Big Idea Media

We’re really pleased to announce that Easy Content Units have been shortlisted in THREE categories in the A4U Awards 2009.  It is a great honour to be judged to be amongst the top companies in the UK affiliate market sectors.

Our shortlisting is for the following categories:

Innovative Affiliate (Publisher) of the Year

As an affiliate have you developed and published a unique or innovative site, campaign, service, application or tool that fully embraces the concepts behind the many facets of Affiliate Marketing (CPA)? Can you demonstrate how this innovation has helped drive sales, either as a corporate affiliate or sole operator? Then this award could be landing on your doorstep.

Best Use of Technology within Affiliate Marketing

Judges are for this award looking for well executed implementation or use of new technology within Affiliate Marketing, either as an affiliate, merchant, agency, vendor or network.

Retail in Affiliate Marketing (Affiliate)

Our vertical awards have been designed to reward innovators and those that excel within their vertical in Affiliate Marketing. There will be two awards one specifically for Affiliates and one for Merchants.

For full details of shortlisted companies check out the A4U Awards page.

What makes these award shortlists particularly rewarding for us, is that ECU has only been launched for nearly 5 months and has been widely accepted by affiliates and merchants alike.

Big Idea Media have one other hope for an award which lies with John’s blog – lammo.net having been shortlisted in the Community awards as Affiliate Marketing Blog of 2009

Easy Content Units has now been live for just over a month, and in that time we have had a number of ideas thrown at us for new functionality.  We have been working hard to include as many of these new features as we can.  Here’s a round up of some of the developments we have added:

Amazon Web Services

The single most requested item was for us to include Amazon products within ECU.  As such, this is the main thing we concentrated on.  I’m glad to say that it’s all live and affiliates are including them to good effect.  Amazon products are updated ‘LIVE’ which means that all prices are as up to date as they can be.  So feel free to include them in your content units.

Merchant List

Whilst we’re working to include as many merchants as possible, there may be some you’d like to see added sooner.  Please use the Request Merchant form, and we’ll add them as soon as we can.  We have ben asked to provide a list of merchants that are in ECU, so check out our Merchant List page to see who’s there.

Pagination on Units

One use we didn’t consider when creating the units was for affiliates to create whole sites using the content units.  Listing all the different product ranges available at specific merchants, or a whole range of products from all the merchants, affiliates wanted to add lots more products than the format of the units allowed for.  So we added pagination to the units, so you can choose either 5 or 10 products per page, and there’s a next/previous button on the bottom to allow users to scroll through the list of products.  The best use of this kind of unit that we’ve seen is Wesmozart’s Chopping Board site.

‘Call to Action’ buttons

When we created Easy Content Units, we wanted them to be as customisable as possible to fit in with affiliates sites.  So we realised that the couple of ‘Buy Now’ buttons weren’t enough, so we added a small suite of ‘Buy Now’, ‘More Info’ and ‘Read More’ buttons.  This too wasn’t enough, and thanks to a suggestion from Sabian1982 we are pleased to announce another new feature.  Use your own call to action image.  Simply specify the URL to your own button, and we’ll show that in your units.

More Developments

We do have a list of tweaks and developments that we’re working on, but if you have any ideas of your own, please leave them on here, or send in a support ticket through Easy Content Units.

I will be writing a number of guides to help affiliates get the most out of our new Easy Content Units tool that we’ve created.

For those of you who haven’t taken a look at our new affiliate tool, carry on reading for a simplified explanation, then once you’re ready to check it out for yourself visit www.easycontentunits.com to start creating your units.

So, what is Easy Content Units

Really simply it’s a tool where you can select products, and build a unit for you to display on your website. All the products are already deeplinked using your affiliate code straight through to the merchant.

You do not need any technical know how to use Easy Content Units, just search through our products, tick the products you want to show and save the unit, you’ll be given the code to copy and paste onto your web page.

The units are fully customisable from colours/style to number of products and layout of the products. You can add titles, high light the best price and have a border of your choice. You can even save the style for use on your next content unit.

Once you have the code and have published it, you can sit back and relax, the prices and availability is updated automatically. If the product should go out of stock it’s removed from the content unit and an email is sent to let you know.

OK how do I get paid?

This again is easy, you are paid direct by the networks as we put your affiliate ID into the deeplinks, this means that you do not have to invoice us and wait for us to pay you. Of course you have to make sure you’re signed up to the merchants you add to the units, but we have a tool built in to let you know if you’re not – all good!

Why not have a go at putting together an Easy Content Unit, these are the results from our first group of testers:

Beach Clothing thanks Keith for building a new site with our Easy Content Units

Multi Games Tables thanks Elaine, this content unit took just 10 minutes to put together with all those Games Tables!

Cloggs Voucher codes a great implementation for discount code affiliates, helping them to add value to their sites

My next guide will be a step by step on how to get your first content unit built.

Easy Content Units compile all of the merchants product files from all UK networks and provide them for affiliates to create content units for their websites.

It’s really easy to use, simply sign up and let us know your affiliate IDs for the networks you use.

You’re then set to make a content unit. Search through our 2.5million products to find the ones you want using the filtering system to drill down, tick the ones you’d like to have, then save. There are plenty of options to customise the units to fit in with your site if you so wish, including enter a reference so you know where the sales come from.

When you have finished, simply copy and paste the generated code onto your webpage – that’s it. The units will update automatically with availability and price there’s nothing more for you to do.

If the product should go out of stock with a merchant, you will be notified in case you want to replace it.

This solution opens up the merchants product feeds for the ordinary affiliate, and is suited for content affiliates and PPC affiliates alike, whether it’s to add price comparison or a product showcase to a page, you know that you can put up and forget with the peace of mind that the correct price is being shown.

We have put up a number of demo pages together for you to see what sort of things you can do with Easy Content Units, check them out, and sign up to start making your own:

Nike Slingshot Range – this page has a content unit on it which showcases the Nike Slingshot range of golf clubs. Would suit a golfing blogger, or content writer about on a page about this golf set.

World of Warcraft Battlechest – this unit would be suited to a product review about the this product. Once the page is published with our unit you can sit back and relax as the prices are updated daily. Simple price comparison no technical knowledge required.

Garden Fountains – Here is a product showcase for a merchant, listing a number of garden fountains

To try out Easy Content Units or to find out more information, please visit http://www.easycontentunits.com