Multiple Products In a Capsule to Be Discontinued

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   Christy Kirwanposted 7 years ago

   Today I have a quick announcement. We are retiring Amazon Capsules with multiple products. Writers haven’t been able to create these in a very long time, but some very old articles still contain Amazon Capsules with multiple products in them. On January 8th, these will be converted to single-product capsules. The first product in the capsule is the one that will be displayed. If you have any very old articles, we recommend editing them and reducing all your Product Capsules to a single product per capsule in order to make sure your desired product is the one that shows up. Let me know in this thread if you have any questions.

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      TIMETRAVELER2posted 7 years agoin reply to this

      I had no idea writers could even do this!  Good idea to get rid of them...spam!!!

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         Marisa Wrightposted 7 years agoin reply to this

         I have several such capsules, because back in the day, they were recommended.  For instance if you were talking about make-up, you might suggest a specific type of product and then discuss how different brands would suit different people.   Instead of having a separate capsule for each, you'd have them all displayed neatly together. 
         
         The multiple capsules were discontinued long before HubPages introduced the new rules, and I could've sworn that at the time, our existing multiple capsules showed only one product.  That's why I didn't need to go back and fix them up.

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            wildernessposted 7 years agoin reply to this

            Nope.  I've got several hubs with multiple product capsules.  I haven't changed them because the hub will be sent through QAP again, and it doesn't match current rules on Amazon capsules in other ways, either.  Eventually I'll probably just delete the hubs as without lots of Amazon they don't make much sense and they won't have any left when editors get through.  They are, and always were, nothing but sales hubs.

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               lobobrandonposted 7 years agoin reply to this

               Dan, if you're on the HP ad program I would recommend keeping the sales hubs even without the amazon capsules, provided they receive decent traffic. You could always work on getting text links in there, instead. But, product-related hubs seem to increase the CPM a lot.

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               Venkatachari Mposted 7 years agoin reply to this

               But, the present issue being discussed is a single capsule showing or featuring multiple products. If the same capsule is displaying multiple products, they will be discarded by HP, keeping only one product.
               So, what I think according to this circular is, that we need to keep only one product link featured or discussed in the Amazon capsule and you may provide links to others through URLs.

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               Marisa Wrightposted 7 years agoin reply to this

               We're not talking about multiple product capsules.  We're talking about the old Amazon capsule where you could choose multiple products.
               
               Those capsules haven't been available for use for a long, long time.  HubPages is now saying that the surviving ones (which must be on very old Hubs) will now display only ONE product, no matter how many are in the capsule.
               
               I'm confused because I would've sworn, at the time they discontinued that capsule, that they also changed the existing ones so they displayed only the first product in the capsule. So I have no idea what this announcement is about.

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                  wildernessposted 7 years agoin reply to this

                  LOL  It took a minute, but I figured it out.  We're talking about the same thing - one capsule with more than one product.  (Multiple product) capsules, not multiple (product capsules).
                  
                  And yes, I still have a few Amazon capsules that show multiple products in them.  As long as they were never edited they have been allowed to remain.

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                  Christy Kirwanposted 7 years agoin reply to this

                  Marisa, I think what you must be thinking of is that we put in place a system to phase them out which required authors to change them in edited articles. If you have an old article with multiple products in a capsule, you must also reduce the products to one before your changes can be submitted. But there are still some articles hanging around that were created with multiple products in a capsule and have never been edited since. These are the articles that will be affected by this change.

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                     Marisa Wrightposted 7 years agoin reply to this

                     I know you did, I recall it clearly.  And at the time, I recall being told that only one of the products would display, even if I'd chosen three or four, so I didn't have to worry about changing them.  So as far as I'm concerned, this fix happened a long time ago.
                     
                     I recall editing one of my belly dancing Hubs quite recently.  When I edited the Amazon capsule, i was surprised to find it was one of the old ones where I'd chosen three products - but I didn't realise that, because only one of them was displayed.
                     
                     It's really not important because I'm sure it affects only a tiny minority of older Hubs. I just  feel like I'm in the Twilight Zone!

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                        Christy Kirwanposted 7 years agoin reply to this

                        We did deploy a similar announcement and fix for keyword-based Amazon Capsules where the product showing at the time was the one that became permanent. This was maybe about a year ago? That's the only instance I can think of where we programmatically set product capsules to display a certain way.

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   Titiaposted 7 years ago

   I've no problem with that.

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   FatFreddysCatposted 7 years ago

   (shrugs) Whatevs.

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   Marisa Wrightposted 7 years ago

   I thought this had happened a long time ago, and that the old product capsules only displayed one of the multiple products already.

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      Jackie Lynnleyposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      Guess not, Christy usually knows what she is talking about.

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   Randy Godwinposted 7 years ago

   The way my hubs were edited it seems even one product is too many.

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   EricDockettposted 7 years ago

   I thought this was ended long ago as well. Odd.
   
   Amazing how much the place has changed over the years. At one time it was the norm to tack on a few multiple-product capsules in almost ever Hub. I remember when we could earn from clicks to eBay.
   
   Maybe HubPages could start a site called "HubPages Classic" where we could publish 600-word articles packed with 87 affiliate links.

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      lobobrandonposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      That would be called squidoo and not Hubpages classic

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         EricDockettposted 7 years agoin reply to this

         You're right!

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   EricFarmer8xposted 7 years ago

   Product capsules are not something I have used. I seem to notice more issues with them than anything else reading the forums. I figure if I want to sell something it would better be done on a blog where I can do this however I want.

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      Marisa Wrightposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      Actually, some people do very well selling Amazon products here.   Yes, you do see a lot of people complaining, but that's because the rules have changed SO much and so many times, and people are stlil confused about how it works. 
      
      Once upon a time, you could write an article, add a few relevant Amazon products and that was that.  Nowadays, you have to choose your Amazon product carefully.  It must be directly related to the title of your article, and you must be able to say why you recommend the product  personally.   If you want to add more than one or two products, then you should add some of them as text links instead of capsules, so the article doesn't look spammy (with "Buy Now" buttons plastered all over it).
      
      That's fairly straightforward, really - but it is much stricter than the old way of doing things, and some people have difficulty with that.

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         EricFarmer8xposted 7 years agoin reply to this

         What you said makes sense. I was bored the other day and I read a lot of posts and saw people complain about the changes over the years. Sometimes the site recommends me posts from years ago.

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         Venkatachari Mposted 7 years agoin reply to this

         Marisa, your observations are quite right and very clear.
         
         I used to wonder at some of those product hubs dealing with even 10 products and incorporating 10 "Buy Now" buttons in it. Everything just looked like an advertising platform.

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