phpBay Pro Tips

phpBay version 3.0.5 released!

Today Wade released a new version of phpBay Pro for wordpress. The new version is 3.0.5. I just upgraded ad one of the cool new features is the “best match” sort option for your eBay results. This should help you get more relevant auction results on your phpBay sites.

If you are still on 3.0 and you missed the last few small updates, there are a few other minor updates. First, you no longer need iconotube. You can delete it from your root folder when you install 3.0.5.

Also, you no longer need to create a license file and upload it. You just need to enter your license key from your phpBay admin account.

Read about all the additions to phpBay on the phpBay forums:

Read about updates in 3.0.5
Read about updates in 3.0.4 
Read about updates in 3.0.3
Read about updates in 3.0.2
Read about updates in 3.0.1

How to organize posts and pages on your phpBay site.

I always get people asking me how I set up my phpbay sites to look like real websites and not blogs. One of the best ways to make you phpBay site look like a real website is to be smart how you organize your posts and pages.

How do you do that? First of all, make your home page display just one page or post. There are a few ways to set that up. You can create your homepage content with a page, or with a post.

Before we get into that, download the Flexi Pages Widget. That’s what I use to display my pages in my sidebar. Add it to your sidebar and edit the settings so that “List sub-pages only in parent and related pages in hierarchy.” Is checked off. This lets you hide the sub pages under each page until that page is clicked, then it expands and shows the sub pages. That’s what I used on Discount Golf Balls.

How to use a Page for you phpBay Site home page
If you want to make it with a page, here’s what you do (in wordpress 2.5+). First, create a page and for the title, use your headline you want on the front page.

Now go to Settings>Reading and then where it says “front page displays” select “a static page” and then from the drop down list pick the page name you just created (the headline of your homepage). …Read more »

Get more clicks by removing bids

Removing the bids from your phpBay sites is a simple way to get more clicks and earn more money. It’s an easy hack that anyone can do if they follow my step-by-step instructions.

But before I go into the details of what to change, I’ll take a moment to tell you why removing bids from phpBay sites will help you make more money with phpBay.

It’s really not rocket science. People will click your links when they see a product that is at an amazing price, a price they can’t get anywhere else. But if I’m on your phpBay site and I see an ipod for $20, but I also see 0 bids, I instantly realize it’s not an amazing deal, it’s just that the ipod has no bids on it, and the price will go up. So I’m less likely to click. But if I see an ipod for $20, and I don’t se anything about the number of bids, then I’m gonna click in a heartbeat because I think the ipod is selling for $20.

True, when people get to eBay they will realize that it’s not selling for $20 and that there are no bids, but at least we planted the eBay cookie. The goal with phpBay is to plant as many cookies as possible.

So lets take a look at how to modify your theme to stop the bids from displaying in phpBay auction results.

Step 1. Locate your template files. You want to edit the file called “template.ebay.results.html” for the regular auction layout and “template.column.results.html” for the column layout. The path to both files is “phpbay_plugin > wp-content > plugins > phpBay > templates”

Step 2. Save a copy of the files in another folder BEFORE you edit them.

Step 3. Open the files in an HTML editing software (or in notepad).

Step 4. Look for this line of code: 

<td width="60" align="right">%%bid_or_bin%%</td>

Step 5. Now you can delete that whole line. But I prefer to comment it out in case I want to turn it on later. To comment it out, replace that line of code with this line:

<--<td width="60" align="right">%%bid_or_bin%%</td>-->

Step 6. Save the file and upload it over the current file using an FTP software (I like Filezilla).

Step 7. There is no step seven. Your done! Go to your site to make sure it worked.

Hope that little hack helps you get more clicks on your phpBay Sites.

phpBay 3.0.2 Released!

Just saw that Wade released a new version of phpBay. The update includes compatibility with phpBay and PepperJam Network. Many people complained about a huge drop in commissions when they switched to EPN. I never noticed any issues and my comissions seemed to be on par with what they were before. But I will probably test it out with PepperJam just to compare.

The new version of phpBay fixes a few minor bugs that were in phpBay 3.0.1. Most notably, Wade fixed a bug with the dynamic CID feature introduced in version 3.0.1.

If you didn’t upgrade yet, head on over to the phpBay Store, log in, and download and install the new version.

Other ways to make money with your phpBay site

In addition to using just phpBay Pro on my phpBay sites, there are a few other ways I make money from my sites.

The first way is with Google Adsense, the second way is with product links from Commission Junctions advertisers.

The question is: are these methods write for your phpBay site?

They may be.

Let’s start with Adsense. Many people don’t want to put adsense on their phpBay site because they feel it takes away from their eBay sales. This is a valid concern.

Whether or not you should have adsense on your phpBay site depends on a few things. First, are you selling high priced items? If you’re selling high-priced items than it may not be worth it to put adsense on on your phpBay site. If you could easily make $10 a sale, it doesn’t make sense to send your visitor away for a $0.10 click . But if you sell lower priced items and an adsense click earns you close to the same amount as an ebay sale, it would be worth testing adsense on your phpBay site.

Second, is your site converting? You may be getting lots of visitors, but for some reason people just aren’t buying from you site. It may be time to test out some well-placed adsense units. Even if you sell high-priced items. …Read more »

May earnings from phpBay Pro sites

So it’s 7 days into June, which means all my cookies from May should be expiring tomorrow. So after tomorrow whatever my dashboard says I made for may isn’t going to change. But I decided to post my earnings now since I doubt they will go up tomorrow.

I had two phpBay sites up in May: my Fender Blues Junior site, which is about 10 months old, and my discount golf ball site, which has only been around since mid April (2008). From those two sites I earned $401.83 from eBay and about another $70 from Adsense. That brings my total May earnings from phpBay sites (let me get my calculator) to about $471.83. That’s not bad considering my golf ball site was only indexed by google the last week of April, and traffic is growing every day.

Here is my eBay screenshot for May:

Not a ton of money, but some nice extra cash that came in from some upfront SEO work, but not much after that.

I’m off to an OK start for June. As of today I made $40 with ebay, $30 from CJ (amp sale on Musician’s Friend), and $10 from adsense.

I also am working on a new phpBay site for used Apple laptops. I’m still tweaking it, but traffic should start coming in a few weeks.

How did everyone else do in May?

Get more clicks with home page auctions

Here is an easy, but great way to maximize the clicks on your phpBay sites. It’s something so easy and it should only take you one minute to implement, if you have not already done so.

Many sites built with phpBay Pro use the wise tactic of making Wordpress look like a website, not a blog. Part of this tactic includes making your home page not display posts, but display a static page (I’ll share a few ways to do this in later phpBay Tips). …Read more »

Why you should not use PPC with your phpBay Pro sites

Many people who get into eBay sites with phpBay Pro have had some past experience in affiliate marketing. That means they have likely promoted their other sites with Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising in the past. So naturally they want to promote their phpBay sites with PPC. But I’m not a big fan of PPC for phpBay sites. Here are some reasons why:

Reason #1: Tracking delay
eBay updates your earnings every day with the previous day’s earnings. So if I go to your site today and buy something, you won’t know about it until tomorrow. But ebay also has a 7-day cookie. So if I go to your site and bid on something, but don’t win the auction for 7 days, you won’t know about those earnings for up to 8 days. …Read more »

How to make images clickable with phpBay 3.0

In general, the more clickable area you have, the better the chance you will get someone to click. And since making money with phpBay is all about getting the most clicks possible, we want our auction results to be very clickable

One problem people have had with phpBay Pro 3.0 is that the auction images do not link to ebay auctions (only the item text is clickable). While this is a valid concern, it is a very easy fix.

Allan from Handy Hints for Webmasters emailed me a great solution. It’s just one small change to your template file.

First, locate your default template file in /wp-content/plugins/phpBay/templates

Second, find thehtml code that places the image on your phpBay site. It will look something like this:

<img src=”%%image%%” alt=”%%alt_title%%” border=”0″ />

Then replace that code with the following

<a href=”%%link_url%%” target=”_blank” rel=”nofollow”><img src=”%%image%%” alt=”%%alt_title%%” border=”0″ /></a>

Make sure when you paste the code into your file that the quotation marks are not curly. you may have to retype them manually.

That’s it! It was that easy!

phpBay Pro inbound link building rules

Now that we talked about ways to optimize your phpBay Pro site for SEO, we’re going talk about things you can do off your site to improve your SEO.

A website’s rank is a combination of the websites relevance to the term being searched, which on-site optimization helps with, and the website’s general popularity. The biggest way search engines determine a website popularity is by counting inbound links. And it makes sense; the more people that link to you, the more popular your site is. (Kinda like high school: the more popular you are, the more kids want to sit next to you in the cafeteria).

There are many ways to get inbound links to your phBay sites. And I’ll discuss them in a later post. But when your making those links, there are two rules to follow to maximize your inbound link strategy. They aren’t a big secret; just age old SEO and link building techniques. …Read more »