Category: How To

Blog posts showing you how to do or achieve something

Encourage promotion help from friends, family and faithful followers

Since this post was published, there have been some updates. We’ve now re-written it as a tutorial. See it here

We’ve done something for you that helps to get your friends, family and faithful followers to pin your designs on their Pinterest. A bit of virality!

The specially worded appeal to them is all done in the text that accompanies the image when it’s shared. It’s not so easy to explain, so here’s what one looks like when tweeted:

How could any of them refuse that? Of course, you’d say something different than I did, something aimed at friends, family or faithful followers.

How you get yours

Use the Nifty Promo Control Panel as usual to set up the products to use. When you’re ready….

In Step 2, choose the individual product page sharer:

the individual product pinner page opens….

then just select the browser’s address bar contents and copy it. It’s a hugely long line of gibberish – but important gibberish, nonetheless!

You’re now ready to put it into

  • a tweet or a reply to one
  • a Fb status update or a reply
  • as the url to use for a new pin on Pinterest

However you choose to share, you’ll get a lovely-looking end result with text designed to appeal to those who support indy artists, as well as friends, family etc.

Here’s what it looks like when pasted into a status update on Facebook:

The text “Help an indie artist by using this Speed-Pinner” is designed to encourage in a non-pushy way.

The text underneath is derived from the storeid and any search terms used, followed by “designs – or tap/click any to buy from Zazzle and help even more!”. It’s designed both to include appropriate detail and, again, make an appeal to the viewer’s better nature. You can see how much space is reserved for that text and where it gets cut off. That’s Fb for you 😉

Embedding Nifty-generated pages in your WordPress, Blogger or Weebly blogs

Here’s a slideshow of some Mother’s Day gifts and cards from Zazzle. It was made in Nifty and then embedded in an iframe here. Also works on Blogger and Weebly blogs (click for examples). See the end for the code used.

Note that you need a self-hosted WordPress site. You can’t do this on the free wordpress.com ones because they don’t allow iframes, as used in this technique.

See the code by clicking the button

Note that

  • for Weebly, a width of 98% works best
  • for Society6 slideshows, use a height of 1050
  • for Zazzle slideshows, use a height of 1100

Here’s a Nifty Society6 embedded slideshow so you can compare to Nifty’s Zazzle slideshow above:

Again, tap/click the button to see the code.

Solved: The trouble with Pinning from Zazzle

Zazzle uses its own internal link shortener when you share from product pages. It includes your referral id (as long as you were logged in at the time) BUT no tracking code.

Now that Pinterest doesn’t let you edit links, you can’t add a tracking code after pinning. How do you get round that?

Making sure pins include your tracking code

Seriously, the best thing you can do if you want to do it manually, is to use Nifty’s individual product sharer to pin once or twice a week from your new products.

Your referral id and the tracking code you give will be used on the links. Easy peasy.

Of course, without a subscription, our referral id will be used half the time. This is the 50/50 referral sharing you might have heard about. It’s a very common way to let people try tools without any outlay, making it risk free while still letting people get rewarded for their effort.

How can I make sure I don’t lose out?

The simple solution so you don’t lose out is to Pin twice as many or even more, including pinning the work of other artists you like. It’s extremely fast and easy, so pinning twice as many takes much, much less than half the time.

And that frees you up to get back to creating new designs in a flash 😎

Following this approach will also give your Pinterest a boost. Why? Because Pinterest loves you to pin lots and your followers, clicks and saves/repins will grow even faster as a result.

Keeping your Pinterest in their good books

Of course, you have to interact with Pinterest in other ways to keep your account in their good books. Do this by following others and repin things you like. Crafts and how-to’s are good for this.

Try for yourself to see how easy it is by following this link to Nifty

Too hesitant for a toe in the water? Relax – we got it!

If you can see the benefits of using the Nifty tools but either don’t have the time or want to try but feel a little overwhelmed, there’s another way.

We’ve just put up a gig on fiverr where we do it for you.

Pinterest screenshot to set the scene

What we’re offering is, on Pinterest, to pin the entire contents of one of your collections to either:

  • one of our boards…
  • ..or one of yours
  • we’ll pin up to 12 per day until the collection runs out
  • maximum collection size for this is 240
  • only G-rated designs will be used

Just think what that’ll do for your viewing figures and maybe even sales! We’ll even show you how to do it for yourself next time, if that’s what you want.

see the gig here

Getting your slot messages ready for Christmas

Now is the time to prepare your slot messaging for the holiday season. At the time of writing, I’ve used only one slot message, an animated gif from giphy.com of a christmas tree with snow falling. I’ve also got a Google ad set to show part of the time, so you might see that instead.

You might want to set up a number of slot messages, each with a different creative to showcase what’s important to you. The point is, now’s the time to do it!

Search Zazzle market place for:
How many to get (max 120):


Here’s the shortcode I used for the above grid:

[niftygridzpro title_font_size="11px" title_alignment="center" cell_max_width="190px" cell_border_color="#888888" cell_background_color="#DDDDDD" cell_font_color="#333333" cell_vlink_color="#666666" description_font_size="10px" description_alignment="center" description_length="0" include_product_names_in_titles=1 use_only_product_names_in_titles=0 include_by_line=0 include_tags_line=0 include_price_line=1 product_grid_nav_font_size="20px" fallback_filename="default-fallback-grid.html" grid_sort_method="pulledorder" associate_id="238582202591969585" store_or_collection="collections/119076182750895596" page_size="12" product_background_color="ffffff" tracking_code="ngrdzwp_xmas_ready" use_local_zsite=0 allow_interaction=1 show_visitor_search_form=1 ]