Store Management

Store Management

If your blog came with a store set up, there are a couple things you should know.  Depending on the niche you might have an eBay store or an Amazon store. Either way, don't fret because I've set it up to be easy to switch between the two if you desire.

At the time of this writing, eBay is being really strict with approving new members, so don't let it bother you if you don't get accepted into their program. If that happens to you, it's pretty simple to change the eBay store to an Amazon store (or add any other affiliate products you might have in mind).

The eBay set up.
I use a plugin that produces a feed of eBay items based on keywords you specify. There are quite a lot of options but the plugin creators did an outstanding job with the plugin page to make it easy to understand.

They have a detailed description of every option. I'm only going to cover the few basics that you need to make money from it though.
First, you're going to add your Ebay Partner Network Campaign ID so that you get credit for any links/sales.
To do that, create a new Campaign in your EPN account.

Once you have it set up, copy the Campaign ID.

Log in to your Wordpress admn and from the sidebar menu, scroll down to Settings and click on WordBay
Now, scroll all the way down to the bottom of the Wordbay page and enter your Campaign ID here:

Deciding what products show up is based on keywords you choose and it couldn't be easier.

Go to Pages/Edit and then the Store page.
The code used to generate the products is simple.

[wordbay] keyword here [/wordbay]

You separate multiple keywords with commas and use a subtract symbol to block any items that have particular keywords. Let's say I wanted shoes and boots, but didn't want cowboy boots to show up. I'd do this:

 [wordbay]shoes, boots, -cowboy[/wordbay]

That's it. Take a peek at the options page for any minor changes you'd like to make or read the creator's doumentation/blog.

What about Amazon?
I could write an entire ebook on promoting Amazon, but I'm just going to be short and to the point on how you can change the items to be Amazon products instead.

The easiest way to do that is simply log in to your Amazon Associates account and either
create an astore – or – create a widget or two.

I prefer to create widgets because I find it faster/easier, and does the job just fine for the niche blogs I usually create.

Basically, once you're logged in, just choose create a widget like you normally would (click Widgets from top tabs menu).
Choose a size that will fit (600px or less in width if you want to keep the blog's sidebar).
Go to the store page (inside Wordpress admin, same as I showed you above), and delete the Wordbay code.

Now paste in the Amazon widget code and bam! You got Amazon products.

You can also mix and match a couple widgets to fill up the page and then test different ones to see if any do better.

I often will put a Carousel (I really like that widget!) on top of a Slider.

Other affiliate offers
Of course, you can add whatever you want to this page. Ebooks, Clickbank products, it doesn't matter. It's as simple as adding the code for whatever products you have into the HTML post editor tab instead of what's currently there.
Full Width Blog Page
Also, don't forget that you have the full width option for a page that gets rid of the sidebar. While your in the page editor, on the right hand side column you will see a template drop down menu.

 

If you choose Full Widh and then Update Page, this will widen the page to the blog's full width and get rid of the sidebar. This would give you more room for products. (you can also do this for any page you want)