Friday , March 29 2024
Do you want to create a wide range of shopping pages for your word press website?

Software Review: WP Shopping Pages From Lunatic Studios And Thomas Höfter

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about a WordPress plug-in called WP Robot. That product allows you to automatically generate posts for your WordPress site. Well Lunatic Studios is back at it with a new plug-in for WordPress, this time called WP Shopping Pages. Like its predecessor, it will automatically populate your site, but this time it will create shopping pages filled with content from Amazon and/or eBay auctions that you can present to your visitors to purchase.

WP Shopping Pages will make it easier to monetize your weblogs with your affiliate networks so that you can increase your earnings without a lot of work. It is keyword optimized which can help you attract more visitors to your site, and since you can target specific keywords will display top items that are related to your niche.

Installation is a breeze as you can add it to your site just like you would any other plug-in. That is, you can upload it manually or use the standard installation from your admin plug-in page and it will work with any template. If you want to make money from the affiliate programs, you will need to make sure that you have an Amazon Affiliate ID, API Key, and Access Key and/or an eBay Camp ID. All of these are free; you just need to register with each company to get this information set up.

Once you have installed WP Shopping Pages and you have your keys, you go to the 'Options' screen and enter in your information. There are other options that will let you fine tune your selections, but to get started, this is all you have to have.

Next you go to the 'Add Pages' of the main WP Shopping Pages screen. You then enter the key words that you want to create a shopping page for. You can create multiple pages, or you can create a single page with subpages. For example, you could create a page with cameras, a sub-page with Nikon, another with Canon, and a third with Kodak.

If you want you can use the default template and that will work fine. As you become more adept with WP Shopping Pages, you will probably want to customize your pages to fit the type and style of website that you are working with. In the admin area, you can create new templates, you can edit an existing template, or you can copy an existing template and making changes to it.

There are two types of templates. The first is the page template that builds the structure of your shopping page. This template tells the system where to place the Amazon or eBay ads and how many to place. The Amazon Single Template is for your Amazon ads and directs where to place the thumbnail, price, and other details. This template may be used multiple times on a given shopping page.

In the templates are the codes and tags that tell WP Shopping Pages what to place and where to place it. There are specific tag items that work with the page templates and others that work with the Amazon Page templates. You can even set conditional tags such that the product must meet a qualification if it is to be displayed on your site.

There is also a feature that allows you to cloak your links so that when someone hovers over the link, it will appear that it is taking your to another location on your site as opposed to Amazon or eBay.

I really like WP Shopping Pages and for a first version it is very complete. I like the conditional options and hope that more conditions are added in the future like having only items released in the last # of days, or only containing specific words in the title (say I wanted only Photoshop CS4, I could enter CS4).

The list price for the unlimited site version of WP Shopping Pages is $89 but for a limited time it is available for an introductory rate of $69. There are also single site and developer versions as well and all come with lifetime updates. You can read more about WP Shopping Pages as well as see what some sample pages look like. There is a 14-day money back, no questions asked return policy as well in case you are not happy with your results.

Once again I found this to be an entirely easy to use and very flexible plug-in. It has a lot of features and you do not have to be high tech savvy to use it. If you want a very easy to use plug-in that will give you the ability to create a wide range of shopping pages for your word press website, then I highly recommend WP Shopping Pages.

About T. Michael Testi

Photographer, writer, software engineer, educator, and maker of fine images.

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