Check out this phpBay tutorial

Hope you find that a useful phpBay resource!

I install all of these plugins on any wordpress site I make, not just phpBay sites.

Some of these plugins are not the most recent versions, but if you have wordpress 2.5 than you can upgrade them all automatically in your plugin menu. Upgrade them all before activating them.

If you don’t have wordpress 2.5, install the “wordpress automatic upgrade” plugin first, use it, then install the rest and you can then auto-updgrade them all.

All of these plugins are compatible with wordpress 2.5 There is a link to download the zip file at the end of the post. Make sure you read the instructions in the readme.txt files before you use the plugins. They don’t call it “readme” for nothing…

alinks: Automatically link certain words in your blog to other blog posts or websites. This is great for internal linking targeted keywords for SEO. Note: this plugin can conflict with phpBay if you set up an aLink for a keyword you are using in an auction. Keep that in mind when making aLinks

All-in-one SEO pack Probably the best plugin out there for SEO. I’ll discuss how to use this to optimize you niche site in later posts.

Google analyticator: Easily links your blog with your google analytics account (if you don’t have one, get one! it’s free, too!). This will be great for tracking how much traffic you get from your keywords in search engines, among other things.

Sitemap Generator: Generates a sitemap for goolge and other sites. this is great for SEO and other things.

Link cloaking plugin: Automatically cloaks and redirects your affiliate links, or any other links you wanna keep private. This is great if you wanna link to any other affiliate offers from a phpBay site.

Viper Video Quicktags: Easily embed video from YouTube and other sources right into blog posts. This is good if you have a content area of your blog and you want to embed product demos or reviews in your site.

Wordpress Related Post Plugin: Shows other related posts at the end of a post. Great for internal linking (SEO) and getting people to read your other content.

Wordpress Automatic upgrade: Upgrade your wordpress with the click of a button!

wp-cache: Makes your pages load faster. Turn this off if you are making design edits so your pages don’t cache and you can see changes.

cforms: most amazing contact form plugin I have ever seen. It can do almost anything. Read the instructions

Download the Wordpress Plugin kit here!

Just unzip the file and copy all those folders into your “plugins” folder like you would with any other plugins.

Enjoy!

Nest post will be about optimizing your site content for your niche so you can make money on ebay!

Create some fake content and auctions
I start by creating one fake post with a phpBay auction in it. And then one fake post with Greek. I do this just so I can test themes and see how they will look with content and phpBay auctions.

What to look for in a wordpress theme for phpBay
Don’t just pick any theme. You need to think about what niche you are promoting and who your audience is. I wouldn’t use this theme to sell motorcycle parts. Ok, maybe that’s obvious.

But I also wouldn’t use this theme to sell golf stuff. “But it’s a golf theme!” you say. Who cares? The number one thing I look for in a theme is that I can make it look like a website and not a blog.

You need to make your phpBay site look like a store, not a blog with auctions on it. Just because there is a theme with a golf ball on it doesn’t mean it is good for selling golf balls on eBay.

When people search for products, they want to come to a legit looking store. If you look like a blog with products on it, people will leave immediately.

Look for Wordpress themes with phpBay store potential
What is phpBay store potential? First, a clean layout. Not big clunky sidebar headers and tons of crazy graphics all over the place.

Second, look for a theme that will go well with your product. How do you know if the theme will go well with what your selling? Well, you have to use your imagination a little. Try to visualize your products on that page. It may not look great with the default theme options, but what if you changed the header by adding a product image? What if you changed the colors a little? That’s what I did when I used this theme on my discount golf ball site.

Third, look for a cool area to feature auctions on the home page. I always try and show at least one auction result on my home page (more on that in a later post). My fender blues junior site has a section for that. You’re theme doesn’t have to have one, but it’s a nice feature.

Fourth, look for a theme that is SEO friendly. This is a huge one. Since we will be trying to rank organically for our niche, an SEO friendly theme is a must. You won’t know if a theme is SEO friendly by just looking at it, but if you know where to look, you can get SEO friendly wordpress themes.

The best place for an SEO wordpress themes is Court’s SEO Wordpress Themes. Court takes regular themes and beefs up their SEO.

Another good place is Blog oh Blog free wordpress themes. These themes tend to be made with SEO in mind, plus there are some great looking themes here.

Try a few themes
I tend to download 4-5 themes and then switch between them in my admin panel. I look at how the auctions show and if the site looks “store enough”. If I need to change the header image to get a better idea, I’ll do that. But the hope is that you get an idea before you spend lots of time changing your theme

Soon I’ll talk about what plugins you should install off the bat on your phpBay site. I’ll even post them here to download.

Affiliate Networks have too much overlap with offers
If you browse affiliate networks like Hydra Media, CX Digital, Neverblue, etc. you’ll start to notice a huge overlap of offer selection. There are the standard offer types: ringtones, dating, insurance, crush offers, freebies/surveys, diet pills, skin care, and a few others. I would be surprised if there are more than 75 unique niches to promote. That means, like a piñata, lots of people are fighting for the same prize.

eBay offers something unique for everyone
eBay is different because there are literally hundreds of thousands of products to promote. So you can find ways to make money on eBay that other affiliate marketers are not targeting.

How to find a good eBay niche
So how do you decide which offers to promote? I already discussed finding the right sized niche to give you a better chance at getting organic traffic.

But with so many offers, there are some brainstorming exercises that will help you think of niches with potential before you actually start to research them. I like to get a list of 10 to 20 niches to research and then go from there.

Exercise one: Look around
The exercise is quite simple. There are niches all around us. Everything you own is a niche. Take a drive. Everything you see is a niche. Everything can be used to make money on eBay.

Write down your possible niches.
Keep a pen and paper with you for a whole day. Everywhere you go, keep your eye out for niches. Write down everything you see. By the end of the day you should have a huge list of keywords/niches to research.

Exercise two: Niche Drilling
You could research every possible niche you see, but that takes lots of time. I have a pretty good system to pre-qualify niches before I start researching them. It’s called Niche Drilling.

A niched can typically be drilled 7 to 10 levels deep. But not every level is worth spending time researching. For example, level one tends to have the most searches, but also the most competition. Level seven or higher tend to have very little competition, but not enough search volume.

Here are the different levels of niches

Level one: Highest level for a given category. This would be a category like technology, sports, financial services, etc. Don’t even bother with these niches.

Level two: sub-categories of level one. Niches like computers, golf, insurance

Level three: one category deeper than level two. These niches tend to be specific products under lever two. For example laptops, golf clubs, life insurance.

Level four: need I say that this is one category deeper in to level three? Level four niches tend to get into brand names. Mac laptops, Nike golf clubs, AIG life insurance

Level five niches are specific models of a brand name: Macbook Pro laptops, Nike drivers, AIG term term life insurance.

Level six niches are even more specific: Pink macbook pro laptops, nike 3 wood driver, AIG 20 year term life insurance.

And it keeps getting deeper and deeper. (AIG 20 year term insurance for smokers, for example).

You can save yourself lots of time quickly drilling into level four our five. Anything above that tends to be very competitive. Anything past level 5 tends to have too little search volume. I just gave 3 examples of niches that took me less than 5 minutes to come up with. Here is a linear look at each drilled niche. The red niches are what I would do more research on.

Technology > computers > latops > Mac laptops > Macbook Pro laptops > pink Macbook Pro laptops

Sports > golf > golf clubs > Nike golf clubs > Nike drivers > Nike 3 wood drivers

Financial services > insurance > life insurance > AIG life insurance > AIG term life insurance > AIG 20 year term life insurance

Remember, just because I pick a level 4, 5, or 6 niche doesn’t mean I will make a site out of it. I just use Niche Drilling to find ideas of niches that may have potential.

Niche Drilling can go any direction
Keep in mind that you can go any direction at any level of Niche Drilling to find hundreds of more niches.

For example, we could drill the niche “sporting” in tons of different ways. Here are a few examples of other ways we could have drilled sporting.

Sports > golf > golf clubs > Nike golf clubs > Nike irons > Nike 9 irons. In this example we change directions at level five (Nike irons).

Sports > golf > golf clubs > Callaway golf clubs > callaway drivers > callaway 3 wood > in this example we changed directions at level four (Callaway golf clubs).

Sports > golf > golf balls > titleist golf balls > titleist Pro v1 > Titleist used Pro v1. In this example we changed direction at lever three (golf balls).

You could drill in different directions to come up with hundreds of different niches. I tend to find a main category and explore different drilling directions at level three and level four.

Niche Drilling has exceptions
Keep in mind that there are exceptions to Niche Drilling. I would not try and make a site for mac laptops or even a macbook pro laptop even though they are level four and five niches. Some products are just oversaturated even when you drill down. It takes a little common sense and instinct.

What to do after you have a bunch of niches?
After you have a big list of niches, it’s time to check the potential they have to make you money on ebay. Read this post to learn how to check which niches have the most potential for traffic.

There are a few things to consider when choosing a niche for making money on ebay.

How popular is your niche?
You definitely want to choose a niche that people are searching for. The problem is that when lots of people search for something it tends to be because the product/service being searched is in high demand and the more competition you will likely have when it comes to SEO.

The trick is to find a balance of a product or service that is in demand, but not too competitive.

I like to look nichea that have at least 100-200 estimated searches a day (more is even better). This tells me that a nich is being searched enough that I can get some decent traffic if i place high in the search results. A great free tool to estimate search volume is the Seo Book Keyword Tool. This tool tends to estimate keyword search volume slightly on the low side. Keep that in mind.

As a test I looked up “Nike Golf Clubs” and SEO Book estimates 159 daily searches. That’s a good start, but we need to check the competition.

How much competition does your niche have?
After you find a niche or keyword with at least 100-200 searches a day, you will need to look at how much competition there is. To check your niche competition, do a phrase search in google for your keyword.

Let’s say your niche is Nike Golf Clubs, do a phrase search by searching “Nike Golf Clubs” in goolge (with the quotations) and then look at the total number of pages on google for that phrase. That would be the bold number in the blue bar above the search results and below the search box.

“Nike Golf Clubs” reads “Personalized Results 1 – 10 of about 96,300 for “Nike Golf Clubs”. (0.25 seconds)”

The only number I care about is the “96,300” as that is how many pages contain the phrase “Nike Golf Clubs”

You want to target a niche with less than 1 million results, but the fewer the better. Less than 500 thousand is good. Less than 100 thousand is really good.

So far so good. We have a niche that gets over 150 searches a day and has less than 100 thousand pages containing that phrase.

How targeted are the top 5 results?
Now we need to look at the top five results for the phrase “Nike Golf Clubs” so we can see what we’re really up against.

Result #1 is Nike.com. That’s no surprise. The next few results are golf related sites.

What I’m really looking for is to see if there is an entire site devoted to Nike Golf Clubs. My thought is that if I have an entire site dedicated to Nike Golf Clubs, and the sites in the top results only have a few pages, than I should be able to outrank them relatively easy.

So if I see general golf sites, I’m not so worried. If I see golf club sites, I’m a little worried, but not really.

Since I just see general golf sites, this seems like a niche worth pursuing to try and make money on ebay.

Other considerations when looking for niches
Many people also like to consider the cost of the item they are promoting. Since you make money on ebay through commission, the higher the item price, the more you make.

While I agree with this philosophy, don’t let a low priced niche turn you off. Here’s why:

First, people tend to be less worried about buying cheaper items online. So while your commissions may not be as big per item, you are likely to sell more items, so you can make good money on ebay as your commissions add up.

Second, eBay has a great cookie system. When users click an ebay link on your site, you will get commission on anything they buy on ebay in the next 7 days, whether it was the same item they clicked on your site or not. So if you can conquer a low priced niche and get lots of clicks on your ebay links, you will still get commission on other itmes people buy.

This month I got made $115 on ebay in one day from my site discount golf balls. How did I make so much selling golf balls? Well, a visitor clicked on one of my links, but then ended up buying a $4,250 fridge. I got the commission on it. So don’t let low priced niches deter you.

I hope this article helped you decide what niches will make you money on ebay.

Soon I’ll post about how to optimize your site for your niche and some other niche finding exercises. Cheers!

What is phpBay Pro? PHPbay Pro is a plugin for wordpress that allows you to import eBay listings into your wordpress site.

How will phpBay make you money? Simple. As a member of the eBay affiliate program, ebay will give you a commission for every sale that comes from your site. The basic payout structure is $25 for every new ebay user that signs up and places a bid, and 50% of eBay’s revenue per auction (that does not mean the sale price, it means the amount that eBay makes from the sale). Read eBay’s full payout scale here

What is wordpress? In short, wordpress is a free blogging platform. If you want to know more, google it.

phpBay Pro is a specific plugin that works for wordpress. You need to have a wordpress blog installed to use it. phpBay also has a more advanced API that lets you build custom sites. This blog will focus on phpBay Pro for wordpress as a way to make money on eBay. But the techniques can be applied to any ebay software.

How much does wordpress cost? Wordpress is free. You will need to register a domain name, which costs around $8.00 a year. And you need to host the site. Cheap hosting can cost around $4.00 a month. I recommend Hostgator for hosting. I have a plan for $9.99 a month and I can host unlimited sites. Plus they have very good support. (24/7 online chat)

How much does phpBay cost? phpBay Pro wordpress plugin costs $79

Is it worth it? Hell yes!

How many sites can you make with phpBay Pro? When you purchase a copy of phpBay pro you can use it to make as many sites as you want. I currently have two phpBay sites up and I am working on a third. I have had other sites with phpBay, but I sold them.

How much am I making with phpBay Pro? Currently I am making about $400 a month with my two sites, and my earnings have been climbing every month. I hope to add another two sites and be making at least $1250 a month 3 months from now (by September ’08).

What are you waiting for? If you wanna start making some money with the eBay affiliate program than sign up to the ebay partner network. Once you get accepted, buy a copy of phpBay Pro and get started. It’s well worth it. Subscribe to my RSS feed to get the latest tips on how to make money on eBay with PHPbay. I’ll be discussing traffic generation, choosing niches, cool tricks, and other tips to make money on eBay.