WordPress Zazzle Plugin - V3.4 NiftyGridZPro released

I've just released V3.4 of my NiftyGridZPro Wordpress Zazzle plugin. It's the Local Domains release.

I'm a bit sad I had to restrict it to product grids with 6 or fewer items. I had to because it does add to the page-load time for larger grids.

When Zazzle provide a clean way of ensuring only products for the given international domain are made available, that restriction won't be needed anymore and I'll update the plugin.

Anyway, if you're serious about your Zazzle business and you're ready to move to the next level, a self-hosted WordPress site / blog with the NiftyGridZPro Zazzle plugin is one way to go.

If you're dithering about when to make the move, perhaps this coupon will encourage you: use OFF40SEP2019 to get 40% off the September 2019 license. Expires October 7th, so you'd better be quick! Use it here

WordPress Zazzle Plugin (NiftyGridZPro) soon to be released at V3.4

I've been working on a great new feature for my NiftyGridZPro WordPress Zazzle plugin that should double your referral income.

You see, if you share a referral link to the .com Zazzle web site but the visitor who followed it buys from the say, .co.uk Zazzle site, then you WON'T get the referral.

I struggled with this for a couple of days but have now got a solution in place. If switched on in your Admin Panel (or in an individual post's shortcode) three things happen:

• Based on their IP address, their country is looked up
• The correct Zazzle domain for that country is looked up
• If the option is on, every product link to the .com domain (the default) is changed to the one just looked up

Every Zazzle country domain is supported. If Zazzle adds any new ones, they'll be added to NiftyGridZPro on the next upgrade cycle.

If the visitor is in the US, nothing is changed.
If a product turns up that is only available on  .com site, then its links are left alone.

If a product's link gets changed, even if switched on, the price line is never shown. Zazzle only gives out US dollar prices and that would be too confusing.

If you're injecting slot messages, any of those that link to the .com Zazzle domain will be also be changed as above.

Local domains - another great reason this is the gold-standard Wordpress Zazzle Plugin. NiftyGridZPro - look no further

Preparing to launch the NiftyGridZPro Affiliate Program

Funny old day, really.

I'm nearly there for the launch of my affiliate system for NiftyGridZPro - that's where people who love the plugin can earn by referring others who then go on to buy it.

Before I can launch, here's a list of thing steps on the way:

• Set up an affiliate program for NiftyGridZPro - DONE (via E-junkie)
• Set up a page so peeps can sign up to be an affiliate - DONE
• Set up a resources page for affiliates, filled with useful stuff to help them sell - IN PROGRESS

For that last step, I wanted to give them an animated gif because they're such a good way of getting engagement on various social media platforms (such as Facebook, Twitter and others)


Here's the final version:

Anyway, I was preparing the raw images for it and noticed that on the NiftyToolZ site, the colours of the faux product box images were all washed out. I don't remember them being like that, as they were nicely vibrant when I prepared them.

Whistle while you work...

After half a day of messing, I still didn't get to the bottom of it. Something to do with size as well because using the same image at a smaller size gives more vibrancy. I hope I didn't swing the pendulum too far the other way on the replacement images :)

Strange.

V3.3 NiftyGridZPro released today!

Happy to say I've now made the next release of the NiftyGridZPro.

V3.3 is a useability release with prettier grids for small cell-sizes, a speed enhancement (large product grids benefit the most) and a bug fix.

Read all about it here

V3.2 NiftyGridZPro now out - WordPress plugin for Zazzle

I've completed the next version of the NiftyGridZPro WordPress plugin for Zazzle and made the release public.

V3.2 adds Google Ads capability to improve your earnings!

A random slot / cell in each product grid (created by NiftyGridZPro) right across your site will be chosen to display a Google Ad. You set it  up in your admin settings as shown here.

Think of the Google Ad as another type of global slot message. Learn more and get tips in the FAQ on it, here.

V3.1 NiftyGridZPro officially released

It' s been a few achievement-filled days with NiftyGridZpro. Extended testing of the new features in V3 of NiftyGridZPro went well and it was publicly released.

V3's main feature is to allow the principle of "rotating ads". For NiftyGridZPro the "rotating ads" are placed, real-time, into randomly chosen slots in your grids of Zazzle products.

V3.1 now formally released as well.

V3 made one such global message available, V3.1 extended it to allow you to store up to 5 global slot messages. There's a full post with demo, on the NiftyGridZPro site.

FAQs updated.

Nearly ready to release the next version of NiftyGridZPro

Finalising...

I've been working away at finalising the next version of NiftyGridZPro. The new version brings with it:

• A new shortcode option to use only the Zazzle-added product names in your title area.
  This gives a nice, clean product grid item display and is really hepful when when space is tight
• A truly powerful Slot Message system
• An Admin Settings page for NiftGridZPro (used to set associate (aka referral) id and to set up global slot messaging

FAQ update

The last couple of posts describe each of these features in depth. What I've been doing is preparing the FAQ entry for Slot Messages.

Now those are done, all that remains is to work out

• pricing
• when / how to release the new version
• how to deal with upgrades for exisiting license holders
• what goes into the announcement material

Once that's done, all that's left to do is to share the material and make the new version available.

I've just had a thought about the marketing aspect of it. Perhaps I should do teasers on the new version on the NiftyGridZPro site? That's be cool!

NiftyGridZPro Slot Messages - Another new feature for the next release of our WordPress Plugin

I've continued working on the next version of NiftyGriidZPro, my WordPress plugin for Zazzle storekeepers and affiliates.

Slot Message

The new Slot Message feature allows you to use an optional set of shortcodes to set up an image and link. The optionally linked image gets placed randomly somewhere in your product grid, replacing temporarily what was already there.

You can see it in action here

You could even use a gif image to give a short animation.

Other features may be added as time goes on. No release date has yet been set for the new version.

Working on next release of NiftyGridZPro WordPress Plugin

I've been working on the next version of NiftyGriidZPro, my WordPress plugin for Zazzle storekeepers and affiliates.
I've added an optional feature to only display the part of the title that Zazzle adds to product titles made up by the designer.

You can see it in action here

Other features will be added as time goes on. No release date has yet been set for the new version.

How to: Get Animated Zazzle Collection gifs on Pinterest, Facebook and GPlus

Animated posts are easy!

I just made this #animated pin on Pinterest. When its url is shared on Facebook or GooglePlus, it only takes one click to see the animation and then one more click to visit your #ZazzleCollection (or whatever link you give when creating the pin).

It's a 25 minute project the first time you do it, 2 minutes when you get good! This is a sceenshot of the pin, click it to see the actual pin doing its animation thing :)

You can see how to do this for your Zazzle collection in this 6 minute vid tutorial:

All tools now operational in the Nifty Promo Control Panel

All tools in the Nifty Promo Control Panel are now working again.

It's brilliant for promoting and has some neat features. Best of all, it's entirely free. Tip my coffee jar with a donation if you like it :)

Slideshow Generator fixed in Nifty Promo Control Panel

Here's a slideshow created by copy-and-paste code from the Nifty Promo Control Panel.

Fetching ...won't be a tick!

search (new window)

What do you think?

YQL issue and the Nifty Promo Control Panel

I've partially solved the issue with YQL and the Nifty Promo Control Panel.

What happened

On Thursday 24th August the Yahoo Query Languge RSS feed facility stopped working. Soon after it started to work only intermittently. Many of the tools within the Nifty Control Panel use it, as does the panel itself, so everything stopped working reliably.

The fix

After lots of research on line, I found someone who mentioned that if you keep retrying to pull the feed with YQL, you eventually succeed.

I've only applied this fix to:
1) the control panel's own display while you're getting the products you want
2) the live product grid pull in:
Step 2: Choose your type of promoting->Get code for embedding in other sites->Product Grid code

I've tested the fix and it works just fine. Any new ones you create on your blogs / sites by using the live grid code will now work. It might take a little while longer to display your grid, depending on the number of attempts it has to make in trying to get a successful pull. It'll try up to 10 times before giving up.

(The static product grid code option above the live one works just fine as is - no changes were required)

There is a risk and it's that Verizon (who bought Yahoo) decide to remove YQL completely. If that happens, a completely different approach will need to be developed.

Over the next few days, I'll be applying the same fix to the other tools in the Nifty Promo Control Panel that need them.