A travel blogger walks through setting up Stay22 on your website: get your AID from the dashboard, use the Script Builder to generate code, install it via WordPress, then verify success in the browser console. You can then create maps, customize hotel listings, and generate affiliate links for Booking.com and Expedia while keeping your AID intact.
Chapters
All right, so you signed up for Stay22, but you don't know how to get started. Once you sign up, you should have a dashboard like this. The important thing up here is going to be your AID, which is kind of like your tagging username. Um, then what you want to do is head over to the LMA, which is Let Me Alas Script Builder over here. If you're not already on it, you'll probably be loaded to your dashboard initially, but just click on this on the side. And then you're gonna hit create new script. So mine already has my domain in it. Yours should also. If not, check the settings page. And then I never touch this deep construct. Um, that's if you wanna change what it shows on pages. I don't gen— bother with that. I just hit generate and then it'll give me this script. So you can kind of check what's included in this script. Script if you have any questions of what it's gonna associate with. But you're just gonna copy over this script over here, or you can hit copy to clipboard to make it easier on yourself. And then I go— I have a plugin called Code Snippets. There's tons of different plugins to install code, um, in your header. This is just one I like, um, and you can see I already have mine in here, so I'm not going to paste it. But this is the one that I already have on here. And then you just hit save changes and then it should generate. Now the way to check it is— so what you need to do is clear your browser's cache and then right-click on your website. I'll open mine here so you can see it. Right-click, inspect element, go to console, and then you see the little rainbow logo here so you know it's working. Now the reasons mine say inactive here is because I just generated this for this test. I have a code that I installed earlier before they had this system that's working perfectly fine, so don't be worried if it says inactive for mine, but should say active for yours. The other thing I want to show you is how to do maps. I do a couple of them. I have one on my Washington, D.C. post, so you— I'll show you what it looks like so you know what I'm talking about. And I typically put them only if I really feel it's necessary because it can potentially slow down loading a little bit, but I haven't found it to be too troublesome. So I have it under my Where to Stay in DC post, um, and basically I stayed with a friend in DC, so that's why I don't have any specific hotel recommendations. But it shows this map and it's going to show the nearby airports and then VRBO or Booking.com. Somebody visiting can select their dates, how many people, different kind of parameters or budget, stars, things like that, and then it would generate recommendations. So let's just, you know, move it around so you can see, and then it will probably send them to Booking.com and give them that parameters that you just put in. Now, if you ever want to edit your maps for whatever reason, or you lose the code, or something happens, whatever reason, You can go over here and edit your map, um, and change it to whatever you want. I have it to this color that's, um, very similar to my logo color. I can put in specific points of interest and hotels. I don't typically do that, but it's great that they have this option. And then you can just copy the code. If you want a static map, you can do that too, or you can duplicate it. Now, something else you'll probably want to know how to do on here is how to create links. So let's say I want to promote this hotel. I stayed here when I was in Belize. I just copied the URL from Booking.com or Expedia or GetYourGuide, any of them that work with Stay22, paste it in there. Um, you don't change this AID, keep it there. Campaign, I can change it if I want for tracking and put Belize or whatever I want on here. And then you just hit generate and then that's your URL you can use in your, uh, blog posts that will directly send people to the right booking. For a lot of people ask why I like Stay22 better than TravelPayouts, and one of the reasons is their Spark feature. So it basically takes copy that it— and turns it into links. Now TravelPayouts has this too, but it links like everything, which looking at this, this is a screen grab from right before I turned it off on Travelpayouts. It's just overwhelming as a visitor, and if I saw this, I wouldn't know what the blogger was actually promoting. Like, it seems like they'd be promoting everything instead of like this one tour that they really liked. Now, for some reason, I can't find Spark doing their thing right now on my blog, but normally it would be something like this where like stay staying close to the Eiffel Tower, and it would highlight that and have it as a link, which in a whole section is a lot less overwhelming for a visitor. So that's one of the things I like. I don't, I don't know why I can't find it right now, but it's usually in that kind of context and is a lot more natural than, than just linking everything like TravelPayouts. They also do have a Nova feature, which, uh, some people have noticed if you go on a blog and you stay there for a little while, it will sometimes push you over to a blogging back up booking.com or Expedia, that's Nova. Basically, if it thinks that a visitor is likely to book, it will push them over to a site. I know some people think it's jarring, but I actually make a fair amount of bookings on it. So while it might be a little jarring at first, I like it because it makes me money. So I'm not gonna hate on it. One of the things that Stay22 doesn't do is widgets. So if you want a get your guide widget like this, What you need to do is sign up through GetYourGuide directly. So I actually use them for my links and my, my widgets, but the links get converted through Stay22's algorithm, so it always comes through there. But I still use the widgets. So for GetYourGuide, and this is all linked to my travel blogging guide if you aren't aware of it, I can show you where it lives, the travel blogger guide here. So you don't have to go search for links. But basically, yeah, if I wanted to do an availability widget like I did that Paris Museum Pass, I would just go over here and create it and then just paste it into my blog post. Anything through the widget will come through GetYourGuide and not Stay22, but I like having both choices, so I recommend signing up for Stay22 and also GetYourGuide directly.
