Please tell me if you know.. i made an asote but its dull and no response.. How do u make sales? hoe you customize?? pleaseeeeee in detail
Hey some of the things I do to promote my aStores is create a Swiki for them. http://swicki.eurekster.com/ That's a great tool for promoting any website, also, it just takes time, create some links to your store on other websites of yours. Maybe even spread word through friends and family. Hope that gets you started Thomas
aStore script sucks. Checkout associate-o-matic (i think is the name). The paid version works quite nicely for putting up an SEO friendly site in minutes.
I created one of those small aStores, it had products that where highly targetted to my site and a link to it was put in several prominent poitions in one of my member areas. I had it there for quite a few months and it produced absolutely zero sales! So I called it quites to promote more profitable things!
You won't get rich overnight with any of the associate stores I've got a few standalone ones like this one: http://www.jamesbondbookshop.co.uk and I've also incorporated them into existing sites such as these ones: http://www.search.ie/ukshop http://www.search.ie/shop
My aStore used to be in the 1st result pages of google but I change method many way so I forget now how I do.
> hoe you customize?? Right, this is a question I have. Anybody got any bright ideas about how to place the astore on the page? At my site It's gotta be red (link later, I'm still a newbie), selling items coloured red (if you love the colour red, then you won't think this a strange idea ), I have tried to get some content in there, which is essential for getting searched (and must be at the top of the page, or may not get indexed), but then the problem is, where to locate the Astore? I am sure I am not the only one with this problem. It's so darn wide (about 860 px, right?) that there's no room for anything else! So I have had to shunt the Astore right down the page, so it is not even visible due to the content. That can't be very good for attracting the visitor's attention! Even if I chuck out Adsense and an intro text box I have at the top, that still doesn't leave much room for content. It would have to be crammed in to the left or right of the i-frame, but that's only a 100 or so pixels on a 1024-optimized page, looks nasty. The option I am thinking of is to do all navigation using nodes outside the frame, so I can narrow the frame still further, but then I lose the search option. My request for the future would be to allow us to customize the size and shape of the Astore... Probably something like Associate-o-Matic, or some kind of database-driven referral links page is the solution at the moment, and not Astore at all... markowe
Blacknight, How is the success of those sites? I noticed you had some non-Bond DVDs -- you might want to tweak your search... http://www.jamesbondbookshop.co.uk/movies-DVDs.html
Astralis I spotted that as well While some search queries you'd expect to bring up the odd weird title, the DVD search thing is just bizarre I'll have to start explicitly removing ASINS! As for the level of business - it's very up and down. However, that's fine, as they're not exactly hard work to maintain
Not hard to maintain at all. That is true. How is your Google traffic? I know they were trying to stop all these Amazon sites. Or at least claimed they would. Off-topic: I see you're a Bond fan. I wrote this article before Casino Royale premiered: Why James Bond has a one-track mind
Astralis The more successful sites get traffic due to their main content. The Amazon only ones, however, are much harder to build up It's not impossible - it just takes more effort
I've developed a fairly complete AWS platform. I still don't know whether I want to launch it as one or as mini-sites (such as what you did with the Bond page) or integrate them into minor pages of my sites. Getting punished by Google, though, is a concern. I will have original content, but I was planning to integrate it into the item page -- mostly original reviews. What is Google looking for to know it's an Amazon site? How much original content must there be for it to be unique? Any ideas at least?
You just can't rely on your search string to produce accurate items. For example, on my site I want just "red mp3 players", but that search string throws up all sorts of nonsense I don't want (esp. stuff that isn't red!), so I keep the keyword search to the sub-category, and keep the main category to a list of hand-selected individual items. That also gives you the possibility to write short texts below items. It would be good if there was more accurate field-based keyword searching - i.e. in my case a "colour" (sorry, color) field.
I'm guessing they are not penalising Astores per se, it's just that when you have an i-frame astore on your page, that doesn't leave much room for your original content. Seems to me Google totally ignores the astore and looks at your text content, as ever. Since that can be quite minimal on astore pages, it may be that that makes the page uninteresting to Google in and of itself.
Blacknight - Your JamesBond site doesn't even look like a standalone a-store. How did you get it to look different from that standard? Or is it an AoM store? Sorry if this is a stupid question.
stilloutthere, blackknight has no doubt done what I have done -- it's purely custom coding by working with Amazon's XML feed.
Forgive me for sounding stupid, but why use a-store, which is designed for the coding illiterate? Don't they offer other, friendlier options for those who code? Is there some advantage I don't see?
It's useful for the semi-coding illiterate like me, plus it is VERY quick to set up. You really can have it up and running in a few minutes. Though I would love to program my own store, and probably will asap.