For the past three weeks we have held competitions which gave ECU members the chance to win Affiliate Pro till Christmas. Each competition revolved around raising the profile of ECU and it’s various facets which help affiliates to get more commissions from their websites.

The first, aimed to promote the number of units being built, and for every impression of a unit built in week one an entry into the draw was given.

87 affiliates built a unit this week, sharing 56577 impressions that week. The winner for week one is: cirrus_lynn

The second week was all about Managed Units, a draw entry was given for every click on a managed unit this week.

13 affiliates shared 95 chances in this draw. The winner is: Renegade

For week three each click from all units were counted as a draw entry, making this draw available for all active members of ECU.

228 affiliates qualified to enter this draw, creating 43516 clicks through to merchants and thus 43516 chances to win the prize. The winner for week 3 is: ukulele

Congratulations to all the winners. If you are a free member, we will be upgrading you to Pro on the 1st October and leave it till 31st December. If you are existing Pro member, please maintain your subscription, we will process a refund for any payments made in October/November/December.

Just because these competitions are over, there’s still other competitions, for example House of Fraser’s competition to win £100 for using Easy Content Units.

At Easy Content Units, we’re always looking for ways to make affiliate’s lives easier. We’ve added templates, Managed Units, Random Units and more, all with the aim of making things easier.

With Christmas around the corner, there has been a swarm of merchant promotions, all vying to get their products in front of your visitors. It’s hard to keep track of it all.

My question is, Would you Like Easy Content Units to help?

What we were thinking was creating a post on here, with details of the incentive and include a managed unit (or a premade ECU) which you could use to help with getting the incentive.

Would you use something like this? Please vote on the form to the right

If we get at least 10 people who would use these units, then we’re happy to start the ball rolling on this one.

For those who hate having to change all the settings for each unit that’s made, we have introduced Templates. You can save the settings for one unit, and apply it to future/past units quickly and easily.

You’ll find the template options on the Admin Tab, click on Templates and the following options are available:

Once you are happy with the style of your unit, open up the Template options (as seen on the Admin Tab above).  Enter a name for the new template and click on save.

Selecting a Template:

Once saved the template will appear in the drop down box under ‘Select a Template’.  You can delete it or rename it by clicking on the appropriate option.

Applying a Template:

Once you have made a new unit, visit the template options, and use the drop down to select the wanted template.  Click on apply to load all the settings.  You can also apply the template retrospectively to units you already have by clicking on the apply selected template to other units.  This is particularly good if you change the look of your site, or decide to create your own buttons.

We hope that the template system will save you time and effort if you have any questions or ideas for improvements, please let us know below or via a support ticket.

This week sees the last of our 3 competitions giving our members the chance to win Affiliate Pro till Christmas. We kicked off with a competition which was based on new unit impressions, the second was to encourage the use of our Managed Units and this week it’s all about the clicks.

Before I let you in on this week’s competition, I’d first like to mention a competition that one of our merchants is running, which gives you the chance to win £100 cash bonus and a runners up prize of £50.  House of Fraser are offering this as a prize draw.  To gain an entry you need only make a sale through an Easy Content Unit.  Whether that’s one you have made (including House of Fraser products) or even easier, by adding one of their FIVE managed units.  Full information is available over at A4U Forum.

Win Affiliate Pro till Christmas:

Since midnight we have been counting up the clicks made by your units, and we will continue to do so until Sunday 2359hrs.  Each click on your units, will give you an entry into the draw.  Obviously the more clicks the more entries you will get.

A nice easy competition to finish off with, if you want to increase your chances of winning, simply add more units to relevant pages and enjoy the exciting click ratio that Easy Content Units provide.

As usual, the winner for this and all of our other prizes will be announced on Tuesday 29th September.  The competition is open to all members, free or Pro.  Free members will be upgraded until 31st December and Existing Pro members will have their subscriptions refunded each month (October/November/December).

Good luck to you all!

As predicted, there are a lot fewer qualifying entries for this weeks competition, with 8 affiliates so far qualifying to win Affiliate Pro till Christmas.  In order to qualify you need only include a managed unit on one of your web pages, and for it to get a click.  Each click gains you an entry into this weeks competition, which incidentally closes on Sunday at 2359hrs.

So if you want a splendid chance to win this prize, then there’s still a couple of days to go.

Details of next weeks competition will be announced a little later.

Useful Links:

Managed Mayhem Competition terms – Win Affiliate Pro with Manage Unit Mayhem

What are Managed Units – Managed Units an Affiliates Dream?

Managed Unit page – Managed Units

As affiliates we know the value in put up and forget solutions, everyone is looking for an easier life, without having to check this and change that. If the solution could also get results and become one of my top performing pieces of creative then that would be excellent.

This is where we came up with the idea of expanding Easy Content Units to merchants, so they could provide us affiliates with just that, a top piece of creative that can be put up and forgot. That’s how Managed Units started off, then we thought, the merchant just doesn’t make them the way I would to fit in with my site, plus wouldn’t it be cool to include the units in my stats, so that we can check that things tally up with the networks, and so a revamp to our Managed Units did just that.

So the key features then:

• Put up and forget
• Contains the best selling products – so top converting
• Style it the way you want – only thing you can’t change is the products
• Stats in your account

Managed Units suit the following uses:

• Shopping Directory sites
• Voucher Code sites
• Merchant Review pages
• Home page ‘best sellers’ list
• Sidebar Widget
• Category Pages
• Plus a lot more

Using Managed Units

Here’s a step by step guide to using Managed Units:

Visit the Managed Units page and pick your merchant

Click on the name of the merchant

All the available units for the merchant is presented with a description

Click on View unit to see what products are currently included

If you’d like to add this unit to your site, tick the box and click submit

You can then edit the unit in the usual way, changing any aspect apart from the products listed

Once you’re happy take the code and place it on our site

Your comments:

If there are any barriers to you using the Managed Units that we haven’t addressed please let us know below or via our contact form

My Wardrobe discovered Easy Content Units after a discussion with Keith Bond, one of our members – thanks Keith.  Since finding out about us, Sophia, the affiliate manager at My Wardrobe has been busy making managed units for her affiliates.

Flushed with the success of creating her first unit, Sophia has gone on to create a number of units targeting various aspects of My Wardrobe’s products.  Each of the units are available on our managed unit page, and are updated regularly to reflect the latest product trends as found on My Wardrobe.

Here’s a run down of the units available (plus direct links to view and add to your account):

Currently the units are only available through their Webgains program, so please ensure you are signed up to that program before you use these units.

Here’s an example of the units built, this one is their best selling items from the ‘New In’ for men:

With just a couple of days to go over the weekend before this weeks competition closes (Sunday @2359hrs), you still have a chance to enter.  Simply create a unit and publish it on your website, each impression gets you an entry.  So far 76 affiliates are sharing 7729 chances at winning Free Pro till Christmas.

We switch our focus on Monday to a new competition and a fresh chance at winning the second of three Pro till Christmas prizes.  This time our eyes turn to getting the merchant managed units up on sites, and each click counts as an entry into the draw.  We are expecting fewer qualifying entries into this draw, so the odds of winning the prize should be better.

So if you have scope to add a managed unit to your site, then get cracking!  Managed Units suit directory type sites the best, whether that’s voucher code or shopping sites.  If you have a product based wordpress site, you could create a merchant focus page, and feature on that a selection of their top selling products.  Lots of scope for you to get creative.

Terms

Competition is open to all affiliates, new and existing members of Easy Content Units

All clicks recorded from a Managed Unit during the competition period will result in an entry into the draw.

These clicks can be made from any of the merchant’s featured on the Managed Unit page, and the unit could have been added to your account at anytime up to close of the competition (including those already published)

Competition runs from 0000hrs Monday 14th September to 2359hrs Sunday 20th September

Winners will be selected at random from all valid entries and will be announced on Tuesday 29th September

As per the first competition, for ECU ‘Free’ members, your account will be upgraded from 1st October to 31st December 2009, existing ‘Pro Affiliate’ members will have their monthly subscriptions refunded each month.

Good luck every one… No need to wait until Monday.  As always if you need anything, don’t hesitate to ask – oh and if you’re a merchant/agency who would like to be included in this competition, find out how you can on our Calling all Merchants post.

OK you have asked for a merchant account, and been emailed your log ins, but now what? Don’t panic, forget the words datafeed and content units, I know they strike fear in those who are not technically minded.  Instead think ‘search – tick –  job done’ as this is how easy it is!

Once you log into ECU you’ll have the following box staring at you:

Enter a name for your unit (you can change this later) something like ‘Bestsellers’ will do nicely.

Make sure the Search is highlighted and click on ‘continue’

Here’s the search box you’ll find on the next page:

You’ll find tips for finding the products you want on this page, so assuming all is well, type in the product name of your first item for our unit, use the drop down to select your program and click on ‘search’

Results will appear below.  Find the specific product(s) you want to feature and tick the box next to it.  At the top and bottom of the results is an ‘Add Products to Unit’ button, click on this and you’ll see the product appear in a blue box at the top of the page.  This box shows all the products you have selected (and the means to remove them).

Repeat the searches until you have all the products you need.  We’d suggest 6/7 products to be enough to show the top 5 products on the site, and have spares should 1/2 go out of stock before you have updated the unit.

Once all the products have been selected, click on ‘Customise’ button.  As the affiliates will customise the units for themselves there’s little to concern yourself with here, except we’d suggest:

• Changing the ‘Order By’ to Random
• On the ‘Unit Size’ tab changing the number of rows to 5 (so that 5 random products are shown, leaving the others ‘spare’)

That’s all we would suggest on this page, so click on ‘Save/Update Unit’ and your unit is ready.  Incidently, when you update your unit, as soon as you click on this button, any changes you have made will be instantly updated on your affiliate’s sites.

The last thing to do is to put the unit live on our Managed Unit page:

• Go to ‘My Units’ page
• Tick the box next to the unit
• Scroll to the bottom, and find the ‘Managed Units’ box
• Use Drop down to find merchant name (if it’s not there/you would like something different then type it in the box – this is the name that your units will be filed under on the Managed Units page, it’s important that it is the same for all your units from the same program)
• Next up is the managed unit name – something like Best Sellers / Latest Products / Best Offers would be great.  If you are on multiple networks, then please put which network you have selected products through in brackets.
• In the description field please put in what the affiliates can expect to find – ‘This weeks top selling items at our site, regularly updated.  Please make sure you’re a member of our program before using this unit.’ would be great, you could also put in your contact details if you wish.
• Once you click on ‘Convert to Managed Unit’ your unit will appear on the Managed Unit page, and your work is complete.

These are the basic steps to getting the unit up and running.  There are advanced features available to you, which we will discuss in a later post.

Obviously with every new system, it will take time to get used to, but following the above instructions will help.  If you have any problems, or would like us to set up your first unit, please ask via a support ticket.

Next week we have a competition for you affiliates which promotes our Managed Units and encourages their use on your affiliate’s sites.

A managed unit is one that the merchant creates, and updates regularly, providing their affiliates with a new tool for their promotional arsenal. A unit works best for best sellers lists however you could create units for new products, special offers and more.

A unit takes about 10 minutes to set up, and around 5 minutes to update each week, but provides the affiliate with a top performing piece of creative (around 10% impression to click) which has seen us deliver approx 200000 clicks to merchants last month.

So how much does our service cost – Zip, nada, nil, nothing – for our self service scheme. Of course if you want us to do the creating/updating then there’s a cos, but if you do it yourself, then it’ll cost you nothing, but 5 minutes per week (per unit).

You can read more about our Merchants Page.

We currently have 59 merchants who’ve created 132 managed units for their affiliates, if you’d like to join them get in touch so that I can set up your merchant account.

Here’s an example, but one of the key features of ECU is that whilst the merchant controls the products, the affiliate controls the styling, so that it fit’s in with their website:

If you’d like to see some examples of how affiliates are using our units check out our Showcase page

Contact us to set up your merchant account