Internet Profits Blog

Using PHPBay is a great way to quickly create an eBay affiliate site. Unfortunately, that ease also means anyone can create a ton of ‘eBay’ sites and pages which, as you might suspect, Google frowns upon. Anything mass produced – you might as well assume Google will not like that.

For that reason ‘just a PHPBay’ site can be hit or miss in Google. But there are some code customizations you can do to avoid being quickly fingerprinted as having another thin affiliate site:

1. Change up the default template. You don’t need everything created by PHPBay to be a link. All link and no text? Change it so only the graphics are linked. Or maybe just the text. And change the default text while you’re at it.

2. Randomize the number of auction listings. Instead of 10 listings per page, as everyone has, use php to get a random number, say between 5 and 15, then use that variable to control how many listings are shown on a page. It size of the content and number of links will thus be different each time the Googlebot comes by.

Within your config.php file, do something like this:

# MAXIMUM ITEMS PER PAGE
$randomnum = mt_rand (5,15);
$config['paging_num'] = $randomnum;

3. Change the default image url used for seo links. PHPBay by default makes the urls for images to be your domains/images/e/number.jpg. That ‘/images/e/’ is called a footprint. Within your ebay.php file find this line:

var $image_replace = "images/e/";

and change it to something else, such as good keyword.

Then, in your .htaccess file change all references to ‘^images/e/’ to your new location.

4. Change the default item listing for seo links. PHP by default makes each product link ‘item-’ followed by the product name. That, again, is a footprint. Within config.php, under Basic Options, find this line:

$config['url_prefix'] = "item-";

and change it to some other word, such as keyword, followed by the hyphen.

Then, in your .htaccess file, change the references to ‘^item’ to your keyword.

There you have it, 4 easy ways to change your PHPBay footprint so you don’t automatically scream to Google – hey, eBay affiliate site here. There are already enough stories of how Google hates eBay affiliate sites without adding yours to the collection.

This will be an ongoing post where various PPC ROI Software is compared:

Affiliate Reporting:

Pros:
- Hands-off, everything is automated for you. This is a biggie.
- You can get lots of data about your campaigns

Cons:
- Expensive
- Reporting should be better graphically. One would think profit green losses red, or some contrasting color combo. Nope. Nothing. You have to see parenthesis in hard to read green bands to determine what is a winner and a loser.
- Reporting should be better overall. It’s not easy to see the results for each keyword. The actual searched keyword is not available. Not have a simple list of keywords and their results for each campaign – which should be basic.
- subid addition to keywords means you can be tracked from your Adwords ads, without needing to click on them, as your subid can be matched to the merchant records

Prosper 202 / Track 202:

Pros:
- Free
- Can track anything

Cons:
Have to manually enter a cost per click for each ad group, which is ridiculous – unless you only have one keyword per group. Without real CPC data per keyword this is really worthless.

Track 202 Pro:

Pros:
- Reasonably priced for smaller ppc marketers
- All automated

Cons:
- If you already have Adwords ads the software will automatically overwrite them to create a new url. This can be terrible because not only do ads have to be re-approved, but you lose all your prior stats for ads – which may have given you a high CTR and low CPC.
- Only tracks PPC through 3 major PPC networks.
- Not as strong as Affiliate Reporting in handling Google API costs, so these fees can ratchet quickly

Extreme Conversions

Pro:
- Cheap
- Shows actual searched keyword and match-type for bidded keyword
- Extremely fast, internally creates campaigns on the fly, and not need to modify existing PPC campaigns

Cons:
- No automation
- Unless commission set in stone (clickbank) and CPC set in stone (never), will never get accurate stats worth anything

Stats Junky

This has some nice looking features, but the depth is just not there. Without having access to your actual PPC accounts, it doesn’t seem like you’re going to get the most accurate numbers.

OK, if you’re on a budget, but at this time not a professional level ROI service.

I’m not the first to make this comment, but after many years of marketing online, it certainly seems that the more someone proclaims their ‘religiousness’ the more likely they are to be a problem customer or just a scammer.

In fact, I’m hard pressed to think of many instances where someone like that wasn’t out to just rip-off products, try to get them for free, etc. Just had a recent example with a “Faith Management” marketing company. Seemed to be just looking to get something for nothing, going out of its way to make bogus claims over products I’ve never seen in more than 16 years of online marketing.

In my view, this has nothing to do with being religious. I’m religious. But I don’t promote first and foremost my company is a religious company. And I don’t thank God in every email or communication. Unfortunately, that over-the-top approach is all-too-often a red-flag of someone trying to take advantage of truly sincere people.

In fact, looking further at this “Faith Management” company, once you get past all the blessings on their website, I see a bunch of scammy crap and use of junk freebie stuff that gives so many online marketers a bad name.

So beware. Why is someone promoting themselves as ‘religious’? Are they truly tied to a religious organization? Or, is it someone trying to trade in on religious goodwill to separate your hard-earned money from your wallet?