Blog

Edit: V3.4 now released!

In the next release (3.4) of NiftyGridZPro, we’re introducing a feature that could double your referral success! How? By using local Zazzle domains.

You see, if a visitor from say, England, visits your site, clicks one of your links and goes to zazzle.com – if they end up moving to and then buying from zazzle.co.uk you DON’T get any referal commission. Yup that’s right, none.

So what the new feature does, if you switch it on, is to find out automatically which country they’re from and then swap that Zazzle domain for .com in all product links in grids.

Check this grid out: If you’re from outside the US, all links in the grid will be for your country’s local Zazzle domain. Hover over one and look in the bottom left of your browser to see…

Advanced feature?

It’s an advanced feature in that you need to understand the repurcussions. You see, not all products are available on the international domains (i.e. not .com).

For example, the entire range of food items (chocolates, party pops, hot sauce etc) aren’t available on international domains.

When this happens, NiftyGridZPro will NOT substitute the local domain for .com – it’ll leave that product’s links alone. That way you still have a chance at a sale.

Restriction – six or fewer items

On large product grids (lots of items) this can slow things down a lot. Until Zazzle provides a clean way of finding out if a product is available on an international domain, we have to go round the houses a bit. And this takes time.

What do we do? For each product in your grid, NiftyGridZPro requests the product page from Zazzle. If it gets back a page with a title of “error”, then it’s not available on the local domain of the visitor. Waiting for Zazzle to return the page is what takes the time.

For this reason NiftyGridZPro will ony allow the international domains feature on product grids with six or fewer items.

Do you display prices?

The only other fiddly bit you need to know about is as follows. It’s because the only prices NiftyGridZPro gets given by Zazzle are in US dollars:

Picture this scene: If you choose to display the price line and your visitor is from, say, Denmark, it would be confusing for them to see the price shown in US dollars, wouldn’t it?

So, even if you have the price line set to display, NiftyGridZPro will switch it off if a visitor’s local domain isn’t the .com one. That now makes sense: the Danish visitor will see no reference to price but the one from, say Wisconsin, will.

From the US? 🇺🇸

By the way, if you’re from the US and want to see it working, unless you take steps, you won’t notice any difference. That’s because .com get swapped out for .com (stupid computers!)

Instead, try using a private browsing window or a vpn – a virtual private network. (Do a Google search for vpn if you need to.) As long as it makes you appear as if you’re from outside the US you’ll be able to see the effect.

Some final points on use

It’s a global setting in your Admin Panel, off by default, which means that when you upgrade, there’ll be no change to your existing product grids.

Switching it on or off (and then saving) operates it in real time across all eligible product grids on your site. Eligible ones are those that don’t mention the setting in their shortcodes. If they do, their setting overrides the Admin Panel setting.

So to switch it on or off for a particular grid, use the option in its shortcode like this: use_local_zsite=1 for on and use_local_zsite=0 for off.

If you’re using slot messages (aka ad injection), any links to zazzle.com will also be changed as per this setting if they get used in a product grid.

We’re pleased to announce the release of V3.2 of NiftyGridZPro, the gold standard WordPress plugin for Zazzle!

In this release you can now improve your earnings! And like every other aspect of NiftyGridZPro, it works on mobile too!

• earn by displaying Google Ads from your Google Adsense account, globally across all (eligible) product grids
• choose the balance between showing ads and showing your other global slot messages

When you’ve got it switched on, a random position (slot / cell) gets chosen in each (eligible) product grid and the ad is displayed there. But only if the roll of the dice says it should or you’ve got it set to always show.

Goolge Ads are another type of global slot message and behave pretty much the same way. This means from one spot, you can control their display globally across your site, just like with the global slot messages.

You’ve got tons of flexibility in choosing when they’re shown, even being able to switch them on or off for a particular page/post’s product grid. Here’s one where we’ve forced the ad to appear all the time by using use_google_ad_code=9 in the shortcode (9 means always, 1 means rarely – it’s a scale from 1-9).

See full details here in the FAQ and find out all there is about setting up and controlling your Google Ads and what makes a grid eligible.

Shortcode used

As usual, here’s the shortcode we used for the product grid above:

[niftygridzpro title_font_size="12px" title_alignment="center" cell_max_width="280px" cell_border_color="#aaaaaa" cell_background_color="#ffffff" cell_font_color="#333333" description_font_size="12px" description_alignment="center" description_length="0" include_product_names_in_titles=1 include_by_line=0 include_price_line=1 store_or_collection="hightonridley" search_term="pillows" sort_type="popularity" sort_direction="desc" page_size="6" page_number="1" product_background_color="#ffffff" allow_interaction=1 show_visitor_search_form=0 tracking_code="ngrdz_blg_pplr_outr_spc" use_google_ad_code=9]