Make A Widget!

Today is one of those fun days… I get to introduce a brand new product/feature of the ShareASale Network. As with everything new, it might take some time to build up – so we are opening it up to all of the Merchants on the network first, so that they have time to fill in some content. We then have plans to open it up to Affiliates as soon as we can, hopefully as early as next week if there are a decent number of widgets created in the next few days.

Seeing how 2007 was declared to be the “Year of the Widget” by so many industry bloggers, we decided to make an easy-to-use interface enabling merchants on the ShareASale Network to create and maintain a variety of widgets for their affiliates. As is the custom with widgets, when a merchant updates the content of their widget, this information is updated in real-time (and without extra effort) to all of their affiliate’s websites.

So, the potential is great for very targetted and seasonal promotions. For example, if you have products that sell very well during the summer… you can include them in a “Summer” tab, and then replace that with an appropriate “Fall/Winter” tab later in the year. The affiliate would only have to load your widget once, and all other updates would be automatic.

Since creating a widget can be a little intimidating the first time, I’ve created a short video which explains the features of our “Make A Widget” tool, and shows a step-by-step walkthrough from start to finish which takes less than 10 minutes.

Enjoy! The videos are located here in full size, and a smaller size is available here.

We would love to help you make your first widget as well, so let us know if you need any assistance at all. Happy widget’ing!