Unless you have been living under a rock with no access to your email, or are busy “prepping” whilst “off grid”, you might have noticed that Amasuite version 4 has been launched by Chris Guthrie and Dave Guindon.
Amasuite is a collection of tools that allow you to grab Amazon product data which can be used to select the right products to promote on your affiliate sites, or even to work out which products might be worth selling yourself, if you are part of that Fullfillment By Amazon white-label bandwagon.
Amasuite is a set of 4 tools, all designed to help you get data about the best selling Amazon products in a given category or niche. You can then use this data to find out what is selling best, what commission you will get or give you information where you could possibly sell your own product on Amazon.
What comes with Amasuite:
Azon Top 100 Analyzer
Extracts the top 100 best selling items from Amazon categories.
Azon Product Inspector
Research Amazon products using keywords and categories to pull the best selling products for your niche. We will use this tool in this article to find the details of the top 200 selling products in a specific niche.
Azon Keyword Generator
This tool grabs the Amazon autosuggest keywords, based on a seed keyword idea. These keywords can be used to create posts or tags in WordPress using SBPM.
Azon Review Finder
Give this tool a category or list of Amazon product IDs and it will extract the name and email addresses of the people who have reviewed the product. This software is new in Amasuite 4 and is geared towards people who sell products on Amazon and are looking for people to review their products for free.
Bonuses
Amasuite also comes with a massive amount of bonus training, WordPress plugins and information to help you become an Amazon affiliate or seller.Click here to check out Version 4 of Amasuite
I have used Amasuite version 3 to build sites with SBPM, using a combination of phpZon Pro, EasyAzon or ReviewAzon and thought it would be a good time to go over the process I use when creating sites using thse tools. The new Amasuite version does look like it contains some new bells and whistles, but version 3 is still perfect for this job.
1. Grab data using AzonProduct Inspector
In this example, I will be building a thin affiliate site on the topic of Dog Collars. I just chose this niche at random, but the process will be the same for the niche you are in.
- Open the Amasuite Product Inspector application and enter “dog collar” in the “Search phrase” box.
- Tick the “Exact Match” option.
- Choose “Pet Supplies” from the category dropdown.
- Set the “Extract Items By” to “Popularity”
- Set “Max Pages” to “10” so that I get a good range of products.
- Click the “Start” button on the toolbar and let the AzonProduct Inspector do it’s thing.
Once it has finished getting the results, I then click the “Save” button on the toolbar and choose “CSV” from the list, which allows me to save the data out to my hard drive for later use.
2. Import into Excel
We then need to open the CSV file we created in Excel to tidy it up before we can use it in SBPM. You can usually double click the file to open it direct in Excel, or you can open the CSV as a text file and copy and paste into a blank Excel worksheet.
Tip:
If you get the data in Excel and it looks like one massive chunk of text in one column, you will need to select column A and choose the “Text To Columns” option from the “Data” tab. You can then choose “Delimited” and “Comma” to split the data into separate columns.
Learn how to do this at the Excel Easy Text To Columns tutorial.
After you have got this sorted out, your Excel should roughly look like this:
3. Tidy up the titles.
Firstly, I would look at the titles of the products, with a view to making them more WordPress friendly.
I start with removing any instances of the following types of characters in the Amazon product title:
" ' # ~ @ : ; / * & %
I select the “Title” column and do a search and replace for any of these characters, replacing them with a single space.
Once you have done this, the last step is to do a search and replace for two spaces and replace them with a single space. You will need to do this a few times, until Excel can’t find any more to replace.
People who sell on Amazon are almost as bad as on eBay when it comes to naming their products, using extra information that looks bad when it is used as a WordPress post title.
Unfortunately, this requires some manual editing of each item, but in the long run, it looks better for your site if you use this as your post title and keyword:
SportDOG Rechargeable NoBark 10R Bark Control Collar
Rather than:
SportDOG Rechargeable NoBark 10R Bark Control Collar PLUS REPLACEMENT BATTERY & PET EMERGENCY Contact Information...
Which is the original title that Amasuite extracted from Amazon.
Another thing you can do, is to make a copy of the title column and turn one into a more compact title and the other can be used as a custom variable. Just remember that if you do this, you will need to change the column name in Row 1.
It might also be a good idea to rename the column headers to make them unique. SBPM will work with spaces in the headers. The custom variable of %%Product Id%% will work – but maybe %%ProductId%% is better.
4. Delete or rearrange the columns
The last part I do before the import to SBPM is to either delete or rearrange the columns so they are in the right order. I want the keyword (or Amazon title) in column A, so I just add in a new column and then drag and drop to the right place.
There are a few columns that I would probably not even use, such as the link to the reviews, category name or the amount of money you will get from a sale of that product. Just delete the columns you think you won’t need to use.
Amasuite version 4 allows you to automatically embed your Amazon Associates ID into each link, which is a great help. Not impossible to do in Excel though :)
This is how my Excel file looks now – all neat and tidy :)
5. Import to SBPM
Now, there are 2 ways to do this, the long hard way and the nice quick easy way. I will go through both because I think that using the long way will help you in the future and it will teach you some Excel skills too.
In a nutshell, what we need to do to get the data ready for SBPM is to convert what we have in Excel, into the right format that SBPM understands.
either:
category/keyword(custom1=value1,custom2=value2)
or
keyword(custom1=value1,custom2=value2)
Excel method:
What we are going to do is combine the colums in Excel to create this format. To do this, move to the end of a row and start by entering an equals sign = and then clicking the cell on that row where your keyword is. This should be cell A2 as per the example screenshot above.
Next, you will need to add an open bracket which will signify to SBPM that the next information will be the custom variables. These custom variables take the format of name=value and if you want more than one custom variable, you will need to separate these with commas.
To add the open bracket, or Excel formula will need to look like this:
=A2&"("
The & (ampersand) will append the bracket or what ever text you want, that you have put inside the quotes.
Next, we need to enter the custom variable name, which we will get from the first row of each column, follow by another equals sign:
=A2&"("&"ProductId="
Then, add another & sign and choose the corresponding value in that column followed by a comma:
=A2&"("&"ProductId="&B2&","
If we just take a quick pause here and see whta the outcome of this will be using the data in the screenshot, we can see that we have created the following:
PetSafe PIF00-12917 Stay and Play Wireless Fence(ProductId=B0055L8RRC)
We are already on the way to creating our SBPM compatible data
Carry on adding each additional custom variable to this formula, including the required equals sign between each variable name and value and a comma between each one.
At the end, the formula looks like this (the formula has wrapped a little…):
=A2&"("&"ProductId="&B2&","&"ListPrice="&C2&","&"SalePrice="&D2&","&"Savings="&E2&","&"SavingsPercentage="&F2&","&"Commissions="&G2&","&"Rating="&H2&")"
At the end of the formula, rather than adding a comma at the end, I have added the closing bracket. This results in the following:
PetSafe PIF00-12917 Stay and Play Wireless Fence(ProductId=B0055L8RRC,ListPrice=349.99,SalePrice=329.95,Savings=20.04,SavingsPercentage=6,Commissions=13.2,Rating=3.7)
Once you have got this formula correct, you can copy and paste it down each row in your Excel file and all of the information will be populated:
You can then copy and paste this column (column I) into the keywords part of SBPM and use the custom variables in the content.
The easy SBPM way:
Whilst learning how to do this in Excel is very useful, I knew that there must be an easier way – so I created a tool especially to help
The CSV To SBPM Converter Tool
This tool allows you to use raw CSV or Excel data and have it converted to SBPM formatted keywords with the custom variables created for you.
You can also choose between outputting the category and keyword or just the keyword, along with the custom variables. You can read more about the tool over at the page.
Let’s get back to our Dog Collar data, which we have already loaded into Excel and cleaned up, re-arranged and made ready for SBPM.
To use this conversion tool, highlight all of the data in Excel (including the column headers) and either press CTRL+C to copy to the clipboard or right click on the data and choose “Copy” from the menu.
Go over to the CSV to SBPM Converter page and paste the data in the box that says “Paste your CSV data here…”.
Choose “Copy and paste from Excel” under the “My data is” section and choose if you want to output the category/keyword or just keyword format. In this example, we are just going to output keyword formatted data.
Click the submit button at the bottom of the page and it will reload, with the neatly formatted SBPM data ready for you to copy and paste direct into the category/keyword section of the plugin.
6. Add the content.
How you might use the Amazon data is up to you. However I will give a little example of the kind of sites I have been creating using the Amasuite extract.
My current “tool of choice” for creating Amazon affiliate sites is EasyAzon – also from Chris Guthrie, because it easily allows you to create different types of links and can be geotargetted easily too.Click here to read more about EasyAzon
An example of using EasyAzon as a WordPress shortcode is as follows:
[easyazon_block add_to_cart="default" asin="B0055L8RRC" cloaking="default" layout="top" localization="default" locale="US" nofollow="default" new_window="default" tag="amazonid-20"]
If we took this as an example and used the SBPM custom variable we created earlier, we could add this to our content as follows to automatically add in the ProductId (ASIN):
[easyazon_block add_to_cart="default" asin="%%ProductId%%" cloaking="default" layout="top" localization="default" locale="US" nofollow="default" new_window="default" tag="amazonid-20"]
The next thing to do will be to either write some quite generic content about Dog Collars, how great they are and that they should be purchased from the following Amazon link. We also need to add in the %%keyword%% placeholder, plus some of the additional custom variables we have created too. This will make the content look more unique.
After spinning some old PLR content I found, my SBPM content has ended up like this:
[easyazon_infoblock align="left" identifier="%%ProductID%%" locale="US" tag="amazonid-20"]
When it {comes to|concerns|pertains to|involves} {dog|canine|pet dog|pet} training, a <b>%%keyword%%</b> {can|could} be {an effective|an efficient|a reliable} {tool|device}. {However|Nevertheless|Nonetheless}, they {must|should|need to|have to} be {used|utilized|made use of} {properly|correctly|appropriately|effectively} {and|and also|as well as} {safely|securely} if you're {going to|visiting} {train|educate} your {dog|canine|pet dog|pet} with them. In this {article|short article|post|write-up}, I {will|will certainly} {show|reveal} you {how to|ways to|the best ways to|how you can} {use|utilize|make use of} shock collars to {achieve|accomplish|attain} this {goal|objective}.
A %%keyword%%, which is on sale {at the moment|currently|presently|right now} for %%SalePrice%%, is {a product|an item} that {will|will certainly} {send|send out} a shock to the {dog|canine|pet dog|pet} when they do {something wrong|glitch}. {Most of|The majority of|A lot of} these {types of|kinds of|sorts of} collars {come with|included|featured|had|possessed} {different|various} {levels|degrees} of shocks that {can|could} be {administered|provided|carried out}, {and|and also|as well as} {should|ought to|must|need to} be {set|established} {properly|correctly|appropriately|effectively} for the {size|dimension} of the {dog|canine|pet dog|pet}. A shock {will|will certainly} be {sent|sent out} from the transmitter to the receiver of the {dog|canine|pet dog|pet}'s collar. You {control|manage|regulate} the transmitter to {send|send out} signals when your {dog|canine|pet dog|pet} does something that you do not {approve|authorize|accept}.
<center><a href=" http://www.amazon.com/dp/%%ProductId%%/?tag=amazonid-20">The %%keyword%% has {an average|a typical|an ordinary} {rating|score|ranking} of %%Rating%% {out of|from} 5 on {Amazon|Amazon.com} - {Click Here|Click on this link|Visit this site|Go here|Visit here} To {Read|Check out|Review} The {Reviews|Evaluations|Testimonials|Ratings|Assessments}</a></center>
<h2>How Does The %%keyword%% Work?</h2>
[easyazon_infoblock align=”left” identifier=”%%ProductID%%” key=”attributes” locale=”US” tag=”amazonid-20″]
It's {a simple|an easy|a basic|a straightforward} {idea|concept|suggestion}-- {any time|whenever|at any time} the {dog|canine|pet dog|pet} does {something wrong|glitch}, you {send|send out} a shock to the {dog|canine|pet dog|pet}. They {might|may|could} not figure it out the {first|very first|initial} time, {but|however|yet} if they do the {same|exact same|very same} {thing|point|factor} {again|once again|once more} {and|and also|as well as} {get|obtain|acquire} {shocked|stunned|surprised}, they {might|may|could} {start to|begin to} {notice|discover|observe|see} a pattern. If they do it {three|3} or {four|4} {more|even more} times {and|and also|as well as} {receive|get|obtain} a shock {every time|each time|whenever|every single time} they {have|have actually} done that {same|exact same|very same} {behavior|habits|actions}, then {soon|quickly} they {will|will certainly} {think|believe|assume} that doing that {behavior|habits|actions} {causes|triggers|creates|induces} them {to get|to obtain} {shocked|stunned|surprised}. {Thus|Therefore|Hence}, they {will|will certainly} {stop|quit} doing that {behavior|habits|actions}.
{An electronic|A digital} shock collar {can|could} be {used|utilized|made use of} to {stop|quit} {many|numerous|lots of|several} {different|various} {kinds of|type of|sort of} {misbehaviors|wrongdoings|misdeeds} in {dogs|canines|pet dogs|pets}, such as {jumping up|lifting} on {furniture|furnishings} or {visitors|site visitors}, {digging|excavating} {holes|openings|gaps} in the {backyard|yard}, {chewing|eating} on {things|points|factors} {and so on|and so forth|and more|etc}.
This example content will create posts in SBPM that have a large EasyAzon block floated to the left, followed by content with an Amazon link in the middle that uses the %%Rating%% variable to show how much people like it. It is then summed up with some more generic Dog Collar content and another EasyAzon block, showing the product specifics, such as size, weight, materials etc.
Again, this is just demo content, so when creating your sites, spend more time making sure it all works and flows properly before posting. I would also use the 3 different content tabs in SBPM to create variations on this theme, using different content or layouts to mix it up a bit.
The result:
Here is a screenshot of the output of this content – and yes… it does not look visually perfect, but I am only using the basic WordPress template and have not done any tweaking at all – but you get the idea.
I hope this helps!
I hope this little Amasuite tutorial and CSV to SBPM tool has been useful for you to help you build some great Amazon affiliate sites.
It would be great if Amasuite gave us slightly more data than just the title, ratings and reviews, such as the product specifics as per the second EasyAzon box I added in my example above. However, it is an excellent tool for starting to build out your Amazon affiliate sites.
Of course, there will be other affiliate programs that give you CSV data that you could also use in SBPM in the same way – so you are not restricted to just using Amazon.
What other affiliate programs do you use SBPM for?