Posted in:
13,189 views
This article shows how to make money as an eBay affiliate on your Wordpress blog or web site using the BayRSS “eBay affiliate plugin” to list auctions directly in your blog posts! If you’ve heard about the PHPBay Pro Wordpress plugin I’ll discuss that as well. Even if you don’t use Wordpress - read this entire post and learn how to put eBay auctions on ANY type of web site, and I’ll even explain how to build your own ebay “niche store” as well!
I have used “affiliate programs” for several years to monetize my blogs and web sites and make money online. But a good eBay affiliate Wordpress plugin has always escaped me. I’ve tried many cheesy little scripts, a few I paid for and some were free. None did exactly what I wanted. First, let me talk to you a little bit about why a “Wordpress eBay plugin” is so important to me…
A lot of people keep really detailed tracking stats on what’s making money in their sites. I don’t often have time for that - so I try all kinds of things and re-do things that seem to be consistently working. Besides this blog about blogging, I have all different kinds of web sites. Some are just fun, like my web site about jokes. Some are techie and gadget releated, and some are pop culture. I’ve monetized using Amazon, eBay, Commission Junction, LinkShare, Adsense, Kontera, AdBrite, Text Link Ads, MaxBounty, and all kinds of others. In a future post I’ll in greater detail about my experiences with each one. Suffice to say - the most consistent money I’ve made has been made being an eBay Affiliate.
Being an eBay affiliate is nice because I believe it’s simply what I call the “long tail of monetization”. I’ve added links for CJ (Commission Junction) before, say for a cell phone accessory vendor, and the products over time either aren’t available, or the vendor can quit their affiliation with Commission Junction altogether. Then the links are invalid - and you have to revisit EVERY post you ever put them on to remove them and add more. This isn’t to say I don’t use CJ links - I do…but let’s say I have a post about a RAZR cell phone. I may post a link to buy the phone new on Amazon, some accessories from a CJ vendor, and last I’ll put a link to some eBay auctions. Even when the cell phone is 2-3 years old and the CJ links are bad, the eBay link should STILL be bringing up the phone used in auctions for sale (for many years). And people always go for what they think is cheapest, and sometimes they choose to view the auctions rather than the other links to see if they can get a deal. Also, if someone clicks on your auction, goes to eBay to check it out - and then BUYS SOMETING ELSE, you STILL get commission on the sale! I can’t tell you how many times someone started out on one of my sites looking for cell phones but bought an iPod charger or a book instead.
Let’s talk about how you make money on eBay auctions. You get 50% commission on the eBay fees. So if something cost $100 on eBay the insertion fee would be say $2.40. If the person added a picture (50 cents), made the ad bold ($1), made it Buy it Now (25 cents), and set a reserve price ($1.50) - the auction could be say $10.15 in eBay fees once it completes. Your profit on the sale would be $5.07 (half of the eBay fees)! That’s for one sale! Imagine the commissions you could make if the items you listed were $200-$300? The only place you can find items with that high commissions are on clickbank, and they don’t give you any advertising or promotion tools at all - and eBay is probably the single most trusted and well know shopping web site in the world, other than Amazon. Nearly everyone I know has bought or sold something on eBay.
I have a web page on one of my sites that gives tips and tricks on the first cell phone I ever bought. It was (and still is) a very long page. This cell phone was one of the first to have a memory card slot. It was also one of the first to play video and work like an mp3 player. I think it’s like 3 years old now. I put a link to a CJ vendor that sold these cards (with picture), and to some accessories. At first I sold all kinds of memory cards, it seemed like every day. Over time this tapered off, and I placed some eBay auctions on the bottom of the page for used and new ones. This was the first eBay affiliate link I ever placed. I now know that was the smartest monetization link I ever placed. That web page still exists - if you want to look at it for reference, view my A920 Cell Phone Guide Here.
To be an eBay affiliate, you have to sign up with Commission Junction. They collect the money and pay you. At the eBay Affiliate Web Site you have access to tools to build auction listings for placement on your site.
**UPDATE** April 2008: I struck out the previous paragraph because eBay announced in March that it would be leaving Commission Junction to start their own “in house” affiliate program called the eBay Partner Network. The same tools (and more) are available to use the eBay affiliate program, but now your affiliate ID (and your check) comes directly from eBay.
My favorite ebay affiliate tool is the “Editor Kit”, where you input some keywords, pick some style, and it gives you the code for a nice block of live auctions. I love to put these on my pages, but going back to the eBay Affiliate Site every time is such a pain and so very time consuming. That’s why I am so happy to have found the “BayRSS Wordpress eBay Plugin”.
Let me tell you why I think that placing eBay links is some of the “smartest monetization” you can make…
The cell phone web page I talked about has been up a few years now. I have watched the same registered users over time revisit that page again and again, and some have even emailed me with questions. What I’ve found is they are revisiting my page to view the eBay auctions!. Many repeatedly, because the auctions are live. So (to my astonishment) - an ad on my web site (the auctions) is actually DRIVING traffic to my site! On that particular page I really don’t sell any memory cards or accessories anymore, but people are STILL buying used cell phones from those auctions (I saw one commission on one just earlier this week). I’ve had many ideas for sites that would thrive with auction listings and good content like some kind of niche collectibles, concert or sports tickets, niche electronics, jewelry, even flat screen tv’s. But who wants to go back to the eBay affiliate site every time I want to list another auction?
Enter the BayRSS Wordpress plugin for listing eBay auctions on your web site!! Install this plugin and you will be able to add a little tag into your post with some keywords and how many auctions you want displayed and BLAM! you have live eBay auctions in your posts and pages. It’s sooooo easy to use! You can also choose to only show auctions with so many bids or a certain dollar amount, share the revenue with other authors within your blog, and more!
I use BayRSS to list eBay auctions in my blog(s) every day. BayRSS is a premium Wordpress plugin and it costs $37. It’s only competitor (that I could find) is the PHPBay Pro Wordpress plugin. As far as I can tell from online screenshots and examples BayRSS and PHPBay Pro are identical except for the fact with BayRSS you can list Amazon products as well as eBay. In addition, even though the layout of auctions on your page from each plugin is the same - BayRSS “cloaks” (redirects) the links. That’s so you don’t have tons of external “affiliate links” on your posts and pages that google might find excessive and give you a penalty for. I don’t know for sure if PHPBay Pro has this feature or not, but none of their online example sites was cloaking their links if it was (big mistake!). I do have another use for PHPBay though - which I’ll explain later in this article.
Going back to BayRSS - you get free updates for life and support. These are both things worth paying for. Free wordpress plugins are great, but if you have a problem sometimes getting technical support can take a few days. Also you might wait 6 months for the lastest version of Wordpress to be supported. Since I purchased and started using the BayRSS eBay plugin I’ve gotten updates quickly and fast email response to support questions. Azlan Kasim - who is the creator of BayRSS has always been quick to answer all my questions and emails. He has released a brand new update to BayRSS to be compatible with the new eBay Partner Network, so BayRSS is now ready to use EPN ID’s switching from Commission Junction.
I want to show you why I’m so enthusiastic about BayRSS. Before I show you how I use it in my blogs (and the kinds of sales I make) - let me sum up the BayRSS feature set again:
- Free Upgrades for Life
- Revenue Sharing, so you can share with guest authors
- Can be used to list both Amazon items and eBay
- No Visible Outgoing Links to eBay (cloaking) - so you don’t worry about “nofollowing”
- Specify Minimum Bid and Price for auctions
- Ability to place localized auctions by zip code
- Unlimited license, use on as many sites or blogs as you want
- 100% full satisfaction 60 day guarantee
- Works with new eBay Partner Network
I think that eBay auctions are a good fit for bloggers. In my post Personal Profits with eBay and YouTube I talk about how you can “personally monetize” by writing about something you either know about or are passionate about - and connect related products to it. If I write a post or review about “wireless hard drives” (follow that link for an example page) all I have to do is place one line of code at the end of the post like this:
This tag gives the parameters for the BayRSS plugin to do it’s work. The first section are the actual keywords that will bring back the auctions from ebay - just like you typed them in a web browser. You can put nearly any search query here, including ones with advanced parameters. I often “subtract” items that I don’t displayed. For the query “sata hard drive” I might modify the search terms to be “sata hard drive -enclosure -adapter” to make sure that the auctions are for hard drives only and not ones selling hard drive enclosures or hard drive adapter cards. The next number is how many auctions will be displayed on the page. I recommend you keep this to 10 or less, because the listings come live from eBay’s RSS feed search function (nothing is stored in your Wordpress database).
Only the first 2 parameters are mandatory, the rest are optional (but useful). The third parameter is the minimum number of bids to show, like if you wanted to show only auctions with at least 1 bid. I choose zero always so I can see everything. The fourth parameter is the minimum price for bid, so if you wanted to show all hard drives with a cost more than $50, just enter 50 there. The last parameter is your “SID” or tracking code. When someone bids on an auction and wins from your site, when you see your commission in Commission Junction, the “SID” will be listed at the end of that line so you know which blog and post it came from (if you use good descriptions).
Here’s an image of from one of my blogs with what the auctions actually look like:
The auctions look really nice, but the thing that makes BayRSS auctions stand out from any free eBay affiliate plugins (yes there are a few free ones I’ve found and tried - which weren’t very good) are the SEO benefits it provides. You may not be aware of this, but when you monetize a web site with affiliate links - if you have too many you may incur the wrath of google and obtain a “google penalty”. Your search rankings could suffer as a result. Google would like you to place a “rel=nofollow” link on your affiliate links so they aren’t counted when your page is indexed. BayRSS goes one better, and rather than placing direct links to eBay in the auctions (which could hurt your SEO), when you click on “Bid Now” or “Add to Watch List” the clicks go to the file “bidnow.php” which comes with the BayRSS eBay plugin. That file in turn redirects you to eBay. Because the auctions are setup in this way, the search crawler doesn’t see eBay auctions - it instead see content on your site (protecting your search rankings).
If you’d like to see some more auctions in action - live examples of posts I placed auctions on with BayRSS that have paid me cash money in eBay affiliate commissions:
Digital Notepad Review
Coach Purse Optic
Agile Guitar New and Used Review
So, I’ve told you how to use BayRSS and shown you live examples of how I use it - isn’t it time that bought it to monetize your web site with eBay auctions? If all I’ve said hasn’t enticed you, let me say (other than the fact I use BayRSS everyday myself) it comes with a 60 day money back guarantee and free updates for life! If you’re not happy you get a 100% refund. But the main reason I bought BayRSS in the first place was the fact that you can use it on an unlimited number of web sites you own! That’s right - there’s no restriction. If you you own 100 blogs or web sites, you can use it on each and every one for only $37!
Maybe you’re still not convinced. I’ve explained to you how BayRSS works, why I like it, and that I use it nearly every day. Let me give you some example commissions:
This first example is of some eBay affiliate commissions on April 7th, 2008:
You can see that I get exactly half the of the eBay fees. It didn’t all fit in that pic, but most of those commissions are from a Bluetooth Headset Review I did just a couple weeks back. Here, let me show you the rest of that screen:
You can see in the rest of the rest of that pic that the first 7 commissions were made selling jabra 8040 headsets. The commissions weren’t that much because the auctions were probably <$50. Any sale is good, but then look at the last 2 auctions where I sold 2 designer handbags. I sold one Bottega Veneta, which was probably another low dollar sale, but then I sold a Coach Beekman purse and earned $16.41 from one item. That's a designer laptop bag that can sell from $150-$400. The seller probably listed the auction in "gallery" with a high reserve price, which resulted in higher eBay fees - that I got 50% of in the end as an affiliate.
In this next example I'll show you what happens when someone creates a new eBay account:
It’s true that nearly everyone you know probably already has an eBay account. But believe it or not there are still people out there that don’t. Think about it - someone turns 18 every day, so there will always be someone that needs a new eBay account that didn’t already have one. If one of your visitor’s clicks on an auction from your site and once they get to eBay signs up for a new account you get $25 for each “advanced lead”! You can see my $25 commission for a new user in the example pic above. Now let’s look at where these auctions come from too…
In this example pic you can see I on this day (April 5th) I sold a digital notepad, some IP Cameras, and again some designer purses in addition to the new user commission. The very last commission doesn’t have any description, but it came from my handbag web site. That means they didn’t buy what they clicked on, but found something else on eBay - and since the transaction originated from my web site I earned commission on it anyway. I hope viewing these commission examples puts it in to perspective a bit more for you and you understand that what I’m saying is true, and that you can really make decent money placing relevant eBay auctions on your blog and web pages.
People who know me will tell you that I’m a “web scrooge” and I will spend dozens of hours trying to get something open source to work just to avoid paying $20 for a product that does the job well. I couldn’t find anything free to place eBay auctions on web sites that worked well at all, and I found BayRSS to be a complete bargain for what it gave me. It paid for itself within 3 days of installing it. The links on this page to BayRSS are affiliate links, and if you click on one and buy the Wordpress plugin I will get a small commission for my efforts of putting this article together for you. But unlike a lot of what you read on “make money” blogs I actually use this product (*a lot*), and I’ve shown you plenty of example pages on live sites I have running right now, and I’ve shown commissions from those pages and sites so you know it actually works. I can and will work for you no matter how great or little your traffic is. All my pages tend to have the “views” listed on them - go back to those examples pages I gave you and look again. You’ll see the ones making me money aren’t very high traffic pages at all. If you are at all interested in making money online and monetizing your blog better Click here to read how to get BayRSS - the eBay Affiliate Wordpress Plugin!
If you’re interested in a piece of software that automatically builds and populates an entire web site with eBay auctions, please read my series: “Watch Me Build a BANS Niche Site from Scratch! I use “Build a Niche Store” PHP software scripts to build an entire eBay affiliate auction filled web site in very little time.
*UPDATE*
One thing that I get asked a lot in email and through my contact form is “How do I place an eBay auction on a regular web site”? What they mean is, they’re not using Wordpress and they want to put auctions on their site too to get affiliate commissions. I have a way that you can place eBay auctions on any site, and it’s a method that you can use whether you’re using static web pages, Drupal, Mambo, Joomla, Xoops, Geeklog, Blogger, or even a web forum - it doesn’t matter! Anywhere you have the ability to place PHP code you can use PHPBay Pro’s API! Remember the PHPBay Pro Wordpress plugin I talked about earlier? They also have a PHPBay Pro API that you can buy and intall on ANY web site you can use PHP code with. When you get to the web site just click on “API”. The PHPBay Pro API is just $49. If you don’t use Wordpress, or have another non-Worpress or static web site, PHPBay Pro API is the only way I know of to just copy and paste PHP code to display eBay auctions on any kind of web site.
Still have questions or comments? You can comment below, or Contact Me anytime!
February 16th, 2008 at 11:51 am
Great plugin but i have a small problem with the ebay affiliate program because it only rewards you if you introduce to ebay a new member who purchases within 30days. With ebay having 200 million users it’s quite a task bringing in new users.
February 16th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
Jerry, I don’t mean to be rude but I think you’re missing the point here. eBay does not only reward you if you send them a new members, I think you’ve misunderstood. If you send them a brand new member you get a flat $25 as a reward. I’ve gotten paid that half a dozen times in the last year. But that’s only extra money you don’t even count on. The real money is made whenever somebody clicks on your site and goes to eBay and buys anything in an auction. If they win you get 1/2 of the eBay fees (whether they were a new or existing customer). In other words, if someone visits my site and sees an auction listing for a $399 designer handbag, clicks and bids and buys it - I get a $12 or more commission from that one sale - even if they had been an eBay member for 5 years!
Rethink it - you can make a tremendous amount of money with eBay.
March 9th, 2008 at 3:13 am
[...] Pratt writes on his blog JTPratt’s Blogging Mistakes, and he makes good money online using Wordpress as an eBay affiliate! Catch him texting on his used cell [...]
March 10th, 2008 at 1:00 am
[...] Pratt writes on his blog JTPratt’s Blogging Mistakes, and he makes good money online using Wordpress as an eBay affiliate! Catch him texting on his latest used cell [...]
March 11th, 2008 at 5:47 am
Hi,
, and thank you for all the great info you make available here!
you’re really big time blogger
my question relates to the first comment by “authority online mag.” and your reply. So using BayRSS, does eBay pay you only for the new members you bring in, or as you replied, it’s wrong ?
second question: which plugin is better and makes better integration with WP and gives better results, BayRSS or BANS ?
also which is easier to use ?
Thanks!!!
March 11th, 2008 at 6:40 pm
I don’t know about “big time blogger” - hopefully I’m teaching others how to not make blogging mistakes so they can become big time bloggers in their own right.
In answer to your question - eBay pays you for both. If someone clicks on an auction from your site and then goes to ebay and bids on an auction and wins you ear half or 50% of the eBay fees from that auction. In addition if they don’t already have an eBay account and create a new one you get an additional $25 on top of the commissions. There are also cases where they will create the account but not win the auction. In that case you just get the $25.
As far as whether BayRSS or BANS and which is better, it depends because they both provide different things. BayRSS is easiest to get up and running because you can add auctions to your posts with one tag and some keyword instantly. On the other hand BANS or “Build a Niche Store” allows you to create an entire eBay store with thousands and thousands of products. It is much more work, but has much greater earning potential in the long run.
Last, BayRSS is a Wordpress plugin and BANS doesn’t integrate with Wordpres at all - it’s a standalone piece of software. For this reason and the different things they provide - personally I use them both and couldn’t do without either one. They are both well worth the very small licensing fee and both have unlimited free upgrades for life.
March 23rd, 2008 at 10:22 pm
Hello,
If the BayRSS is a plug-in for Wordpress how do you use it
on your own websites. My websites don’t have plug-in just
as BANS doesn’t.
Are you using the term websites for Wordpress sites?
Thanks,
Phil
March 24th, 2008 at 10:05 am
Yes, BayRSS is a plugin for Wordpress - so you can only use it in web sites powered or running the Wordpress blogging software.
April 4th, 2008 at 7:11 pm
[...] Pratt writes on his blog JTPratt’s Blogging Mistakes, and he makes good money online using Wordpress as an eBay affiliate! Catch him texting on his latest used cell [...]
April 9th, 2008 at 1:42 pm
[...] Pratt writes on his blog JTPratt’s Blogging Mistakes, and he makes good money online using Wordpress as an eBay affiliate! Catch him texting on his used cell [...]
April 12th, 2008 at 10:17 am
There’s a cheaper way to get all that done, and it does work. Find a feed scraper plugin (feedpress), and use it and the ebay rss feeds from searches. Add some SEO, backlinks, maintance plugins, and you have an automated ebay affiliate site, like a BANS, but it only costs you the domain reg and hosting. My link above is one of my smaller sites done like this. :)
April 12th, 2008 at 10:39 am
You’ve found a way to place eBay auctions on a Wordpress blog, but all you did was create a “splog” that will never perform well. Google has already thrown out most of your indexed pages to the supplemental index when you do a search on your domain. None of your links are nofollowed, and with no original content at all your site is nothing more than a big sales page to google. Also, currently all of your related items are nearly identical and the site looks really, really spammy.
With a LOT of programming work you could maybe clean this all up. If you have that ability (and time) - yes you could do this all for free. It’s no secret that eBay offers their API for programmers, and widgets and affiliate link tools to bloggers for free.
The whole point to using BayRSS is to save yourself all the hassle and effort by buying something that just “works”. I AM a programmer and professional web developer by trade and even I won’t spend the dozens of hours required to build such a tool. Why should I? $37 is what BayRSS costs, and that’s what my family spent on dinner last night. I make hundreds of dollars a month with that plugin - it paid for itself in three days.
Also - with the coffee site you setup with your own programming skills, maybe you would be interested in creating some sort of free plugin for eBay auctions. You’d be famous overnight, since everything currently out there costs money.
=)
April 14th, 2008 at 7:47 am
[...] Pratt writes on his blog JTPratt’s Blogging Mistakes, and he makes good money online using Wordpress as an eBay affiliate! Catch him texting on his used cell [...]
April 18th, 2008 at 10:14 am
[...] Pratt writes on his blog JTPratt’s Blogging Mistakes, and he makes good money online using Wordpress as an eBay affiliate! Catch him texting on his latest used cell [...]
April 18th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
[...] For more details on how to use eBay in blog posts read Make Money as an eBay Affiliate in Wordpress. [...]
May 1st, 2008 at 6:27 pm
If you are trying to find someone that hasn’t signed up with ebay already, you should start at a nursery. Majority of people that will/would have signed up, are already signed up. If you actually will buy anything online, then you have an ebay account. If not, you have been living under a rock.
Shudogg Dot Com - Make Money Online Blogging
Make Money Online Bloggings last blog post..Adsense Secrets Volume 4
May 1st, 2008 at 6:42 pm
@Make Money Onlie Blogging -
This is the second ridiculous comment you’ve made on my blog today. You are speaking off the top of your head about something you obviously have no experience with. If you had a half dozen blogs using eBay affiliate auctions, you would know that nearly every month (if you have some traffic) you will receive commissions from ebay for new signups. It’s not hard at all -it’s the law of averages. It’s also the second time you though you would add your blog link in your comment, even though it’s already at the top of every comment you make…
May 7th, 2008 at 6:45 am
[...] Pratt writes on his blog JTPratt’s Blogging Mistakes, and he makes good money online using Wordpress as an eBay affiliate! Catch him texting on his latest used cell [...]
May 16th, 2008 at 5:28 am
I’ve heard about BayRSS - have they addressed the changeover from CJ yet? That has to be one of the most frustrating, time consuming things I have to do this month (update my hundreds of sites/pages/etc.).
Thanks!
Barbara
Barbara LIngs last blog post..RANT - What the eBay Affiliate Program is Missing Part 2 - Parallel Universe Shipping!
May 16th, 2008 at 7:34 am
@Barbara Ling - yes BayRSS is completely EPN compatible now! It also has some new features I need to detail when I update this page!
May 20th, 2008 at 11:14 am
Great series - a lot of good ideas for future projects! Thanks!
Scotts last blog post..Wild Blue Beer Review
May 20th, 2008 at 12:07 pm
@Scott - thanks for reading, BayRSS is the best Wordpress eBay affiliate plugin I’ve used. It now has some new features that I will post about soon!
May 20th, 2008 at 5:12 pm
[...] Pratt writes on his blog JTPratt’s Blogging Mistakes, and he makes good money online using Wordpress as an eBay affiliate! Catch him texting on his latest used cell [...]
May 26th, 2008 at 6:00 am
I finally got this plugin. THANKS. It is so easy, just as you said it would be. This is really going to help my monetize my new niche sites.
Just wondering where you got your affiliate ID from? Can’t seem to find it, and since I’m already thrilled with this plugin thought I’d probably need an affiliate link. ;)
Jackie
May 26th, 2008 at 8:27 am
@Natural Pregnancy Project - I just emailed you the info. Glad to hear you like the plugin, it’s easy to use and my favorite for sure.
May 30th, 2008 at 3:00 am
Hey, man! Thanks for the tip! Gonna get that plugin asap!
June 6th, 2008 at 7:04 am
SHH! You’re giving away all our secrets!![=)]](http://www.jtpratt.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/4.gif)
As to the concern about having to buy something within 30 days…most people that sign-up are doing so in order to bid or buy on something right away.
Make Online Moneys last blog post..Profit from Poo
June 6th, 2008 at 7:47 am
I agree. Also - to the few commenters that think you can’t make money from new eBay signups…last month I believe I had 7, which at a $25 commission each made me $175, so there @Make Money Online Blogging!
June 9th, 2008 at 12:37 pm
I prefer the PHPbay Pro tool for either Wordpress blogs or the API for standalone sites. This BayRSS deal only looks like a ripoff of the PHPbay Pro tool.
tony dees last blog post..The Face Of Twitter - Jack Dorsey?
June 9th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
@tony dee…grateful to have your comment - have you ever tried BayRSS before? If you actally read my article you’d find that BayRSS lets you add Amazon items as well as eBay auctions - PHPBay does not. PHPBay is $49, BayRSS is $37. To get the eBay API for standalone web sites you have to pay an additional $49 on top of the $49 for PHPBay, or buy the $79 bundle.
You say BayRSS is a ripoff of PHPBay, but you don’t (obviously) use BayRSS - it’s just another plugin that performs the same function (+ Amazon items). Don’t bash something you haven’t used or call it a ripoff because it does the same thing. There are lots of Wordpress plugins that do the same thing.
June 23rd, 2008 at 11:30 pm
[...] Pratt writes on his blog JTPratt’s Blogging Mistakes, and he makes good money online using Wordpress as an eBay affiliate! Catch him texting on his latest used cell [...]
June 26th, 2008 at 12:20 am
I have to say that I found your website very helpful and informative. Thanks so much..I’ll be checking back again soon.
danis last blog post..1/10/08
June 30th, 2008 at 9:24 am
Hi - I’ve enjoyed the level of detail you include on earnings. Makes the post inspirational and informative. I’ve got a couple of BANS stores that have earned money and I’m continuing to build and will soon add my blogs to the mix using BAYrss. It’s exactly what I want and I was just about to start using the ebay kit when I found your site.
One note about ebay signups. Things have changed a bit in that they don’t pay simply for a signup anymore. The call that a CRU and have added an additional requirement that the new signup actually has to place a bid and you then get paid for the “active” CRU or ACRU as they list it in the earnings reports. I have a CRU that earned nothing because that person has yet to place a bid.
Hope this helps.
Thanks - Kirk
June 30th, 2008 at 8:15 pm
@Kirk - that’s a good point to note. I’d also point out that even with the new requirement, it hasn’t slowed down the amount of $25 commissions I get per month for new ACRU’s at all. The majority of people that signup for a new account bid on something.
July 8th, 2008 at 3:03 am
Cool Blog! I will stop by more often!
MysteryBid
http://www.mysterybid.com/blog
July 9th, 2008 at 8:17 am
This post was very helpful. I downloaded the BayRSS script today, and plan to start trying it out on some existing sites, and on a couple of new niches sites.
Other posts on this blog are also very helpful. I’ve subscribed to the feed and will be reading this blog frequently.
REPs last blog post..Edinburgh Exhibition Features 007 James Bond Memorabilia
July 9th, 2008 at 8:27 am
Hello again! I have a quick question. On the BayRSS options page, there are options for “Listing” and “Sorting.” What does your experience indicate is the best way to set up those options? “Best Match” for Sorting? “Ending in More Than” “x hours” for Listing? Thanks.
July 10th, 2008 at 7:15 am
@REP - I normally use this format (with brackets of course):
nms:ipod,8,0,0,site.ipod
the first is of course the number of auctions to show, and the next two are zeros (number of bids and minimum bid) most always for me. In the BayRSS setup options I go with all zeroes, and listings within 7 days ending soonest.
hope that helps!
July 14th, 2008 at 5:42 am
One thing I’ve noticed in checking search results listings over the weekend (after following back to SERPs from site visitors who came to the site from Google to read a blog post) is that in some instances the excerpt in the SERPs contained the auction product info that the bayRSS code pulls into the blog post. However, in other instances, the excerpt in the SERPs contained the bayRSS code (for example, [nms:ectaco jetbook,1,0,0,jb] ), instead of the auction product info that the code produces. I have to say that I found that to be somewhat disconcerting.
July 14th, 2008 at 6:38 am
@REP - well, there are two things I can say about that. The first is if google indexed any of the auction info at all - your page didn’t have nearly enough original content on it in the first place. The auction info shouldn’t be the draw from the search engines, your content should be.
But secondly, when a Wordpress page is rendered to a visitor or search engine PHP code has already executed. This means that the auction code would be filtered and the raw tag should never be visible. Although I would suggest posting your issue in the BayRSS forum, this is definitely a Wordpress problem you have, probably a conflict with another plugin or something. A search crawler should never have the chance to show code since that’s not what people ever see in a browser.
July 14th, 2008 at 7:09 am
Thanks for your quick response. The code is not ever visible to visitors, so I don’t know why it would nevertheless be visible to the crawlers. If the problem is conflict with another plug-in, the only plug-ins I’ve installed since the issue started appearing were CommentLuv and dofollow plugins. So I may have to resign from the dofollow movement and disable those plugins! I also changed themes over the weekend on the one site where this issue is occurring, so maybe I’ll try reverting to the old theme to see if that helps resolve the issue. Also, this issue seems to have occurred in Google, but not in Yahoo search results, for some reason.
Thanks again.
Also BTW, the auction info wasn’t the “draw” from the search engines, but rather the post content was relevant to the search query, and thus appeared in the search results. But in the content excerpt in the search results in some instances those snippets of code appeared.
July 14th, 2008 at 7:20 am
That is really, really weird. If the plugin and the theme change don’t fix it definitely post in the BayRSS forum. I wouldn’t get rid of CommentLuv and Dofollow just yet, I use them both on all my blogs and I’ve never had a problem with BayRSS at all. Try the theme change and see what that does first. Especially if Yahoo reads it right but google doesn’t - that screams problem with the googlebot and your blog as a whole may be fine. I’ve never heard of googlebot doing things like that though - very weird. Post in digital point forums in the google section about this…see what other’s say.
July 17th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
Great post - thanks! Like your others - full of useful info (and readable, too![=)]](http://www.jtpratt.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/4.gif)
A side question: what script did you use to display the examples of eBay affiliate commissions shown above?
July 17th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
@XTP - I didn’t use a script, those numbers are from the old Commission Junction stats page, before they switched to EPN.
July 24th, 2008 at 11:41 pm
Hi John - finally took your advice and installed this plugin
One thing I don’t get is the default options. For example, i’ve set my default to auctions ending withing 1 hour but the listings still display auctions with days remaining.
Saif270s last blog post..Creative Zen Mozaic - Pretty As a Picture?
July 25th, 2008 at 10:51 am
@Saif270 - I guess I don’t understand that option. I use the same otions every time, keyword, numbers of auctions, zero and zero - for no bids and ending soonest. I would never want to limit to auctions within an hour - what if there weren’t any ending in an hour for that keyword?
This is the format I use very time:
(in brackets of course)
nms:hard drive,10,0,0,tracking.id
August 13th, 2008 at 11:50 am
[...] in knowing more about placing eBay auctions in your blog posts - you might want to visit my post on Wordpress eBay Plugin BayRSS for [...]
August 17th, 2008 at 10:04 pm
good post on monetizing with eBay. phpBay Pro has a feature I like a lot - item display in columns, and I don’t see this feature in BayRSS. People are used to list format for eBay items, why not to give them something new?
Max@Viliat-Blogs last blog post..Create and Manage Your Own Blog Empire Automatically
August 18th, 2008 at 7:14 am
@Max@Viliat-Blog - item display in columns is coming to BayRSS in addition to new features PHPBayPro doesn’t even have. PHPBayPro just increased their price to $79 - which is double the cost of BayRSS…sorry - it’s just not worth it.
August 18th, 2008 at 9:12 am
John, after reading your post I am very interested in BayRSS plugin (also because of Amazon products). What are additional features in BayRSS you mentioned about, and when upgrade is coming? have you try to use Amazon with BayRSS and how you’d do it?
August 20th, 2008 at 10:38 am
I can’t mention the new features of BayRSS, but I will announce them when they come out. You can add Amazon items with BayRSS just like eBay auctions, simply by adding a tag with keywords after a post - it’s very simple.
August 29th, 2008 at 9:56 am
There is a third alternative, WordBay. That one’s free. I tried it, but I needed to filter down to sell things only within X miles of a postcode, which it didn’t do.
I only gave it a 10 minute trial, downloaded/installed/set the options, dropped the code into the page (worked a treat), but it simply didn’t meet my needs of:
1] Specify a distance/range
2] Be able to display items from one category at a time, but different categories across the site.
WordBay is more of a niche product based on the product, whereas I had a niche based on location.
I’ll try Bayrss at some point, but for now I am just using the tools in the ebaypartner site.
Great page. Good overview of what’s out there! I’m sure it will have inspired newcomers to take the plunge.
homeworkers last blog post..Homeworker Jobs
September 3rd, 2008 at 8:44 am
I tried Wordbay and it didn’t work nearly as well as BayRSS for me (in addition to being really basic and not having as many features)…
September 3rd, 2008 at 2:10 pm
Great post and interesting comments! Regardless of the latest ePN shake-ups people still seem to like eBay.
John - what produced the nifty print-out of sales that you show above - is it a screen shot of PJ’s report or a special app?
September 4th, 2008 at 9:50 am
actually that old screenshot is from the way commissions used to look in Commission Junction before the switch to eBay partner network in May 2008. I haven’t added a screenshot of EPN or Pepperjam yet (both of which use Flash charts).
September 7th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
Sounds like a great plugin to have, I’m unsure how I could use it yet but I’m definately going to be checking it out.
Cheers!
Tom “I make easy money online” Walshs last blog post..Do you earn bux.to?
October 7th, 2008 at 7:32 am
Very nice write up about creating eBay powered sites. I haven’t used BayRSS myself yet, but I am a fanatical phpBay user, and plugin developer for eBay sites (mainly phpBay add-on plugins).
You readers might be interested in a plugin I have that works for any eBay site, no matter what eBay script you use.
It displays your EPN stats directly in your Wordpress admin panel.
Only requirements are Wordpress and an EPN affiliate account.
Full manual at http://www.psp-tubes.net/downloads/piggybank.pdf .. and the plugin page is at http://www.psp-tubes.net/wordpress/display-ebay-partner-network-epn-stats-in-your-wordpress-administration-panel/
I wish you all good profits with your sites.
Cheers
Alan
November 24th, 2008 at 3:59 pm
I have a client who sells a lot on ebay. We are creating a blog for them to gain search engine traffic. They are wanting to show their auctions within their blog posts. I was wondering if you know if the BayRSS plugin allows you to only show auctions from one ebay seller? or do you know of any other solution that would be better?
Boyd - seo specialists last blog post..Contacting Bloggers and Guest Posting