Member Profile Page

Just rolled out the Profile pages for members which are linked to from wherever your nick name is displayed on the site - for now that means next to any Otakurls or comments. Your profile will also be linked to from up n coming features like the forum posts, Directories, Event calendar, My Comrade list etc.

Your profile page contains a section where you can choose products that you recommend from Amazon. If people buy any of the products from your profile page *you* get the commission.
Your profile page can also display the top 5 entries from your RSS feed (let me know if you want more displayed). You can also register your Flickr account name and 7 random photos from your account will be displayed. You can see what my member profile looks like here.

If you are member who is actively participating through the community features, your profile page is exposed more often which should help drive traffic to your personal blog or site. If a user buys a product from your profile page then you may make a few bob on the side too. Read on to find out how to set up your profile page...

These are the new fields available for edit from the Profile Edit page. Choose a category for your website. This field is used to filter which category your site is displayed in the up n coming directories. if you dont choose a category, your site will be found under "everything". Some blurb about yourself which will appear near the top of your profile page. If you have a blog, you will most likely have an RSS Feed - stick your feed address in this field. If you are not sure what RSS feeds are, then Wikipedia will tell you.
By registering your feed, you will be exposing your content to others who have similar interests and hopefully generate incremental readers for your site. If you have a Flickr account, you can register your account name in this field. The account name I need from you is the original name that Flickr assigns to you when you set up a new account. For example, go to my Flickr account page and right click on my avatar. Then click on 'properties' to see the name of the avatar image. In this case, you will see its 88444437@N00.jpg. "88444437@N00" is my Flickr user name - stick yours in this field. Amazon currently exists in JP, US, FR, DE, UK and CA. They have a Chinese website but that does not support the associates platform yet. You can choose up to 20 products from any one of these locales to display on your profile page. The products you choose have to be form the same locale. If people buy any of these products, you get a commission from Amazon. Your tag will be embedded in the product links 100% of the time.

You first need to go to amazon to sign up for their affiliate account which is called Associates. Its up to you to decide which account you want to signup for. Amazon.com ships worldwide so you may want to chose US - you can sign up for a US account at amazon.com/associates. To sign up for a UK associates account its amazon.co.uk/associates, for DE its amazon.de/associates etc.
From the select menu, you must choose the locale representing the products you want to recommend. For example, you cant choose products from Amazon Japan and then set this field to "Amazon.com". If you want to recommend products from Amazon.com, you must set this field to "Amazon.com".

If you are in Singapore, Netherlands or Pluto (for example) where Amazon has not set up stall yet, you may want to consider choosing Amazon.com as your locale. This is because Amazon.com ships worldwide and Amazon can pay your commision in USD. When applying for an Associates account, Amazon will ask you for your home page URL. If you dont have one, give them your dannychoo.com profile url which is http://www.dannychoo.com/home/eng/your-user-name-here.
What happens next is that Amazon will review your site/page and then send you an Associate Tag. You must put you tag in this field correctly in order for you to earn money.

If you hover over one of product images on my member profile page, you will see that the URL contains "dannychoocom-20" - thats my US associate tag. If you leave this blank then nobody will get a commission.
Its important that you choose the correct locale otherwise users will be sent to the wrong site. For example, the products you see on my member profile page are chosen from Amazon.com. If I chose "Amazon.co.jp" as my locale, I would be sending users to Amazon Japan which is not want I want.
ASIN stands for "Amazon Standard Identification Number" and is basically the product ID. Each product in the amazon catalog has its own unique ASIN. No two products share the same ASIN.
What you need to do first is to get yourself to wikipedia and read their explanation of how to find out what the ASIN is for a product. Once you know how, you will string ASINS separated by a comma and stick them in this field. The products you see on my member profile page is made up of the following.


You can stick up to 20 ASINs in this field. Once you have saved the changes to your profile, when you go to your profile page, you should see the list of products that you chose. If Amazon does not have an image for that product, it will be replaced by a generic image. if you do not see a product, then check the ASIN again. If you dont separate the ASINs correctly with a comma, the products wont show up on your profile page. You can copy the ASINs that I have strung together above and set your locale to Amazon.com to test it out.

It's rare that you're posting on a sunday afternoon :)

Lots of nice new features to play around with.

Danny SAIKOU!

Wow Danny!  You've been busy.  I especially like how clean everything is.  Wonderful concept!

Wah this drives me to make a blog page now.  What's funny is I register for a flicker and live journal accounts ages ago, but they just sat around collecting dust. Now you I need start doing stuff with them.  Thanks for the inspiration!! 

Wow Danny! Your site is sooo awesome! Plus the whole idea of giving us normal folks the opportunity to earn.. shows how great a dude you are! Initially went to your site for the gundam and figures goodness but now I'm getting a whole lot more! Thanks bro! Looking forward to lots more of the good stuff in the future!

Wow, you site gets better and better. So much features for everyone. 
Its super cool btw.

ありがとう, ダニーさん。

Not only are you a stand-up guy for giving us the opportunity to earn a bit with your website, but you've also given me some food for thought regarding my own profiteering escapades.  

Amazon JP ships worldwide for books, CDs and DVDs.

And it might be easier if you make it pull random items from the user's wishlist instead. ASINs are a pain to use.

This is great! I really love the idea of having your own little mini-page! ^_^

That's a cool idea mate!  However I have a problem.  I signed up for an account here the other day, and never received the confirmation e-mail so that I could activate my account.  Even having it resent from the login page ("forgot username" option I believe) did nothing, and my e-mail is correct.  I'd like to try this feature, but can't.  Also, will this be added to Figure.fm? Thanks.

Weel, I'd love to join in on the fun, but I have been rejected AGAIN by your site. this is the twelfth time trying, and still it sends me immediately back to the login page.

Does this site block out Opera, as that's the browser I am using. Is this a problem for your site? I see there's a lot of people who are members of the site, so it must be just me? Sucks, man! ;_;

Anyway, I won't change browsers, as this is all I can use now, due to IE being buggy and unsafe, Netscape being too complicated and Firefox being too inaccesible for me.

I guess all I can do is remain a guest! @_@

i cant register. it says my email is invalid.. does it not allow gmail or something?

Hello Danny! What a nice site you've got! I'll keep posting my comments (I usually don't) on your site :)

awesome Danny, 1st U give the opportunity to learn more about Japan, anime otaku etc. ect. Now your'e giving us a chance to earn some papers.....
Once again, youv'e outdone yourself....I mostly queck Ur site out at work, they block all the good stuff (Bastards)!! But when i get a chance I will definitly look into it!! extra doe = more figures and anime dvds ...... I like .... =P

Hey Danny, Great work and very impressive what you've done this time.
It going to get more complete with every update.

Wow, your little blog is turning into a real Otaku culture community hub. XD 

Some nice and interesting new features you've added for members. I hope all this activity won't be a drain on your Bandwidth. ^^;;

Woosh..................Way to go...that sounds awsome.  

I got a question..for some reason my name shows up as N/'ght ... but on the top it says im registered as n'ght.. whats up with the '/' ? :P

Do u every read the comments that are posted and reply to them?

Danny,
I've got only one thing to say..
        AWESOME.......
and Thanks for what you bring us.....otakus overseas.

Awesome work on the site.

brilliant... lol, pretty soon you'll need your own staff to read and add posts for you!!! :)))

you have done it ! 
WoW 
keep up the good work .. 

ps. any chance of the wallpaper module to work?

My god, this place is just getting better and better every week.  I feel that this place wasn't the same when I first join and I do mean for the better! :D

Vertigo,
Soon (I hope) ^^;

No Name,
I do but sometimes I'm late ToT

n'ght,
I need to fix that bug

mikes852,
Is there another email you can try? Gmail should work fine.

David,
Could you give me a bit more detail? Do you get sent to login page after registering?
Have you tried clearing your cookies?

DarkMirage,
Will consider wishlist addition.

Cool new update to your site! 

The profile pages are nice.  I like the Flickr integration.

One more step to the ultimate blog...!

This place really changed for the best since I first came here.
I even set it up as my homepage now and visit it a few times everyday ;)

Thanks Danny for everything... 
I'll wait for your next shenanigans.

Densha Trooper powaaaaa!!

This is really nice of you to add these features for us to your website.  Thanks Danny.  I'm a little under the weather right now, but will check everything out more thorough later.

So many features!

Not sure if ill use most of them though - ill just sit back and await purdy new updates!

Keep it up. Hows about a Harajuku/ Yoyogi park update? See Danny hangin wit' the yoof? Id love to see that.

kool lol

Great Idea I'm all for it

Awesome. Your site keeps getting better and better. Thanks for all the cool stuff you bring!!

Hi Danny,

I've put in ASINs in my profile page and while all of the links show up, only a few of the images show up.  The rest DON'T show the generic amazon image so I wonder if it is an Amzon problem or the way i have entered the ASIN?

iheartassassinmaids,
Thanks for the heads up - fixed that bug.

This is a great feature Danny, thank you not only for allowing us to show our rss feeds on your site, and thus potentially sending more visitors to our sites, but also to allow us to make some money out of it!!! ^_^

I found a little issue today, the server where is hosted my site was down, and if I wanted to see my profile page, there was a couple of errors, I don't recall exactly the text, but the first was about being unable to connect to my site and the other was that it couldn't open the rss feed. And the page ended right after the errors. You should add and error handler there, so if the user website is down, the rest of the profile page shows normally.

The WOZ,
Thanks for that - will get to it soonish ^^;

hey... i've got lots of question about this... i am new to this thing but i really want to know all about this stuff... please.. i need a help

wow alsome danny!!

Very helpful!  I'm going to get started on that account.

Thanks for this post!

I think it helped.

I already placed an RSS feed into my profile. I hope it works