New Nifty Product Staging Tool for Zazzle, Society6 and other PODs

The Nifty tools just keep getting better! There's now a free staging tool that you fire up from the Nifty Promo Control Panel.
It makes it so quick and easy to create images for your social media - and you get given a link to use with it that links to the products you started with. Great for improving your sales!!

• Zazzle storekeepers use this link
• Society6 storekeepers use this one 
• other POD storekeepers use this direct one
  (there's no control panel for other PODs, you use it direct).  

Here's what the Nifty Product Stager for Society6 looks like in use:

You first set up the products you want in the control panel. When you open the stager (in Nifty Step2) the images for them are pulled into the pre-staging area.
You then:

• click the ones you want in your graphic and they are copied to the stage
• you set up the frames that you want, one at a time, and add them to the stage
• you do the same for any text and other graphics from external sources

You can change the layer order so that the right items are in front / behind and, when you're design is complete, you can take a screenshot.

There are three layers you can use:

• background
• image
• foreground

These help you to keep your different design elements separate and there are buttons on the stage to let you switch the working layer.

You can even save your frames and text as templates to use on other design projects. Find out more about the product stagers on the NiftyToolZ website

Enjoy 🤪

New NiftyToolz support for free WordPress blogs

We've updated the NftyToolZ widgets so they work on free WordPress blogs.

All you have to do is paste the html you get from the Nifty Promo Control Panel and paste it into an html block on your WordPress blog / site.

Here's an example post demonstrating the available widgets:
https://razamazazzle.wordpress.com/2019/08/18/demo-of-nifty-widgets-on-this-a-free-wordpress-site

Custom Rustic Wedding Thankyou Cards

Click any of these wedding thankyou cards to personalize and buy for your wedding:

New Nifty Z&S6 gifting free-for-all Facebook group

I've created a new Facebook group to give Zazzle and Society6 artists somewhere they can show off their designs to potential customers.

Only shares/posts made with the Nifty tools are allowed there and you're asked always to use NZS as part of the tracking code when using the Zazzle Nifty.

Get over to the Nifty Z&S6 gifting free-for-all group, join up and get sharing!

Here's links to Nifty (these open in new windows):

• Zazzle Nifty
• Society6 Nifty

Pretty Sweary Things - feminine, elegant designs!

Minors, avert your eyes!

I love these Sweary mugs, pillows, totes and all sorts. Elegant yet sweary. Those mugs look like they could be perfect for the office, lol!

Which is your favourite? I bet you know the perfect 'lady' amongst your girlfriends who would delight in getting one of these!

#madebynifty

Focus on: Speed-pinners / tweeters for Zazzle or Society6 stores

There's been lots of enhancements to the Nifty tools recently and ones that I've focussed on a lot in my NiftyToolZ marketing are the speed-pinner and speed-tweeter.

screenshot of a speed-pinner

Why focus on those?

It's that they seem to be the most instantly attractive to Zazzlers.

I see so many Zazzlers using Pinterest and Twitter for promoting, it made sense to focus on Nifty promo tools that work really well down those social media channels.

So my marketing focal points are

• The "speed-pinner" and "speed-tweeter" names give great clues as to what they do
• The promise (and reality) of being able to get one for your store in just four clicks carries a lot of weight

Most people think that getting something really useful must take tech-savvy skills and so can't be for them. Yet here's one they can get in only four clicks?

Their curiosity is engaged. And, heck, if it only takes four clicks why not just give it a go?

Get yours

You can learn how to get your speed-pinner in just four clicks.

Other benefits

There's a few more benefits with the speed-pinner, speed-tweeter and unmentioned speed-fb-sharer. They can really easily be

• tweeted as a new tweet or in reply to one
• shared on Facebook as a new post on your timeline, on your page, in a group or as a reply. 
• (pinning on Pinterest, though, is a pain so we'll skip that)

The cool thing is that, when shared, the image and accompanying text of the share is designed specifically to encourage others to do some tweeting / pinning / fb-sharing for you - a multiplier effect.

Here's what a tweet of one looks like - remember this is the speed-tweeter itself being tweeted.

a speed-tweeter tweeted on twitter

I manually added the text and hashtags at the top of the tweet but everything else was done automatically.

Here's a link to that speed-tweeter tweet so you can see it for yourself (and maybe tweet some!)

Find out how to share your speed-pinner, speed-tweeter or speed-fb-sharer in the brief tutorial.

Learn about embedding a Zazzle slideshow on your website or blog

Embed Nifty's slideshow sharer pages on your own website or blog

I've tested it on Blogger, Weebly and self-hosted WordPress.

I've added a new section to the Nifty Zazzle Slideshow Sharer Page that's there to let you (or your visitors!) get the html code to embed the slideshow on your site or blog.

This is what the new section looks like:

It shares brilliantly on Twitter, Pinterest and Facebook with the supplied buttons, too. The images when you share are linked to the slideshow. Cool!

A couple of other things:

• The sharing buttons don't show up on Weebly but they do on Blogger and WordPress.
• The in-built search will only search in your store, if that's the source for your slideshow. If the source is the marketplace, then that's where search looks. It'll also look there if your source was a collection.

Probably the coolest 😎 aspect about this is the search. Your efforts to get a visitor to your blog / site will more likely pay off when you keep them looking only at your products. Ok, when they click through to the product page, they might get diverted then. But at least while they're on your site / blog, you can keep them looking only at yours.

---

As usual, without a subscription, you automatically advance to 50/50 referral commission sharing by using your referral id. With a subscription, it's 100% to you.
Note: Because the slideshow is generated live by pulling afresh from Zazzle for each visitor, it also means that if you let your subscription lapse, all existing (and new ones you embed) will revert to the 50/50 approach. It's not planned that way, it's just the way it works for 'live' stuff.

Testing iframe for slideshow sharer page

Here's a Nifty slideshow embedded in an iframe.

It's a great way to show off your Zazzle product designs. This slideshow shows my Mother's Day designs. Tap/click any to personalize and buy.

Testing iframe for product grid sharer page

I was reading through the forum and someone mentioned how it was against Zazzle's terms of service to use iframes to display Zazzle pages.
That lead me to wonder about them for Nifty and came up with this:

Society6 Nifty tool set now complete

click the image to try it for yourself - 50/50 referral sharing with your curator id

I've continued to enhance the Society6 Nifty CPanel, bringing new tools on board and putting right some teething problems.

I'm happy to say that everything, apart from the embed-code widgets, is now working as it should.

I'll be working on the widgets next. In the next week or two.

Society6 Nifty CPanel resurrected in new home

We're pleased to bring you the resurrected Society6 Nifty CPanel!

When Yahoo withdrew its YQL service, it completely broke all the Society6 tools. It's taken time to get it (partially) rewritten and transferred to its new home. 

In this new version, the only source you can use is a Society6 collection. Up to 240 products, so get yours ready!

The first tools released are the S6 nIFTTy Scheduler and the Individual Product Pinner/Sharers and we'll bring back more as time goes on.

We're really excited that it's back because of the huge advantage with promoting Society6 gear when compared to Zazzle.

What is that massive advantage?

It's that the success rate is better than with Zazzle for any given effort.

Why? 

If you've been promoting Zazzle designs for a while, you'll know there are many ways to lose a referral with them - there are lots fewer with Society6!

On the downside, Society6's cookie expires after 30 days as opposed to Zazzle's 45 days. And, even though Society6 gives only 10% referral (curator) commission, in the long run, there'll be a much better return on effort.

Well, that's the theory 😎 Keep an eye on this blog as time goes by to find out!

The small print

As usual, it's free to use on a 50/50 referral (curator) split. A little later there will be a membership option where the links will always use your curator id instead of for just half the time.

Try it: Society6 Nifty CPanel!

New style for Nifty's Product Grid sharer page

We like to keep Nifty up-to-date and relevant in this wonderful, chaotic internet world in which we virtually live. This time, it's the turn of the product grid sharer page to come under the spotlight.

A big thankyou to the feedback that molded it into it's final form (second piccie, below). You know who you are, Dale, BK and Malissa - 💐💐💐

Ever since we built the product grid sharer page tool for Nifty, it's used the same layout. It was time for a freshen-up.
Compare the two. Here's the original:

the old layout for the product grid sharer page

...and here's the new layout:

click the image to see this new layout for real

I think you'll agree, it's a cleaner and fresher look and might tip the balance in helping you get a few more sales 👍

We've only just put this live - why not be one of the first to see it for real?

make your own here

Enjoy 😎

Zebookfreec featured picks working well

Each day the Zebookfreec featured picks showcases three collectible art ebooks for free download.

Zebookfreec's unique proposition is that all ebooks in the collection are collectible in their own right, including as they do, gorgeous artwork from movie, tv and comic-book franchises and also from indie artists.

They all share the same thing in common, other than being free to download, and that's thing is they're all linked to their page on Zazzle where they can be bought to add to a real-world collection.

Today's free download featured picks are Supergirl, Thor Ragnarock and House Mouse:

Gigs on fiverr for Zazzlers

The Nifty tools I've built for Zazzlers are used over and over again by most of the Zazzlers who give them a try.
Even though they're simple to use, there's one group of Zazzlers who don't use it much at all:

Those who don't realize their Zazzle store is a business

And that's the group of Zazzlers who are new to the concepts to do with promoting their Zazzle designs as a business would - and that can prove to be too much for many. Those Zazzlers are happy to share from each product's page when the fancy takes them.

What I'd say to them is that by having a store on Zazzle you are a business and to be successful in business you have to behave like a business. And that means promoting like a business does.

Do you?

For example, do you do any marketing campaigns? Any seasonal event deserves its own campaign and right now, Valentine's day is approaching. To get the results we'd all like to have, takes far more shares than we can ever hope to achieve by hand, sharing from product pages and collections.

How to get the message across?

Any Zazzler who is serious about taking more of a business approach needs to use tools powerful enough for the task. At the very least, the tools should multiply your effort and take 10 minutes to get the results you could only hope to get by spending hours at it without the tools.

Reaching those who would benefit

The main way I try to reach Zazzlers about the Nifty tools is via the Zazzle forum but I recognise only a tiny percentage, overall, visit there. So to try and reach more Zazzlers I've put up a couple of gigs on fiverr.

The first is a gig where I build an ebook for them (using the Zebookfreec service) out of one of their collections. The second offers to pin the content of one of their collections to either one of my boards or one of theirs at the rate of 12 per day until finished.

I'm hoping that people who get in touch about the gigs will (eventually?) be open to the idea of using the Nifty tools, with the standard brilliant, free hand-holding I give.

Zebookfreec groundwork completed

As you'll know if you've been following things, we've spent the last month or so working on Zebookfreec.

Looking upstream, it's a service aimed primarily at Zazzlers who want to reach into a new marketing channel, one largely untapped until now. Zebookfreec makes it possible for Zazzle storekeepers / designers / affiliates to promote their or other's art and designs via ebooks.

Each ebook page is a product, with image and title linked to the product page on Zazzle. Here's an example of a page 

example page from a Zebookfreec ebook - title and image linked to product page on Zazzle

And looking downstream into the channel, the target market is anyone, including kids, with a Kindle or other ebook reader or tablet. The exact target audience depends on each ebook's subject matter and currently includes:

• Parents wanting something different for their kids' bedtime story time or just to cuddle up on the sofa with and spend some quality time
• People who love Superhero artwork and comic books
• People who enjoy art

The main thrust of the 'offering' is that these ebooks are collectible in themselves and, where the content is something like posters or postcards, the ebook is a catalog of collectible art they can buy for their own collection.

The ebook features are:

• Made from one of your collections on Zazzle
• Every page links to the product's page on Zazzle
• The back page has both a bitly link and A QRCode link to the live version
  - this means someone can be showing someone else your ebook and the second person can whip out their mobile/tablet and point its camera app at the QRCode. It'll take them to the onlive version where they can buy as well.
• Every link has a referral id and tracking code so successes (referral income!) can be tracked
• Choices for you to get the referral sharing split that suits you (from none to all)

When you own the copyright of the entire content, you're able to publish your ebook on Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing and on ManyBooks. One of ours on ManyBooks had 35 downloads in the first 3 weeks of uploading it.

Links:
Find out more about getting your own ebook made
See and download today's free featured picks on Zebookfreec
Browse the full list of Zebookfreec titles available for free download

Filling Zebookfreec's Shelves

I've now added a few more collectibles to the list of titles available for free download over at Zebookfreec.

They're all from Disney and so far include:

• Disney Princess
• Winnie The Pooh
• Frozen
• The Muppets
• The Seven Dwarfs

If you have kids who've enjoyed the movies, comics and characters then they'll love having these collectibles for their Kindle or other ereader / tablet.

download your free collectible ebook
- which will your kids choose?

Disaster for some, YQL withdrawn from service

The live product grid widget and live slideshow widgets you would generate using the Nifty Promo Control Panel for Zazzle are both broken.

Yahoo has withdrawn YQL from service. It's the backend tool used by those widgets to work with Zazzle RSS feeds. Alternatives are being looked into.

This is what they say.

Important EOL Notice: As of Thursday, Jan. 3, 2019, the YQL service at query.yahooapis.com will be retired. This will impact users of datatables.org as well as developers who creates features using this YQL service.
To continue using our free Yahoo Weather APIs, use https://weather-ydn-yql.media.yahoo.com/forecastrss as your new API endpoint. Contact yahoo-weather-ydn-api@oath.com for credentials to onboard to this free Yahoo Weather API service. Other YQL based services that use query.yahooapis.com will no longer operate.

All Society6 tools are broken as well. Luckily I'd already removed the dependency on YQL from all but those two Zazzle widgets but hadn't even started on the Society6 Nifty tools.

Watch this space for any developments.

Nifty is moving home...

From the very beginning, Nifty has been living as a lodger on my www.kdl.to domain. Great news - it now has its own place at niftytoolz.com

At the same time it's gained some new features to help develop a brand new, real-world sales channel, overlooked until now and therefore ripe for the harvest.

You'll also be pleased to know that it's had a good sweeping out of the dustweby corners and that caught me a few unusual-circumstance bugs.

It's new home is here: https://niftytoolz.com/npcp/nifty-promo-control-panel.html

The New Nifty enhancements

Here's a quick summary:

• Improved handling of description lengths when displaying products
• Improved product grid display on mobile and tablets
• Much-improved search facility on slideshows (widget and sharing page)
• The Live-print Catalog announced in the last newsletter has been refined and improved
• Make a QRCode graphic for your slideshow or product grid in Nifty and use it in your marketing support designs - they're great on the backs of your business cards.
• Multifeed option, there for when you need it. Simply ignore it and all tools will work as they do now

Make a QRCode for your product grid sharer page in the following section of Step 2

As the screenshot says, there's a similar button in the 'share a slideshow page' section so you can choose what's best for any given purpose.

Here's one I made for my fine art collection. It's for a product grid page because I like the way they work on mobiles. It's quick and easy to swipe up and down through the product designs.

your mobile camera app should recognise this automatically and
offer to open the web page in your device's browser

If you've not used QRCodes before, you're part of a shrinking population! They're almost second nature to millennials and younger peeps. Most camera apps on mobiles and tablets recognise them automatically and when they do, they offer to open the page in the device's browser.

They're great to put on your marketing material and give one more avenue by which potential customers can reach your designs! Real marketing pros will love the added reach this gives.

Why not point your mobile at the QRCode and see what happens?