Automatically identify and pin your Zazzle best with NiftyZSort

How to identify your best performers and then set up automatic pinning for them using just a few clicks and one copy-and-paste. It really is that simple!

Identify and auto pin / share your best-performing Zazzle products

First, you'll need a few things:

• An account on IFTTT - and know how to make applets there
• A Pinterest business account (or you could tweet or share on Facebook)
• The free NiftyZSort bookmarklet

Got those? Great, you're good to go :) No? I'll wait while you get them...

What is a best performer?

Products which get viewed only a few times on average before you make a sale are "best performers".

Note that if you've only had one order for a product after only two views, it's not really a best performer, you might just have got lucky! I think you can be sure of it being a best performer when it's sold more than a few and it's still got a low-views-to-orders.

Prodesigners report somewhere in the mid teens of views per order is average for their best ones. And some of those sold in their hundreds.

Identifying and choosing your best performers

First, decide on roughly what style / theme / type of product you want to run with this time. See the screenshots below for more detail.

• Get to your Zazzle store's back end 
• move to the category, department or search to bring them up
• from the sort drop down, choose Orders (All time)
• and lastly, set the page size to 204

An example might be that you want to identify and auto-promote your best performing designs in your fine art category

Here's more detail of the above steps you'll take. Why not follow along?
By the way, a "pid" is the unique Product Identifier of each and every product that gets made. It's the long number at the end of the url in the address bar when you're on a product's page.


Screenshots of each step are here, up to starting off your applet creation in IFTTT.

Get the right products showing in your store's back end with sort order & page size as shown

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click the NiftyZSort bookmarklet in your toolbar

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In the dialog box that opens, copy and paste the below
24 sordersalltime reverse export

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 You'll first see a page summary dialog and when you close it, you'll see:

A new export window opens with the top 24 performers as a comma-separated pids list
note: if it's already open, it'll update instead

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Copy the list of Pids ready for the next step. Then click the link to the nIFTTTy Pids Scheduler

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Paste your pids where indicated and set up the rest of your schedule

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Finally, make the feed and hit the copy button ready for using in IFTTT

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make your new RSS feed based applet using the Feed Url you just copied

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Now get on with more important stuff like designing and let IFTTT pin on your behalf!

Confirming the selected products are ok

If you want to see the products that got selected, close the export window and look on the page in your store's back end.

You'll see some with alltime perf... highlighted in red. They're the ones that got selected. Note that the products are sorted in your store's back end with those with the highest all-time orders at the top.

I did it this way (in the NiftyZSort config dialog) so I can confirm that each one with that highlight has had a high enough number of orders for me to rely on it being a best-performer, time after time.

Last point

You don't have to use Pinterest as the Then That part of your IFTTT applet. Other common choices are Twitter and Facebook. Some Zazzlers even auto email them to their autopost blogs.

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Things to know

• the scheduler can handle a maximum of 72 pids, so don't configure NiftyZSort for more than this
• when the scheduler runs out of pids to pin / tweet / share, then delete the now defunct applet
• when it pins / shares, the tracking code will have the pinning / sharing date appended

Enjoy 😎

7 Best practice pinning tips with nIFTTTy scheduler

Ok, so you're a Zazzler and use the nIFTTTy share scheduler tool in the Nifty Promo Control Panel to earn from Pinterest.

Click the image to see live

You already have an account on IFTTT (If This Then That) and you know how to create an applet there which uses an RSS feed as the If This part and a Pin as the Then That part.

So here's a bunch of best practice tips that will make things easier, quicker and more useful. Take the brain ache out and insert the easy life 😎

Tip 1

EDIT: I've now made the update as per below, so you can ignore this tip now!

Include a date in your tracking code when preparing your scheduler setup. I'm thinking about adding the current date to the tracking code automatically whenever the scheduler pins a product on Pinterest. In the meantime, add your own.
This way, when you make a sale, you'll know how long the pin had been around for. Anything that helps you learn more about your promotion efforts is a good thing!

Tip 2

When you're naming your applet in IFTTT, include:

• the source
• the page number
• the board name

When your applet runs out of things to post, this makes it easy to remember where you got to, so making the replacement app becomes much easier.

Tip 3

If you're using the nIFTTTy Pids scheduler, for the source, instead use the Zazzle url (from the address bar) like this

Notice that I didn't bother to include the initial https://www.zazzle.com/ part. When you name it as suggested, it's so easy to move to the next page when the scheduler runs out of items to post.
All you have to do is:

• open the existing applet on IFTTT
• change the source part to the next page number
• once you've done that, copy the source from the applet 
• get to somewhere on Zazzle and change everything after the https://www.zazzle.com/ to what you just copied
• if you were on the home page, put in the / after the .com before you paste

Once you've got the new Zazzle page showing then continue as normal, finally replacing the existing feed url in your applet with the new one and you're done.

Doing it this way, you can save yourself a good few clicks, a bit of brain ache and a couple of minutes - and there's far less of a chance of making mistakes.

Isn't that great?

Tip 4

This one's an advanced one and requires messing with an exisiting applet's feed url. You use this tip when your (nIFTTTy share scheduler) applet runs out of things to post.
It saves you having to create a new applet each time and can save you 5-10 mins.

If you haven't messed with url parameters before, be brave - all you have to do is to change some numbers for others.
Here's an applet of mine. Let's say it's run out of products to pin and now needs to pull from Page 2 of Zazzle's rss feed.

I've highlighted the bits that need changing

I've highlighted the two bits you need to find and change. Don't worry about the goobledigook and what it means, all you need to be able to do is to find them in the Feed URL

Rectangle highlight: &cdt={a number}

This is the starting date and time for the scheduler. It's used internally to work out which product to use in Zazzle's rss feed.
For the curious: The number is the number of seconds since a rereference dat 

Copy the number in the highlighted grey box

You get it from here: https://www.epochconverter.com 

Oval highlight: %26pg%3D{a number}

This is the Zazzle rss feed's page number to use. In the example given, I want the second page, so I change the exisitng digit 1 to 2, so it ends up looking like this:

%26pg%3D2

For the curious, when url parameters are used within another url parameter, as they are here, they have to be encoded. The %26 is an encoded & and the %3D is an encoded =
...so behind the scenes the whole thing ends up being &pg=2

Editing when in the applet

IFTTT doesn't make it easy to see what you're doing when editing, so it might be easier to copy the whole Feed URL and paste into your favourite editor and make the changes there.


Once you've made the changes to the applet, just save it.

Tip 5

Due to an impossible-to-code-around effect, the first few items in the feed can be missed. It happens the first time the applet runs. Behind the scenes, when you make the Feed URL in the scheduler, the starting date/time of the applet is noted - that cdt thingy in Tip 4.

If some time slots have already past,  then they'll still be counted in working out which product in the Zazzle rss feed to use.

So the tip is to create the applet while it's still the morning, according to internet time (GMT) and use time slots only after 12 mid-day (spread evenly pm option in the scheduler).

Or you could wait until midnight (again using internet time - GMT), and use the spread evenly over 24 hours option. Finally, changimg the first time slot from 12:00am to 12:30am to make sure the applet is saved with plenty of time before the start of the first timeslot.

Wait til 12midnight GMT and set your timeslots as shown

If you're not sure what the GMT time is, you can get it here: https://time.is/GMT

Tip 6

Have some boards for specific subjects / themes and some for specific products / product groups.

Tip 7

You can only have 10 active applets (ie switched on) at any one time. So focus on a few boards at a time, moving on when you feel each has enough products. Then cycle round again when you've done all boards.
With up to 12 per day per applet, it won't take long til you have well-filled boards across many subjects - just make sure they'll appeal to your followers :)


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If you've got any questions or you want to share your own tips, the Facebook NiftyToolz, Tips and Support group is the place to go to ask.

 

 

Ingenious DIY technique for mounting a cupboard

How to hold a cupboard in place while marking the wall for drilling. Note the socks for protection. This is perhaps one of the best DIY (do-it-yourself) techniques you'll come across. It's perfect if there's no-one around to help.

Holding a cupboard while mounting

Adjust your step-ladder to get the approximate position, and then brace the feet in the right position to get it just right. You can use thin pieces of plastic as shims on top of the socks to get the level just right.
Use the same technique once you've drilled while you bed the screws home.

Remember to be safe while you work and ensure the ladder's feet can't slip!

Society6 Nifty CPanel for Curators tool is working again

Society6 changed the underlying html code on their pages and that broke the Nifty CPanel for Curators. It's now MOSTLY working again.

The Society6 Nifty CPanel for Curators

With the CPanel in Step 1 you get the products to work with. They can come from a search or a collection. Once you've filled in your curator id and completed setting up which products you want to promote, you move to Step 2.

In Step 2 you choose how you want to promote them:

• Schedule them for posting to one of many social media channels using IFTTT (If This Then That) 
• Share them in a slideshow
• Share them manually to one of the many supported social media channels (Pinterest is a favourite) just by clicking
• Get code for any of the supported widgets for pasting in your web site

It couldn't be easier! If you need tips on using it, click any of the help buttons (marked with a ?)