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Help - Basic aBar™ Generation

Although we try to make aBar™s as easy to use as possible, we recognize that there are some aspects that may not be as self-explanatory as we would like them to be. We have a feedback page for any suggestions you may have about how to convey concepts more effectively.

If you have problems related to how the Amazon Associates program system works, how you get paid, or how you join the Amazon Associates program, please go to the Amazon Associates program site.

If your problem involves generating an aBar™ successfully for your site, see below for some tips. If these do not solve your problem, please feel free to contact us via any of the mechanisms we make available, including live help via boldchat (See the top of each page).

The following tips step you through generating an aBar™ in the order of the steps on the Get Your aBar™ page.

Be aware that before you can make any money using aBar™s, you must sign up to the Amazon Associates program (see above) and obtain your CampId. This id is passed to Amazon through the aBar™ links to ensure that you get paid by Amazon. Note that none of your money ever goes to eBarster - it goes direct to you from Amazon!

1. Make sure that the url you enter is the full url to the page of your website (no redirect pages). Please do not put any slashes at the end of the url. Please ensure the url starts http://

Examples are: http://www.bookfreakz.com http://www.ebarster.com/index.asp

2. When you join the Amazon Associates program, you will be given a "CampId" and it is this number that should be placed in field 2. This number will then appear in every other listing link generated in your aBar™, starting with the first one. If one of the users of your aBar™ clicks on one of these listing links and this results in a sale or that user becoming a new user, you will earn 100% commission as detailed in the Getting Paid page on Amazon Associates program website.

An example of an Associates Id is portables-20, which is the eBarster Id you will see on the listings in the aBar™ on this website, and is the default one used by aBars if no associate id is entered when generating an aBar.

4. The font family field can contain only one of the following values at this time: arial or times roman or helvetica or verdana or geneva

5.6. and 7. You are able to choose any font color for your aBar™ text (5), for your Prices text within the aBar™ (6), and any background color (7) by using the #XXXXXX convention for hexadecimal numbers. We strongly advise use of the hexadecimal numbers where possible. However, if you wish to use color names, the only ones supported are listed here: blue,green,red,black,white,lime,gray, silver, olive, aqua,teal,navy,fuschia,purple,maroon,yellow

8. The only widths supported currently are 120, 130, 140, 150 and these values are pixel values.

9. The only heights supported currently are 400,500,600 and these values are pixel values.

10. It is possible to have a border of 1 pixels, or to have no border at all (0 pixels). The entries supported therefore are 0 or 1. However, advanced users may want to provide their own borders by enclosing the aBar™ in another html element of their own choosing. This is, of course, something that we could not support, as there are so many permutations, but advanced users are welcome to experiment.

Help - SEO Tools

Meta Tag Analyzer

You can use this tool to help you analyze Meta tags on the sites of your competitorS!

META Analyzer Tool © SEO Chat™ URL Valid URL Enter Captcha To Continue To prevent spamming, please enter in the numbers and letters in the box below Report Problem with Tool.

Meta Tag Generator

You can use this tool to help you generate Meta tags for your site

Meta Tag Generator Tool © SEO Chat™ Keywords List of relevant keywords Description Short description of page Enter Captcha To Continue To prevent spamming, please enter in the numbers and letters in the box below Report Problem with Tool.

Help - Advanced Uses

We have tried to make aBar™s as flexible to use as possible while making them easy to use by those who are not advanced in html/javascript skills.

For those who have advanced skills, there are a number of tricks that can help you make aBar™s a more powerful experience.

1. To experiment with aBar™, you can call it directly, using the following url (replace www.myurl.com as appropriate:

http://www.ebarster.com/abars/Default.aspx?fromurl=[http://www.myurl.com]

Note that the fromurl parameter is mandatory.

You can add on parameters, and change parameters within this call as you like..based upon the rules above, and the query string you can see on the "Get an aBar" page.

There are two "hidden parameters" for use only by Advanced users..

2. Should you dislike the generated results in your aBar™, you can change the keywords being used by the aBar™ to find matching Amazon listings, by adding another parameter to the call to Default.aspx The parameter is k and can contain a comma separated list of 5 keywords. It should be exactly 5 keywords, no more and no less or else unforeseen circumstances may result. The format is k=keyword1,keyword2,keyword3,keyword4,
keyword5

3. Should you be unsure what the aBar™ is doing with the parameters you are passing in, you can add another parameter - test=1 - which puts the aBar™ into debug mode and prints out all the params passed in, and which keywords are being used to generate your aBar™.

A summary of useful parameters for advanced users is listed here:

fontcolor-font color you want to use

bgcolor- background color you want to use in the aBar™

fromurl – the url of the page you are testing with the aBar™ (must not be a redirect page, must have content!)

fontfamily – the font family you would like to use in your aBar™ <>pricecolor – the color of the prices text

trackingid – your Amazon Associates program tracking id (associates id or affiliate id e.g. portables-20)

width - the width of your aBar™

height - the height of your aBar™

border - 1 for a border, 0 for no border

test - 1 for debug mode

k - optional, advanced users only, set to a comma separated list of 5 keywords

Note that although the "Get Your aBar" page attempts to show you what your aBar™ will look like once it is generated, some website pages require parameters/cookies etc. to be passed to a webpage and these pages will not work well on this page. You should try to use the generated code in your page, as it should work inside the page itself in such cases.

However, note that there are some pages where aBar™s will not work - for good security reasons - although it is unlikely that anyone would want an aBar™ on such a page - such pages include secure bank account details pages, etc. If you cannot get aBars working on your site, please contact us as aBars should work with the majority of sites. Note that database-generated sites or sites where access is controlled can use a version of aBars but you need to contact us to get the code (see below).

Common Problems

1. No Payments

It is common to forget to put your Affiliate Id (Campaign Id) in when generating your aBar - don't do this or you won't make any money from your aBar!

2. Code doesnt work

It is also common not to copy ALL of the generated code properly after generation - be sure you have copied ALL the code in BOTH of the generated code boxes!

3. Ads dont seem targetted

If the ads generated dont appear to be targetted to your website's audience, it could be because your website's content is not well primed for search engines - to improve this, ensure your keywords in the meta tags are correct, ensure that your title is very relevant, and ensure you have relevant links and content on your site!

Also, use the tools on the left to help choose and create meta tags for your site and see our articles about Search Engine Optimization

If you have other issues or questions please contact us.

5. Access-controlled / Database-generated sites

Sites that are access-controlled or database-generated dont work with the public version of aBars.

However, we have another version of aBars specially designed for these kinds of sites. We don't make it publicly available, as we need to guide you in the installation of this code a little more.. but we offer the guidance for free, so just contact us (see link below)!

6. Still Need Help?

We are very willing to help you with installing code, Search Engine Optimization of your website etc. free of charge during our first few months as a business! Simply contact us for more help! If you have other issues or questions please contact us.

Classic aBar