I've had the WP Shopping Pages plugin for quite awhile now and absolutely love it.
I use it to auto-post products — mostly romantic movie DVD's from Amazon — to my dating blog on a regular basis.
Actually, the WP Shopping Pages plugin has been a real blessing.
I haven't been that keen to write about dating for awhile now, yet with the auto-posts my subscribers still receive updates through my Aweber blog broadcasts on a regular basis and therefore keep returning to visit the site. By result, my Google Analytics stats show no real decline in traffic despite the fact that I've done very little work on the site for months.
There are a couple of issues with the plugin that I've noticed just recently, however.
Despite selecting Skip Products if No Description Found in the options, one post came up empty as shown in the screenshot below.
Egads! The lack of a description doesn't exactly compel the reader to click through the link to buy the product. Not only that, but can you imagine what would happen to your subscriber numbers if all the posts for a month or more showed up like that? Bar the thought!
Another smaller issue I have with WP Shopping Pages is that the descriptions show up as one very long paragraph, instead of being separated into smaller, easy to read chunks.
Here's an example of how a post will show up if I don't edit it. And here's how I edited the blog post for the movie Titanic in just a couple of seconds.
Much better, eh?
So, although automation is great, you still have to invest a little bit of time and effort to make sure your blog doesn't come across looking like a ‘splog'.
Put those autoposts into draft mode and make them reader-friendly by adding paragraph breaks. Delete those without descriptions. Last, but certainly not least — add your own commentary about the product to avoid duplicate content penalties.
Learn more about WP Shopping Pages.
Watch my video or visit the WP Shopping Pages Plugin site.
Hi Rosalind,
Quick question – how do you get the plugin to only return one item per post?
Thanks!
Ros,
Nice write up on the plug-in, but you might want to check its operation!
When I view the page on 101Date.com (https://101date.com/titanic/) the price is listed as $0.39. When I click through to Amazon, the price is $3.96. Get the same with both Firefox and IE7.
Is that a typo? Or, was the plug-in supposed to do some fancy math?
Chris
Hi Chris,
Ya, that doesn’t look very good, now does it? And as much as I usually tell affiliates NOT to put prices into their posts for just THAT reason, looks like I broke my own rule. Egads..
If it were truly dynamic, like the Amazon links are… then the prices would update.
Cheers,
Ros
This is such a great resource that you are providing and you give it away for free. I enjoy seeing websites that understand the value of providing a prime resource for free. I truly loved reading your post. Thanks!
Thank you for all your tips Rosalind.
Looking at your sites, your advertising (monetization) seems to be very subtle. In fact I had to go looking for it. Do you find this is the most effective way of monetizing the site or would you get a better return with more active and obvious advertising.
Hi Graham,
I might indeed make more obvious advertising as you suggest, however that is definitely not my style.. and my methods work REALLY well. 🙂
I believe in a ‘do unto others’ approach, and because I hate having things rammed down my throat, I don’t do that to anyone else either.
Hope that helps.
Cheers,
Ros
Thank you Rosalind. I checked our the plugin and sounds interesting. I added it to my plugin list to check out. I do agree with you, no matter what you ‘automate on your site’, be it a plugin or sales page, its always best to go check the settings and tweak to your personality and that of the blogs. The drag and drop method to online things doesn’t really work anymore, otherwise we will be interest-less, newspaper page drones 🙁
I was not aware of the WP Shopping Pages plugin, so thanks for that plugin, Ros. I’ll make sure to check it out for my upcoming WP site.
Even if you need to bring your own alterations to the post, I certainly appreciate the time and energy saving it will bring.
Thanks for the plugin info. Have you used WP Robot? If so, I would love to know your thoughts on that one.
Thanks for the info. I’ve been thinking about using this product for awhile now. Time to take another look. Thanks Rosalind!
I watched Titanic just a few nights ago on TV. Cried like a baby again when Leo (‘Jack’) sank to the bottom of the Atlantic.
Anyway, interesting plugin! I haven’t seen that one before so I’ll for sure be checking it out.
I agree too that automation is fantastic but doesn’t really replace us humans altogether. But I love finding and using tools that help get more things done, faster. 🙂
Angela