How are affiliates finding new and special products to promote?

[anura22]

How are affiliates finding new and special products to promote?  Are affiliates using the Affiliate Request thread in the new forum?

Approximately two thirds of my sales are through 3rd parties.  In the old forum affiliates were able to ask for specific themes and products.  This seems to have gone completely awash in the new forum.  In the past I was able to see my products on affiliates’ web sites, blogs, pinterest, etc.  Now most do not even have a reference to their affiliate advertising spots.  Also MarilynR & ElizabethR (who used to advertise many of my products) have indicated they are no longer promoting as of 3/3/22 but there post are still showing.

Now that affiliates do not have access to the HTML code, what can we do to keep affiliate contacts and advertising???

[carulcards · Accepted solution]

I don't know how other affiliates do, but I mostly use the Zazzle RSS feed to look for interesting designs. There are ways to adjust those feeds so that you can search for precisely what you want. Then I use IFTTT (if this, then that) to automatically add those designs to my Blogger blog (see the Blogger link below). From there the designs are forwarded to my Pinterest account (also see link below), also automatically.

To use the forums, I think, would be very time-consuming. 

By the way, I just added one of your Halloween designs!

[anura22]

Thank you carulcards!  I’m smiling along with my pumpkin.

Isn’t technology grand.  It’s getting way past my understanding.  Glad to know that there are many other ways for affiliates to work with Zazzle designers.  Appreciate your response, KatiChel

[Barbara]

Those who make affiliate requests will certainly use what's posted in their threads. What I'm noticing, however, is that fewer affiliates are requesting designs. It could be that, in the old forums, there were a number of threads that the affiliates abandoned but people didn't know this, so they continued posting there, thus keeping threads alive that were actually dead. The same will quickly happen here, too, because members aren't allowed to delete or at least lock their own threads. That particular forum could use a bit of Zazzle's attention into how it functions.

When I did a bit of affiliating, I ran searches in the marketplace for specific themes I was interested in. I also looked in the Show Me threads because the marketplace doesn't necessarily show everything, particularly newly created designs.

Colorwash's Home

[mylittleeden]

As it is no longer easy to copy and paste your products into the threads do you think it is worth doing? I am still not sure how I can do it quickly and to be honest rather spend my time designing and being creative if I can. I promote my own stuff too but I curious as to what others feel about the recent changes. I was working on added new items to the show me thread until the changes as a non coder I don't know how to now can only copy and paste the the link without the image so doesn't seem much point. Just doing pinning instead? I am I missing something?

[Barbara]

@mylittleeden  I agree. It was far easier to use BBCode to post images and links to our products. The switch to having to use HTML is more complicated but without any advantages.

Colorwash's Home

[Kevi]

It is easy to post into the Show Me forum.

Click on the Share link of your product and copy the html box

Reply to thread in Show Me forum

click on expand toolbar then click on html

paste your product html

click on reply 3 times and it posts the image.

Hope this helps.

[mylittleeden]

I tried but it still didn't give me the image 😔 but thank you for trying to help ❤️

[CrazyMermaid]

Most professional affiliates have hundreds of niche sites. They use feeds and don't rely on Zazzle's html code. Much of it is automated. Affiliate aggregates such as Viglinks and Skimlinks also provide access to the Zazzle affiliate program - which is how I discovered Zazzle. Their sites are usually anonymous because they don't want to give their competitors their strategies. They also don't want merchants to know if they are promoting their competitors. I still promote over 400 merchants. 

[Barbara]

Way more clicks than using BBCode where you just copied the code and pasted it into the post, easily spotting size to alter and easily positioning multiple products and/or views. I've always preferred trends toward simplicity, not complexity.

Colorwash's Home

[ColsCreations]

It's actually only two extra clicks 😉 One on the dots to expand the posting menu, and a second on the HTML option. Oh, and a third click to close the source code box after you've pasted. Other than that it's the same copying of a snippet of code and pasting it. Takes literally just a couple of seconds to do the above.  Once you've pasted it you can change the specified size in the code just as you could before. But did you know that after you've closed out the HTML box you can just double-click the image in the post to highlight it which creates drag-handles on it and then you can simply drag the image to whatever size you want?. 🙂

I think the real issue people are having with this "new" way is not that they are copying/pasting HTML instead of BBC, it's that the options for getting the code have changed (you have to get it from your back-end now) and you can't change the product view shown. It's not about the code being a different type and the forum, it's that they changed the functionality of the Share feature itself so it's no longer as handy no matter where you want to paste your code.

[Barbara]

@ColsCreations  Yes, there's the issue of having done it one way for years and then having it a different way, which the memory in our hands persists in resisting. And no, I didn't know about the handles for resizing. I deem that one handy-dandy! You forgot the extra click needed to get past the claim there's an error in the code. As for the roadblock to sharing that's been placed in front of us, I wish to heaven they'd explain it.

Colorwash's Home

[Barbara]

@mylittleeden  Have you tried HightonRidley's bookmarklet tool? Maybe it will cure your problem:

https://community.zazzle.com/t5/tools/v2-easy-to-use-html-generator-tool-for-promoting-a-product/m-p...

Colorwash's Home

[CloLee]

How do I even share other people's products now?  I used to just view a product whilst logged in and click on share and share it to my pinterest boards but I can't find share on anyone else's products now - only mine on the 'back end' product page.  Thanks.

[BKMuir]

CloLee - From the search results page you can add to a Collection - that you might share.

From the Product page you can click on the square icon (left of the heart) in the upper left corner, then the drop-down menu allows for choosing Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, or copy the link to your blog/website.

[CloLee]

Thank you!  😳 I spent ages looking for the share button and couldn't find it!  That's great!