Tag Archives: amazon

Heads Up! Updates to the Amazon and eBay Capsules

As of today, the number keyword or seller-based products that can be featured per Amazon or eBay capsule will be lowered to two. We have decided to reduce the upper limit to fight clutter in Hubs, help Hubbers present their pages’ visitors with a better experience, and (hopefully) boost Hubbers’ Amazon and eBay earnings.

Capsules featuring more than two keyword or seller-based products will not be affected unless edited (when you edit a commerce capsule featuring more than two keyword or seller-based products, the limit gets brought down to two).

The total number of manually-entered Amazon products one can feature in an Amazon Capsule (entered by ASIN or URL) remains capped at ten, however we do not necessarily recommend featuring ten items in the capsule just because you can.

With many features on our site, we have found that when we present fewer options, we see an increase in the total number of clicks. By paring down the total number of keyword or seller-based items featured in commerce capsules, we hope that we might also help Hubbers drive more clicks and boost their earnings.

Generally speaking, Amazon and eBay Capsules perform best when the products they feature are of very direct interest to the readers of a Hub. For example, an Amazon Capsule featuring a wind-proof umbrella in a Hub about different types of wind-proof umbrellas is going to perform much better than a Hub featuring a book about parenting in a Hub sharing general parenting advice. For this reason, we recommend featuring products sparingly and only featuring products when they are directly alluded to in the body of your Hub.

New Amazon-Branded Buy Button on Hubs

Screen Shot 2015-01-13 at 11.11.42 AMTwo months ago, lobobrandon suggested that we make Amazon Capsules more attractive, observing that Amazon products presented on other sites for which he writes are more comely and also more lucrative.

We absolutely agree that better visuals can lead to better clickthroughs, and especially think that present that using more prominent Amazon branding and including a call to action to “buy” a product is one of the most important things to impact clickthrough rates to Amazon (though the single most important thing you can do is carefully choose just a small number of products that are directly related to the subject of a Hub- and give them insightful custom descriptions).

We have therefore updated the Amazon Capsule with an Amazon-branded buy button (as pictured to the right).

Should this update improve the performance of Amazon Capsules in your Hubs, we’ll stick with it!

Thanks for the great suggestion, lobobrandon! We appreciate your HubPages community activism. 😀

A Visit from thisisoli

thisisoliThis afternoon, HubPages HQ was visited by none other than thisisoli, an Austin-based hubber who is visiting San Francisco at the end of a lovely California vacation with his wife.

thisisoli, a HubPages member of two years now, is the third hubber to visit us at 95 Minna Street.  He had a look at the office, and met the team, after which we adjourned for a great lunch at Osha.

We had a great time chatting, and learned a lot from thisisoli’s superior hubbing skills. He’s especially adept at working with Amazon and eBay capsules, and is looking forward to the holiday season, which can be quite lucrative!

thisisoli shared with us that he had originally joined HubPages looking to set down some backlinks for his wife’s website, My Vegan Planet.  After publishing some hubs, he left the site alone, but noticed after some months that a decent chuck of AdSense revenue was coming from HubPages and decided to give it a more thorough look.  Now, thisisoli has over 175 hubs and is very adept at measuring his success and finding exactly what it takes to write useful, lucrative hubs.

We were all tickled to meet a fellow hubber in person, and we look forward to meeting more of you in the future!

Thanks for stopping by, Oli!

‘Tis The Season For Amazon And Ebay Capsules

Even though it’s hard to believe, it seems that it is now officially December, which means that we are smack-dab in the middle of yet another crazy holiday season filled with sales, shopping, traveling and family get-togethers. It’s so easy to get so caught up in the holiday madness that sometimes you wish that it would just be over as quickly as it showed up. Well, I’m here to tell you that there’s no need to be such a Grinch and besides the fact that you get additional vacation time and a chance to hang with your family(could be good or bad), there are definite bright sides to this whole ‘holiday season’ thing.

You see, from a HubPages perspective, the over-hyped Christmas shopping season that kicks into gear this month means that people are looking for stuff to by and despite some slowdowns in online spending this year, more people than ever will be heading online to shop. Although yesterday(aka Cyber Monday) is supposedly the busiest online shopping day, the entire month of December leading up to Christmas creates a very opportunistic time for Hubbers to make some additional revenue.

Whether people are out searching for electronics, movies, books or beauty products they will be looking for places online where they can learn more about things and potentially buy things as they begin to mark people off of their Christmas shopping to-do lists. One of the best ways to capitalize on this product-buying trend is to create very informative and product specific Hubs that include Ebay and Amazon Revenue Capsules. These capsules enable those browsing your Hubs to not only learn about the products, but buy them directly from your Hub as well. This makes the purchasing process easier for the buyer and it helps you earn some additional cash in the process. You’ve helped them make an informed decision and because of that you get a piece of the pie if they follow through with a purchase on Amazon or Ebay. Sounds like a great HubPages holiday shopping situation for everyone involved, don’t you think?

If you haven’t registered as an Ebay or Amazon affiliate yet on HubPages, be sure to login and check out your My Affiliate Settings page for information how to sign up in a matter of minutes. Now, hurry up and get to Hubbing so that you can turn this year’s holiday season into a way to make yourself some extra Christmas spending cash.

Also, according to our reports, Ebay is currently trending towards generating over double the amount of revenue per click that Amazon is generating, so start plugging in those Ebay Capsules, Hubbers!


Light blue(left column) is Amazon’s revenue per click vs. the purple colored(right column)Ebay