Auto Products with Category Populators - Feature Guide

This feature, known as product drip feeding, allows you to automatically and gradually introduce and add products to your store. Set a search term once and your store keeps filling that category from your chosen merchant, a few products at a time, without you doing anything else.

Where to find it

Go to Store > Products > AI Tools > Auto Populators.

Choose the category, enter the search term for the products you want to import automatically, fill the other fields and then initiate the process by clicking the Create button.

Check out the video for all the details:

How it works

Every populator that is switched on runs once a day. It searches your chosen merchant for your search term, skips anything already in your store, and imports up to your daily limit. The products land in the category you picked, with their content written for you automatically.

Your products are built on live merchant listings. When a listing sells out or is taken down, the offer behind your product expires and is removed, and a product with no offers left stops appearing in your store's listings. That is normal and it happens to every affiliate store, especially with eBay, where listings are often single items that end when they sell.

Keeping a category stocked is therefore an ongoing job rather than a one-off, and that is exactly what a populator is for.

The settings

• Category

  Where the products are added. You can create a new category here without leaving the page.

• Search Term

  What to search the merchant for. A keyword, a phrase, or a product name.

• Merchant and Locale

  Which merchant to import from, and which country to search in.

• Products Per Day

  How many products may be added in a single day. A slower drip looks more natural to search engines and gives you time to check what is arriving.

• Maximum Products

  A lifetime total for this populator. It counts every product the populator has ever added, including ones that have since been removed from your store, and it never goes back down. When the count reaches this number the populator has done the job you gave it and switches itself off. Set it to 0 for unlimited.

• Maximum Products In Category

  How full the category is allowed to get, measured against what is in it right now. While the category holds this many products nothing new is added, and the populator stays switched on so it tops the category back up as older products drop out. New populators start at 48. Set it to 0 for no limit.

• AI Relevance Check

  Checks that each product is a good match for the category before adding it. You get fewer products, better matched to the category. Uses AI Chips.

• Merchant Category, Sort Products By, Minimum Price, Maximum Price, Minimum Rating and Search Title Only

  Optional filters that narrow the search. Which of these you see depends on the merchant you chose.

Reading the list

The Auto Populators list shows both counts side by side, so you can tell at a glance what a populator has done and what your category actually holds.

• Maximum Products reads something like 82 / 50. This populator has added 82 products since the day you created it, against a limit of 50.

• In Category reads something like 2 / 48. The category holds 2 products today, out of the 48 it is allowed.

On an older store those two numbers are often far apart, and that is expected. It simply means most of what the populator added over the months has since sold out or been delisted at the merchant.

The Stopped Because column tells you why a switched-off populator stopped. It stays blank for a populator that is running, and for one you switched off yourself.

Tips

Use a specific search term. "Kenny Scharf art book" fills a category with better matches than "art" ever will, and the AI Relevance Check has an easier job.

Give each category its own populator. That way one search going quiet does not stop the rest of your store growing.

Questions and Troubleshooting

My populator says it added 82 products, but the category only shows 2. Where did they go?

Those 82 are everything the populator has added since the day you created it, which for an older store can be a year or more of imports. Products built on listings that have since ended no longer appear in your store, so the number in the category is almost always lower than the lifetime total, and the gap grows the longer the store has been running.

The In Category column shows what is in there today. To refill the category, set Maximum Products to 0 on the populator, save, and switch it back on.

My populators keep switching themselves off

Check the Stopped Because column. Reached Maximum Products means the populator added the lifetime total you asked for, so it finished. Raise Maximum Products, or set it to 0 for unlimited, then switch it back on.

No products found means the merchant returned nothing for your search term on three runs in a row. Try a broader search term, a different merchant category, or remove any price and rating filters.

Nothing is being added, but the populator is still switched on

Look at the In Category count. If the category is already at its Maximum Products In Category, the populator is waiting rather than working, and it will start adding again as soon as there is room. Raise that number if you want a bigger category.

Can I have more than one populator on the same category?

Yes. Several populators can feed the same category, each with its own search term or merchant. They all respect the same Maximum Products In Category ceiling on that category.

How do I get an old populator adding again?

Open it, set Maximum Products to 0, check Maximum Products In Category is above what the category currently holds, save, then switch it on. It will pick up on its next run and start topping the category up from what the merchant has listed today.