Welcome
Are you one of the thousands of eBay affiliates abruptly "terminated" for some unclear infraction and had all your pending commissions reversed and stolen away from you? Or maybe you're an active eBay affiliate that's just tired of working under constantly changing, arbitrary and excessive rules and you're looking for a workable plan-B. Whatever your current status in the affiliate marketing world, this Website will teach you a highly effective technique that uses the SEO quality of eBay's public RSS feeds to promote other affiliate programs.
I'm going to show you how to make a small alteration to the powerful phpBay Pro eBay affiliate script which will allow you to build eBay niche sites that surge to the top of Google's natural search listings. But you're NOT going to promote eBay, you're going to promote whatever affiliate program(s) you choose! This technique won't work with other eBay affiliate software, so if you've been using BANS, or some other eBay affiliate script, you need to buy a copy of phpBay Pro right now! If you've been terminated by ePN and you still have a bunch of affiliate sites getting search engine traffic every day, it won't cost you near as much as letting all those niche sites go to waste! For the rest of you, it's an excellent investment that is all but guaranteed to make you money. Note: This trick will work with either the WordPress or API version of phpBay Pro , but not with phpBay Lite.
I'm going to explain this using the Google AdSense affiliate program, but with a little imagination, you can apply the technique to any affiliate program you choose.
First, create a page on your site with a promenent Google AdSense ad. Give the page a name like "onerror.html" and save it to the root folder on your server. Now, open your phpBay Pro "auction.php" file in a HTML or text editor and scroll all the way down to the bottom. At the bottom of the file you will see php code that looks like the example below:
***Begin Example***
switch ($i["aff"]) {
case "afepn":
$url = "http://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/" . $rover["rid"] . "/1?campid=" . $i["pid"] . "&customid=" . $i["cid"] . "&toolid=10005&mpre=http%3A%2F%2F" . $rover["url"] . "%2F" . $i["title"] . "_W0QQitemZ" . $i["item"] . "QQcmdZViewItemQQssPageNameZRSS%3AB%3ASRCH%3A" . $rover["abbr"] . "%3A101";
break;
***End Example***
Replace this group of code with the example below:
***Begin Example***
switch ($i["aff"]) {
case "afepn":
$url = "onerror.html";
break;
***End Example***
There will be four (4) more instances of code starting with $url = under the one you just altered. Make the same change to all of those instances too. This way, if your site visitor changes countries, the redirect will still work. Of course, you can use a file name other then "onerror.html" if you want. Also, make sure you back up your original auction.php file and only make changes to a copy.
Upload your altered auction.php file to your site.
Now view your site with all those SEO enriching eBay listings that will bring in several shoppers every day from Google, Yahoo and MSN. Move your mouse over a link and see where it shows something like "...mysite/item-ebay-listing-title.html" in the browser status bar. But now, when you click on one of those eBay listings, you will go to the "onerror.html" page on your site instead of going to eBay and all you will will see is maybe a short message that says something like, "Please excuse the inconvenience. We cannot complete your request at this time," along with your AdSense ads and maybe even a Google AdSense search box.
What do you think your site visitor is going to do at this point?? About 70% of them will either click a Google ad or start using the AdSense search box you so thoughtfully provided them. Be careful not to violate the Google AdSense Terms of Service here. You can't use any text of graphic that tells or asks anyone to click a Google Ad. But don't worry, most of them will figure it out on their own.
Tip: If you are using a Google Adsense search box, make sure you design it to show the Google results on YOUR site and also place a search box on the top of all your pages for those people who wouldn't click a eBay listing in the first place. It will reduce your bounce rate. I'm not saying this will raise your AdSense commissions enough to make up for any loss of eBay commissions, but it will definitely cause your AdSense earnings to go up enough to justify keeping the sites going.
I hope this article helps you. I used Google AdSense as an example, but using this same technique, you can use phpBay Pro to promote any affiliate program that has items also being sold on eBay. For example, if you have a CJ or LinkShare publisher who sells "RN Exam Study Guides," you can use eBay listings for "Nursing Exam Study Guides" as SEO content and redirect any clicks to your real affiliate publisher.
