Friday 30 May 2014

Discover the joy of the free Zazzle forum collections generator

Problem solved:

Posting a product with linked image on the Zazzle forum is too hard for many, and takes too long for the rest of us!

I wondered if I could come up with a solution that suited me and would likely be useful to others. Well, I've finished it and it does suit me, and it seems to be useful to others judging by the forum posts I'm starting to see :)

Free Zazzle Forum Post Collections Generator

Tool Benefits

  1. Quickly make forum posts of collections of related designs, all using your referrer id and tracking code
  2. Let the visitor see a page of related products with just one click
  3. Make it easy for affiliates to use your collection with their referral id and tracking codes 
  4. Use on any forum that uses bbcode, not just Zazzle's!

Tool Features

Here are the features of the tool and the webpage where you configure your collection

For the forum post:

  • A title to show on the forum post
  • The ids of exectly 4 products you want in your collection
  • As usual, the referrer id and tracking codes to use in all links
  • The display template to use of the 3 available (how it will look on the forum)
  • Your storename for a general link at the end of the post
One of the special features I've built in is the construction of a link that, when clicked, displays a page of related products. It's the second-to-last link in the forum post generated.

The very last link in the forum post is a special one aimed at affiliates. It allows the affiliate to quickly regenerate the collection but using their referrer id and tracking code instead.

So for the related products page, you give

  • A search term or phrase that will pull the related products
  • If you used a storename, it will pull from the store, otherwise from the market place
  • A department id to allow you to restrict products to specific types (see screenshot below for where to get the department id)
  • The size to display the product images at
  • A background color for the product images
  • A title to be displayed on the page
  • Whether a product's tags should be included with its description
All links in the related products page that gets generated use your referrer id and tracking code. The page generated is only temporary, lasting only while the visitor views the page, disappearing when they move somewhere else or close the browser window.

Finding the product id

Here's where to find the product id to use. First, get to the product page of the first product you want in your collection. Then look in the address bar for the last number, in this case 228396736475066042.
  • Sometimes there might be some others numbers earlier in the url - you don't want those, you want the ones after the product 's name you should see



That number is the product id and if you double click it, like before, it will select just that number for you to copy.


Finding the department id

When you're in your store's back end and you click on any of the departments in the left hand nav, then you'll see the department id in the address bar. It's the one that's preceded by dp-

Have a look at this screenshot:

Look in the address bar for the number after dp- and that's your department id

If you double click that number, like before it will select just that number for you to copy.

Enjoy and let me know how you got on with it in the comments :)

No comments:

Post a Comment

Comment moderation is switched on. Please wait till I've had a chance to review your comment and publish it. Thanks!