Following on from our Top Toys Unit, we have now been able to create a price comparison unit for each toy in the top 12 ‘Dream Toys’, which you can add to your sites.

Similarly, you will need to be approved to each of the programs so that your links work. You can of course ask for the unit to be transferred to you, to give you control of the merchants if you wish.

All these can be styled anyway you like to fit into your websites.

Only want to show the best price? Simple, resize unit to show 1 row x 1 column – order by price

The Units:

Bakugan Battle Pack Price Comparison

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If you want to be able to edit the products in these units, please let us know on a support ticket and we’ll copy the unit into your account.

As affiliates and merchants are talking more and more about utilising video in their campaigns, and the list of merchants with You Tube channels is growing over at A4U Forum, we’re keen to show you how you can combine the video with your content units.

We have already covered how to add a video to an Easy Content Unit, and added a feature to choose where to put the video, top or bottom, but what uses could you put these units to work? Here’s the first idea we had – a showcase unit. We chose to create one for the product Sphereing via Buy a Gift (via Affiliate Window) using a video available on their You Tube Channel:

We created a random unit which shows products from Buy a Gift with ‘Sphereing’ as the keyword filter. Then we customised the unit, and added the You Tube Video – simples!

Next up we’ll look at price comparison type of video content unit.

Oh by the way, if anyone wants a copy of this unit put into their account, let me know by support ticket and I’ll copy one in

Some of you may have missed a post by Character Online yesterday on the forum. It was announcing that they have made their video archive available via You Tube for their products. This is great news for you as it means that you can add video and a content unit to your toy sites in time for the Christmas Rush. They have created some great looking ads for their top selling toys (did I say top selling? oh yes – a clue for your focus I think) including:

· Anipalz
· Aqua Sand Rainbow Kingdom Gift Set
· H.M. Armed Forces – Royal Navy
· H.M. Armed Forces – R.A.F
· H.M. Armed Forces – Army
· H.M. Armed Forces – Role Play
· Go Go Hamsters
· Mixi Chix
· Peppa Pig Playhouse and Buggy
· Princess Peppa Pig Toys
· Postman Pat Hide and Seek
· Postman Pat SDS Toys
· Scooby Doo Mystery Mates Mansion
· Terminator Salvation Toys

So how does this fit into Easy Content Units? Easy Peasy! Check out our post about adding Video to your units, and now you have a video which sells the products you feature in your units. “Brill” I hear you say! “Can you show me some examples?” No problem here you go (if you want a copy of any of these units placed in your account, ask via a support ticket, and I’ll pop them in):

Go Go Hamsters Range:

GR8 Mache Maker:

Have fun and get creative with these new video and content units!

You’ll find Character Online’s affiliate program with Affiliate Window

All Character Online’s Videos can be found on this page at You Tube

For those of you who are still on ECU Free, this will help you understand the differences between the different out put methods available on Pro, one of which may suit you more.

Javascript Output

On ECU Free, you build your unit, and offer you Javascript code to copy and paste on to your site.  This takes all your styling and the products and enables you to load the unit on your web page – nice and easy.  The Java units are unable to be read by search engines, which is good for SEO as the description provided by the merchants is not included in your page and so you won’t be slapped for duplicate content on your site.

Affiliates however sometimes would like to display this information so that the engines can read it, well fair enough.  As long as it’s used alongside plenty of your own content then you might not get a slap from Google.  So we set about adding different ways of adding units to your sites.  Unfortunately both the methods we have come up with has meant that they can be recoded and to protect our revenue share, have had to make them Pro only features.

PHP Output

The first thing we thought of doing was to add PHP output for the units, this would allow affiliates with the know how to take our code an place it on their sites and for the contents of the units to be read by the search engines.  For those less able to use PHP, or for those using WordPress as a CMS, you would need to use the PHP code in conojunction with a plugin such as EXEC-PHP, which lets you place PHP in posts.

RSS Output

In a stroke of genius, we came up with RSS output as another means of getting our units onto your sites.  RSS is a lightweight, yet powerful means to display the contents of your units on your sites.  Again there’s a plugin for WordPress which enables you to do this easily – thanks to Keith Bond for his Keith’s Easy Rss WordPress Plugin.  The contents of the unit are able to be read and updated automatically the same as the other methods.  Whilst they don’t take any of the styling/customisation from ECU, they do use your own CSS so fit in beautifully with your sites.

We believe that RSS output is a major step forward for our affiliates and merchants especially when they are used in conjunction with the managed units.  You can now show your users top products from a variety of merchants, via RSS direct onto your sites.

I will be updating ECU with examples of each method, so you can see them all in action in the next couple of days.  Let me know what you think by leaving a comment below:

Discount code and voucher code sites have started using Easy Content Units to good effect. Used to supplement their pages with a showcase of products which their users could use the discount code on ECU has increased clicks through to the merchant’s site.  Even when placed below the fold.

The most popular type of unit for voucher sites is the random content units, although not the most effective, they do provide a selection of products which are always available for their visitors to see.  More effective however are the managed units which are regularly updated by the merchants themselves with their best sellers.  Featuring the best sellers has an obvious advantage in click throughs, however for the site owners, can prove a logistical nightmare, whilst for the merchant it only takes a couple of minutes.

Either of these two types of units are great for sites with many pages, as they are true put up and forget solutions.  Once published, there’s no need to go back and edit the units (unless you want to of course).   We do have an example or two to share with you on our Showcase page, where you can see how other affiliates are using Easy Content Units on their sites by way of real life examples.

If you need any help at all with either getting started with ECU, creating a unit, or maybe you are a merchant who would like to set up a managed unit to be used by discount code sites and others, please get in touch or send in a support ticket.

This one is good for a product showcase website about furniture.

I would think you  need to add around 250-500 words about the Nero range of furniture from Oak Furniture Land.  Include the types of furniture on offer, the price range, any details of where the furniture is sourced/manufactured.  You can describe the colour of the wood/varnish, it’s appearance along with sizes.

I’d structure the page with a paragraph at the top introducing the range, something to entice the visitor to check out the range below.  Then I’d add the content unit.  Below that you can add the remainder of the text, with any purtinent links to similar items/ranges.

The content unit, and how I built it:

First up click on ‘Create a Unit’ then give it a name.

In the search box, I searched for ‘Nero’ exact match.  I applied filters to the search results to narrow the selection down to Oak Furniture Land as the merchant – there was also a choice of network too.

The products appeared below, so I ticked the boxes of the products I wanted to appear in the content units, and clicked on ‘Add Selected Products to Unit’ and then on ‘Customize Unit’

This took me to the styling page.  I added a clickref, changed the styling to ‘horizontal’, ticked the boxes to show picture, title, description price and merchant image.  Chose a Buy Now button from the Buy Now drop down, and hit save/preview button.  Noticed the unit was a little thin, so changed the width to 400 and hit save/preview again.

I took the code in the box and pasted it to appear below et voila: