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Amazon Product Ads

A multi-instance WP widget that displays Amazon UK/US Self Optimizing Ads or if a post contains a custom field ASIN or ISBN it will display an ad for that specific product.
To use it simply drop the widget into one (or more) of your sidebars and you’re good to go.
The wdiget has the following configuration options:
* **Title**:  The title displayed at the top of the widget, just leave it empty to disable the title.
* **Amazon Store**: Choose which Amazon store to provide the ads to.
* **Tracking ID**: Your Amazon Associate Tracking ID, this can be found in the upper left when you log into the Amazon Associates site.
* **Link Colour**: The RGB colour you want to use for the text links within the ads
* **Self-optimising Ads Only**: When checked the widget will only display self optimizing link and will ignore any ASIN/ISBN in the post
* **Self-optimising Ads Logo**: When checked the Self Optimizin Ads will have the Amazon logo displayed at the top, if not a text link to Amazon will show

A multi-instance WP widget that displays Amazon UK/US Self Optimizing Ads or if a post contains a custom field ASIN or ISBN it will display an ad for that specific product.

To use it simply drop the widget into one (or more) of your sidebars and you’re good to go.

The wdiget has the following configuration options:

  • Title:  The title displayed at the top of the widget, just leave it empty to disable the title.
  • Amazon Store: Choose which Amazon store to provide the ads to.
  • Tracking ID: Your Amazon Associate Tracking ID, this can be found in the upper left when you log into the Amazon Associates site.
  • Link Colour: The RGB colour you want to use for the text links within the ads
  • Self-optimising Ads Only: When checked the widget will only display self optimizing link and will ignore any ASIN/ISBN in the post
  • Self-optimising Ads Logo: When checked the Self Optimizin Ads will have the Amazon logo displayed at the top, if not a text link to Amazon will show
  • Fixed Product ID: Use this to specify a specific Amazon product that will always be displayed by the widget, setting this will force the widget to ignore the Self-Optimising only flag.

Download Amazon Product Ads from Wordpress.org

14 Responses to this article

  1. Helen Says:
    July 29th, 2009 at 2:51 am

    Does the Amazon plugin allow you to choose the products?

  2. Darren Says:
    August 18th, 2009 at 6:12 pm

    @Helen

    Yes you can specify a product by adding a custom field ASIN to you post with the Amazon ID of the product you wish to include.

  3. Adam Says:
    August 22nd, 2009 at 10:47 pm

    I just downloaded your plugin.
    I cannot customize the ASIN, I see the widget but there are no options for customization.

    Please help.

  4. Darren Says:
    August 23rd, 2009 at 8:53 am

    @Adam

    the ASIN is not entered as part of the widget options, you create a custom field called ASIN in your post

  5. Darren Says:
    September 16th, 2009 at 6:38 pm

    @Adam

    You can now update the ASIN in the widget if you want a widget instance that will always display the same product

  6. Irving Says:
    October 16th, 2009 at 12:36 pm

    Hi. Each time I use custom field with ASIN in it, your widget will show a standard ad from amazon.co.uk. It also happens if I put the ASIN in the Widget setup. However, everything went okay if there is no ASIN numbers in the posts/widget.

    You can look at it yourself by visiting my site at http://en.irvingevajoan.com. I put 2 widgets in the left hand side. The top widget is standard widget which only shows Self Optimizing Ads Only. meanwhile, the bottom widget is default (without checking the Self Optimizing Ads Only option).

    Now, the article about the Linksys router have a custom field with ASIN set to B001SEL326.

    If you see, the top widget works okay, but the bottom widget only shows amazon.co.uk banner.

    Something wrong?

  7. Matthew Gerring Says:
    October 16th, 2009 at 6:58 pm

    Hi there. I downloaded and installed your plugin, but it won’t respond to any settings that I change. If I only have one instance of your widget running, it pulls products from the correct store but it doesn’t “self optimize” as advertised. If I put a second instance, it goes to the UK store no matter what I do, but it will choose products that make sense with the content.

    I’m running Wordpress MU 2.8.4a.

  8. Vasilis Says:
    October 21st, 2009 at 9:53 pm

    Hello
    I just installed your plugin and got the following message

    Fatal error: Undefined class name ’self’ in /home/www/allaboutdigitalfotography.com/wp-content/plugins/amazon-product-ads/amazon-product-ads.php on line 145

    Can you help?

    Thanks

    Vasilis Vrakotas

  9. Darren Says:
    October 27th, 2009 at 5:58 pm

    @Irving Unfortunately Amazon does not recognise the ASIN you are using, the page is there for the product but the Ad doesn’t work. I went into my Amazon Associates account and tried to use their Product Links wizard but that too did not recognise the ASIN. They do however have ASIN B002FL4QZC with is exactly the same product.

  10. Darren Says:
    October 27th, 2009 at 6:05 pm

    @matthew The “Self Optimizing” aspect of the plugin is performed by Amazon who have this in their FAQ:

    In the preview we are only displaying sample products from selected product lines. The optimisation of the displayed products will take place once you include the code into your website. The website must be viewed 2 – 3 times before Self-Optimised Links will optimise the ads for this page.

    As to your problem with the second instance forcing Amazon UK I will have to look into this. I do not develop against WPMU and consequently have never tested against it.

  11. Darren Says:
    October 27th, 2009 at 6:30 pm

    @Vasilis Can you let me know what version of WP you are using and when you got the error

  12. Irving Says:
    October 30th, 2009 at 8:55 am

    @Daren, I think you are using amazon.co.uk while I’m using amazon.com. The ASIN that you give is not recognized in amazon.com, even though it is recognized in amazon.co.uk.

    I got the cue from you when you say that you try to build the link from Amazon affiliate page. I tried mine, and after comparing theirs (using my B001SEL326 ASIN), I think I found the difference.
    Your widget uses o=2 for the second parameter, while Amazon produces o=1. I modified your widget to change it to o=1 and it works just fine.

    Is this always have to be set to o=1? Or perhaps o=2 is for Amazon.co.uk?

  13. Irving Says:
    October 30th, 2009 at 10:28 am

    @Daren, one more question. Looking at your code, if a post have multiple ASINs, you will show all of them in the widget. I have not tried this, so plese confirm.

    However, what will happen in the homepage? For example, I have 2 posts with 1 ASIN each. Currently, they are both shown in the homepage. But your widget only shows 1 ASIN (from the older post). Is this the intention?

  14. Darren Says:
    November 3rd, 2009 at 11:03 am

    @Irving I’ve just release a new version that should fix the Amazon.com parameter issue.

    Yes, you can use a comma separated list of ASIN to display several products

    Yes, the intention was for only the first to display on the home page

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