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Posted by Lammo in 
After what seems like an eternity of beta testing (ok, three months) behind closed doors, I’ve finally been given the green light to launch a public beta version of our brand new Content Unit system. And what a system it is – Easy Content Units is the UK’s first multi-network, fully customisable Content Unit system. With more than 2.5 million products across the ten main UK affiliate networks, it’s really simple 
to make fantastic looking Content Units, comprising deeplinks to products from multiple merchants, across multiple networks in the same unit, containing in-stock items and up-to-date prices.
With the current financial climate, customers in 2009 are going to be ever more price-conscious. People 
will still shop online, they will just shop around more for the best deal. Those whose TV blew up in 2008 would have nipped down to Dixons and staggered home with the largest LCD they could carry. If the same happens this year, people will be more likely to go online, and find out who’d selling the cheapest LCD TV – If you can offer them all the prices on your site, then they’re a lot less likely to look elsewhere, and you close the deal – fab!
Which is exactly what Easy Content Units allows you to do – you can create Price Comparison content units (just add the same product from different retailers into a unit), and put those units on any webpage – If you know how to use a mouse and copy & paste, then you can have Price Comparison units on your site in minutes.
But that’s not all – You can showcase a particular merchant’s best sellers, highlight entire product ranges, similar products (why not cross-sell movie merchandise on a DVD site?)
The system is designed to be easy to use (it’s so easy, even I can use it!) – you simply search for products, and then tick the ones you want to add to your unit. Once you’ve got all the products you want, you can then customise your unit – And I mean customise! You can specify how much (or how little) information is displayed, change the height/width to fit your site exactly, change colour schemes, borders, add custom tracking IDs, add a title, Buy Now buttons and more. And your unit will update automatically – any changes you make on the ECU control panel will be reflected automatically on your site – you don’t need to change the code at all.
Best of all, we’ve made Easy Content Units completely free to use – The site works on an 80/20 split system, so the content units show your links 80% of the time, and our links the remaining 20%. However, as a special thank-you to my loyal Lammo readers, anyone who joins Easy Content Units before the end of the month and puts a unit live can have a Lammo bonus – a 90/10 split in your favour. Just get in touch with your ECU username once you’ve put your first unit live, and I’ll put you live on the better split.
ECU has been many, many months in development and testing has been hard work at times, so I’d like to publically thank Stu, our main Web Dev guy who basically built the system from scratch, and also remind him that the hard work still lies ahead – This is very much version 1.0.0, and we’ve got some huge, 
huge plans for ECU which we’ll be unveiling throughout 2009 – we’d really appreciate any feedback on the system (particularly any bugs or issues) that you may have – there is a support feature within ECU, but obviously you can grab me through the normal channels too.
We’ve really worked our asses off on this system, so hopefully you’ll find it useful! I’ve dotted a few examples of units around this post so you can see the different look and feel that can be achieved very quickly and easily with Easy Content Units – Please note they’re not the actual units themselves – these are simply images, so the links won’t work (and there’s a spot-prize for the first person to spot the deliberate mistake on one of the units!)
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Looks good mate, very useful. Best of luck with it
Looks a good tool, sure it will be mega useful. I can’t spot the deliberate mistake, have looked at all the Units too!
Is there a live demo of a content unit box?
Cheers for the comments guys – Hope you find it useful, as we’ve put a load of work into making it as customisable as possible.
David – you can see a live demo of one of the units here
John (and co) – you are flippin geniuses
http://www.allkids.co.uk/multi-games-tables.shtml
if I can do it this quick – ’bout 10 minutes – then ANYONE can do it.
Now if you just get working on your scrambled eggs – you’d be darn near perfect
Deliberate mistake, no star wars logo above Mighty Mugs Han Solo?
Hey I like the look of these – if I get it to work like Elaine’s page I will be quite happy.
I guess the deliberate mistake is 247 Electrical
We have two winners..
The “deliberate mistake” was that I’d included an image of a unit I built in November, that included 24/7 Electrical, a merchant that went bust a few weeks later.
However, there is indeed a missing Star Wars logo above Hans solo’s head – That’s not my work though.. that’s the actual (unaltered) image supplied by the merchant.
So Machead and Tania – congratulations for being so eagle-eyed. I’ll be in touch shortly to arrange your prizes.
@Lammo – Thanks for the link. This looks to be a great service – perfect for niche PPCer’s IMO.
Congrats to Machead and Tania – skimmed over the competition question – grrr!
Congratulations John!
Brilliant tool and great to see it launched.
How do we get merchants added as there are a number missing?
Thanks.
Hi Andrew,
On your homepage dashboard (once logged in), under the Help section, there’s a link called “Request a merchant” – simply fill in the merchant you’d like to see here, and as long as their product feed is up to scratch, we’ll get them added as a priority.
Looks fantastic and I think the 80/20 split is very fair!
Will you be releasing the pro version anytime soon. Will that mean we can pay a fee and keep 100% of the commission?
Chris – Thanks!
Kylah16 – That’s exactly how the Pro version will work – It won’t be available until we exit beta however, which I would say is still several months away. I’ll let you know as soon as its ready.
Great idea, have registered and it’s a great implimentation too.
Well done.
Any chance you could get Amazon involved ?!
The revenue split is fair considering the time saved but have you thought about taking all the commission yourself and giving 80% back to your users ? Just a thought but that way:
1) You would do huge volume and be able to get an extra % off the merchants so perhaps the 80% would be the same as or even more than 100% for publishers in some circumstances.
2) Publishers would only have one main account / one payment threshold to worry about.
Best of luck with it.
I second having Amazon!
I third Amazon
Hi guys,
Amazon is coming – we’re working on implementing it as we speak. Without getting too technical, they work completely differently to the networks, so we need to re-work a lot of the site to get them implemented seamlessly – I would estimate that we should have them live in early February – we will of course let you know as soon as they are live.
That’s a good suggestion Rob – we did consider using our links and paying the affiliates, but after a little feasibility, it was clear that the majority of affiliates didn’t want another person to invoice/get paid from, and that they would prefer to use their own links (If they know their link is being shown, then there’s no accusations of us not passing on the correct commissions etc).
We’re in the (constant) process of adding new merchants – does anyone have any requests?
I’m more and more impressed with this as we go along.
Just logged in to check out how many impressions I’d had and wondered why one of my units was highlighted in red text … it contained some out of stock products and a simple click on the words “click here” removed them for me.
How fab is that.
(P.S. I’m another vote for Amazon please)
I have used the free version of this tool and can say you are right they are the best Content Untits (that i have come across!) I am just waiting for some serious inspiration for a new site before i purchase but am looking forward to the day.
Do you offer any developers licences or affiliate program?
Sorry,
Also is there any plans for a US based version?
Hey Sam, thanks for the kind words
We don’t offer developer licenses at the moment – There will be a referral program going live shortly.. we’re just putting the finishing touches to it.
There may well be a US version in the future, but it’s a long, long way off to be honest – Our “to-do” list is already over a year long!
Interesting comparison service – thanks for the heads up. It looks to make the setting up of sites much easier without having to worry about managing data feeds!