phpBay Pro Tips

Archive for August, 2008

As many of you have heard (or perhaps found out the hard way) eBay has been shutting down the accounts of many publishers. Not just shady people either. It’s one of the most ridiculous thing’s i have ever seen. I have not been shut down, but since they are not giving much info as to WHY they are shutting people down, i have no idea if and when it will happen.

Here is a great thread on EPN. My eBay name is scuttleSRVbuttin. I have a few comments on there.

Many people have been screwed. If you’re one of them, there may be a light at the end of the tunnel. I just talked to Wade(the phpBay developer) the other day and suggested that he start working on Amazon integration for phpBay. He told me he had actually started it the night before.

I don’t think the Amazon affiliate program is nearly as good as eBay, but there are people who do well with it. This is a great opportunity for people who already have sites with traffic. If you already use phpBay, then your set. But if you have BANS or a custom thing, you may want to switch to phpBay or get the API.

Anyone here been banned by eBay yet? Have you tried switching to pepperjam? did it work?

I read an interesting article in the Chicago Tribune today that said EBay will be switching its fee structure to promote fixed prices over bidding. According to another article in the Chicago Tribune, EBay’s number of new users is slightly going down. EBay says the move is to help them compete with Amazon.

So is this change going to help phpBay Pro affiliates?

Well, according to EBay this change will encourage sellers to sell more items, which will mean more products for buyers to choose from and more sales, right?

Not so fast. In my experience “biddable” items get more clicks than buy it now because buyers to your site see the lower price and are intrigued to click. This will help you get more cookies on people’s computers.

On the other hand, how likely are those people to actually buy the item once they realize that wasn’t the selling price, but just the current bid.

I think with EBay’s upcoming changes to the ACRU payout system, the new fee changes will be positive for affiliates. Why? Because if someone sees an item for a fixed price on your site and then signs up to EBay, they are much more likely to buy that item after they sign up since it’s selling for the price “advertised”. And since EBay’s new lead system is based on quality (pay outs are $1-$50 per lead), I think that people’s lead quality should go up.

But will you get as many sales? I’m not sure. Your EPC should go up since more people who click will buy. But your overall sales may not go up since it’s likely less people will be clicking.

All-in-all I think the change will be good for affiliates. What do you guys think?

I’m a little behind on updating you guys on my phpBay Pro earnings. I’ve also been pretty about about posting tips. Things have been pretty busy. But i’m going to try and start posting again at least once a week. If anyone has any tips to submit or specific questions, feel free to post a comment or send me an email and I’ll Post them.

Back to my earnings…

The past two months have been great. My revenue has been going up each month. In June $457.99 from EPN and my Fender amps site made another $54 from Commission Junction. So my total June earnings were $511. Just about all that came from my used apple laptop site, and my Fender site. While my golf ball site is still my best looking phpBay site, it is the poorest performing site. My SEO rankings started to drop and the commissions weren’t great so I started to focus all my efforts on the two other sites.

July was even better. In July I made $518 from phpBay pro and my fender site made another $66 from CJ. So my total earnings from phpBay sites was $584.

Here is a screenshot of my payments from the last few months:

Here is a screenshot of the breakdown of my earnings by site over the past three months (not including August. “Default Campaign” is my fender site):

Note that a lot of that revenue from the Golf Ball site came when i was testing PPC. Most of that is not profit. But the other two sites are all from organic traffic.

August is off to a great start, too. I already earned $347 and the months is just half way through. I’ll keep you posten on how it turns out.

Also, if you didn’t get phpBay Pro yet, It’s time to buy, Wade sent me a 20% off phpBay coupon. So buy it already!

This reduces the price of phpBay to just $63.20 (Regularly priced at $79)

Still haven’t joined the phpBay Pro bandwagon? Well now’s the time. Wade (the developer behind phpBay Pro) just sent me an exclusive coupon code for a 20% discount on any phpBay Pro product.

You can’t find this phpBay coupon anywhere else and I don’t think it will stay valid for long. So if you’ve been thinking about buying the phpBay Pro wordpress plugin, do it now and save over $15.00 off the regular price.

Here’s how you get the 20% discount on phpBay Pro:
Sign up to my email list and i’ll email you a coupon for 20% off any phpBay Pro product. This exclusive coupon was sent to me directly from Wade Wells (the developer of phpBay Pro). The coupon is 100% legit and will save you at least $15, depending on what you buy.

Request your free coupon now:

Over the past 6 months I have made over $7000 from just 3 phpBay sites (see my earnings here). And most of my traffic is just to 2 sites. (I will post the last few months earnings screenshots in a few days). So stop putting it off and buy phpBay today while you can get $15 off. Then read this blog for tips on how to earn like me.