I'm pretty sure by now most eBay affiliates have at least heard of phpBay Pro.

You may have heard that phpBay Pro offers a powerful and versatile way to display eBay affiliate listings on your sites that is unparalleled by any other eBay affiliate software on the market.

You may have also heard that Wade Wells, the author of phpBay Pro, provides a consistant and superior level of service to all phpBay users.

I know from experience that all these claims are 100% true.

As I cruise around the Internet and see dozens of promotions for phpBay Pro, I notice that no one is explaining some of the more important features of the script. I call them "sleeper" features.

There are several sleeper features in phpBay Pro, but in this article, I'm only going to cover what I believe is the most important set of sleeper features... Security!

WHY EPN ACCOUNT SECURITY IS IMPORTANT:

As a member of the eBay Partner Network, you have to worry about a host of issues that don't affect other affiliate programs. Ignored, things like bot clicks, blank referring URLs and clicks referred from sites you do not own may get your ePN account suspended or even terminated without any prior warning. If you think I'm exaggerating, go the the ePN forums and have yourself an eye-opening read!

Bot Clicks: If you have ever logged on to your ePN dashboard and seen 1,426 clicks for the day on a campaign that's only 5 days old, you know that ePN's so-called "industry standard" bot filter is at least 50% ineffectual. But that won't stop ePN from using those bot clicks to recalculate your QCP score and start paying you only $0.02 per click for the next several days! There are several posts on the ePN forum where people claim their QCP EPC dropped to $0.00 after a bot clicking spree!! If the bots haven't attacked your sites yet, don't worry, they'll get to you eventually.

Blank Referring URLs: ePN demands that every click you send to eBay incudes what's called a "referring" URL so they know what domain (website) the clicks came from. Normally, a person using Internet Explorer or FireFox will send the referring URL to ePN automatically when they click one of your affiliate links, but many people use special software to "block" the URL for personal security reasons. Many automated software programs (bots) also block the referring URL when they click on your links. In fact, there are several reasons beyond your control where clicks may show up at ePN with a blank referrer. If you start sending clicks to eBay with no referring URL, one of two things will happen. At best, they will suspend your account and it will take weeks (without any commissions) to get it straightened out with their Quality Assurance people. At worst, they will simply terminate your account without notice and you will lose any pending commissions they owe you.

Links From URLs You DO NOT Own: As of August 2009, it is a violation of ePN's rules to send clicks to eBay from any domain you DO NOT personally own. If you place your affiliate links on sites like CraigsList, Twitter, WordPress.com or Facebook, ePN will terminate you when they see the referring URLs. Now you may be thinking, "I don't do that." Well, that's great -- you are a honest player. But that doesn't mean your competitor is!! If your eBay niche site is doing better than mine in the search engine rankings and your affiliate links aren't protected, I can easily copy them into a few anonymous posts on Craigslist and you can guess what's going to happen to your account when ePN sees the referring URL. Even if ePN only suspends your account, it will take you weeks (without commissions) to prove your innocence. Are there really other ePN affiliates who would do such a thing? YES, THERE ARE LOTS OF THEM!!

Warning: Starting in May 2010, ePN has been sending out warning emails to affiliates who they say have a bad/blank referrer rate over about 1% of thier total clicks. While it's obvious that the vast majority of these clicks are due to ePN's inability to properly block bots, they have put the responsibility for it directly on the affiliate's shoulders.

HOW PHPBAY PROTECTS YOUR EPN ACCOUNT:

Several eBay affiliate scripts on the market use what's called a "SEO URLs" feature. They all work basically the same way. When you move your mouse over a displayed eBay listing on your site, the URL in your browser's status bar (bottom) looks like the link goes to another page on the same site. When you click the link, the SEO URLs feature rewrites (converts) the link to a roverized eBay affiliate link, which in turn logs the click at ePN and sends the 'clicker' to that specific listing on eBay. This "local redirect," as it's commonly called is perfectly acceptable to ePN.

The main purpose of the SEO URLs feature is the arguable SEO benefit. But, does this feature make your ePN affiliate links secure? NO, IT DOESN'T.

That's what sets phpBay apart from and way above ALL the other eBay affiliate scripts on the market. In addition to masking and redirecting the links just like any SEO URLs feature, phpBay also provides three layers of security with each click.

• Referrer Checking.
• Browser Checking.
• IP Address/Range Blocking

Referrer Checking: When someone clicks on one of your SEO URL links, phpBay Pro first checks the referrer to make sure the click originated from your site and is not blank. If the referrer information fails this test, the redirect to eBay is aborted and a blank page is shown to whoever/whatever clicked the link. You can easily modify this page to display any content you like.

Browser Checking: If the click passes the referrer check, the next thing phpBay does is check the users browser against a list of known/acceptable Web browsers that you can edit. If the reported browser does not match one on your "whitelist," the redirect to eBay is aborted and a blank page is loaded.

IP Address/Range Blocking: Last, but not least, phpBay checks the clicks IP address. If this address matches a specific IP address or falls within a "range" of addresses on your "blocked" list, phpBay will abort the redirect and load a blank page. This is more efficient than having a list of blocked IP addresses in your .htaccess file because it is only processed when someone clicks a SEO URL link, not every time a page is loaded like with .htaccess. Adding/Deleting IP addresses or IP Ranges from the list is easy.

Live Example:

Below are three live eBay listings created with phpBay. Move your mouse over the links and look at your browser's status bar (bottom), See how the links look like they go to another page on this site? Now click one of the links and watch phpBay open a new browser tab (optional), rewrite (roverize) the link and send you to eBay. Now test phpBay's security features by right-clicking on any link below, then copy/paste the link into a HTML file and upload it to your server. Now dispay the page you made in your browser and click the link. phpBay will know that link didn't come from this site and will display a local page instead of sending you to eBay. Nice!! You will get the same result if your browser trys to block the referrer or if you are reading this article using some unknown browser. Also if I have added your IP address (or your countries IP range) to my IP blocking list.

phpBay's security features do a lot more than help protect your eBay affiliate account from suspension or termination, they also help protect your QCP Quality Score (EPC). In fact, if QCP works the way ePN claims it does, shielding your links from bots, bogus browsers and blank/bad referrers may actually help increase your QCP Quality Score over the long term. It did mine!!

Special Militant Discount: - The maker of phpBay Pro has provided me with a special temporary discount code that, when used in conjunction with clicking a phpBay advertisement on this site, will deduct 20% from your initial investment in phpBay Pro.

And security isn't the only reason to display eBay listings with phpBay Pro, there are over 20 different (easy to configure) ways built in to phpBay that allow you to select exactly which listings you display and how they are displayed on your site. There's a special WordPress plugin and a API version that will work with any php based pages and integrates seamlessly with other popular tools like Joomla, Drupal, Mage and X Site Pro.

Start using your special discounted copy today!!

Enter discount code: 5A9ACA416B during your checkout process and save 20%!