games have left me with a site that is “getting there”…… It doesn’t have any products on it yet, a job for completion tomorrow I think, but at this point I’ve tripped over my new Amazon auto-poster plugin.

Don’t get me wrong, I fully intend for these reviews to be fully-fledged as per the Amazonian Profit Plan but I thought it would be cool to have access to all of the Amazon metadata for my products in advance. That way, I can theoretically build my own templates for the product pages and use the data I have to populate some of those fields while writing the rest.

Anyway, best laid plans of mice and men, the templates that come with the product – WPZonBuilder – are more obscure than I was expecting and unfortunately the demo sites don’t really go into any details about how they were achieved. This has left me trying all possible combinations of settings trying to get something that looks the same and wondering at the same time if I shouldn’t really be going with pages instead of posts as a site building mechanism. It’s funny, I went down this route thinking that it would be so much easier than editing the HTML templates provided in the IPK setup. I must have “stupid” written on my forehead.

If anyone has enormous WPZonBuilder experience, I’d be really happy to hear from you about your own thoughts on my dilemma.

Earnings for Day 4:

Adsense: $0

Amazon: $0

Clickbank: $7 (I seem to have an affiliate who has worked out the right audience!)


Comments

5 responses to “Day 5 – Struggling with Amazon Auto Posters”

  1. Hey Martin,

    I’m Louis, the developer of WP Zon Builder. If you have any specific questions on how to use the template system or tell me exactly what you’re trying to achieve, I can tell you how to setup the templates to get the look you want.

    My e-mail address for support inquiries is listed at http://www.wpzonbuilder.com/

    Please let me know if I can be of any assistance, and good luck with the plugin!

    Louis

  2. Hey Louis,

    That’s very kind (and quick) of you. I have a technical background (just not on ein PHP and WordPress) so I was trying to figure it all out before bothering you. I may still do more of that before I bother support.

    As an idea for a template, how hard would it be to build a summary and post combined? I know the hammers demo site has a little of this, but I’m thinking more about the classic eshopping grid of products in a category that all point back to the product specific page/post.

    Martin

  3. You’d have to modify your theme to display the posts on category/archive pages in a grid-style layout. It’s not something you would reasonably be able to do just by editing the WP Zon Builder templates, although in theory you could since you can put any code in them you wish.

    Louis

  4. Hi Louis,

    Yeah, I’d found my way in the code to both the category page handling and also the way the excerpts get used by WPZonBuilder. I think I have a good handle on how the options set up the excerpts.

    Do you have anyone using this stuff with the Socrates theme, as I’m not seeing any of the short posts showing up in the category page? I’ll keep checking.

    Martin

  5. Check your excerpt settings on the WP Zon Builder -> General Settings page. For the fastest reply, send an e-mail to the address listed at http://www.wpzonbuilder.com/support/, or let me know when you respond back here.

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