1. Within your cpanel click to add a new subdomain.

2. Call the subdomain * (yes, just an asterisk).

3. For the document root use the root domain (public_html). If the dynamic subdomains are for an add-on domain, then the document root will be public_html/youraddondomain.com.

That’s it.

Now, you can refer to a subdomain and it is automatically created on the fly. Such as using the WordPress WP subdomains plugin to create subdomains out of pages.

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.

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 just tested the service, found a couple domains ready to be deleted, and purchased them. They were both ultimately sold through the GoDaddy site.

Unexpectedly, I did not own the domains immediately after buying them. Instead, the redemption period had to run, which it did, before they were transferred to my account. With the GoDaddy auction if the domain owner does redeem their domain then the purchase price is refunded.

I have now been able to confirm through whois that both domains have retained their age. It appears as if I bought them 7+ years ago, not last week.

Now we’ll see if this helps with SEO – it should. I’ve only used the free features available at Fresh Drop, but I was impressed – impressive enough to get me to go back and also to write this post.

========
Update: FreshDrop is NO LONGER Recommended

What was a good service has turned into a huge, greedy rip-off – about $100 a month just to see the age of domains available from GoDaddy.

Fortunately, there are alternatives:

PremiumDrops.com – has a list of expiring GoDaddy domains, with their age. Here is a specific page: http://premiumdrops.com/list.php?l=Godaddy+Auctions&a=show – However, the service is $25 per month.

DropAce.com – Free – Easy to scroll through lists of expiring and deleting domains, but does not easy show age of the domain. Need to click on a domain name to see details, such as age.

GoDrops.com – Free – Nice of lists of daily dropped domains and their age. Unfortunately, to preserve PageRank one needs to get a domain before it has dropped into general availability. The service is thus good for getting a domain name, but not for getting an aged domain.

ExpiredDomains.org – Free – Great website with lists of domains and their age, including an ability for a keyword search.

JustDropped.com – Free – Good flexible search options, but not able to search or see age of domains.

Also – found http://EstiBot.com – very interesting domain naming tools

Includes the Webmaster’s Legal Guide, other legal resources, and over a dozen legal forms for Internet marketers.

As a reader of this blog you can get $25 off. Simply use this coupon on the order page: IPUBLOG

Here is the link: FTC Survival Guide

Michelle Obama Monkey Face Picture

This is a picture that is all over the news as being offensive (or funny) because it is the top search result in Google images.

All you need is a hot topic like this, create a blog page like that website has done, and monetize it in some manner.

In this example, the monetization on that page is a CPA offer at the bottom which is related to the Obama administration. A simple email submit.

And of course the additional traffic is likely to visit other web pages where there are additional monetization opportunities.

Could you do something like this? Sure. These hot topics pop up every day and many will have a shelf life for a long time.

- To control access to a membership site (as opposed to offering a downloadable ebook)
- Have an affiliate program
- Offer coupons

Amember
website
Amember will do all of the above with PayPal. It works great.
Downsides: Expensive at $180.
Has coupons by percent or dollar amount, and can limit how many times coupon is used.
Have to manually pay affiliates, and affiliate module has bare functionality and not always easy for affiliates to access.
Amember can work with ClickBank, which would offer a trusted 3rd party payment mechanism affiliates. However, there are the ClickBank fees, price restrictions, mandated return policy (which is incredible abuse for IM products), and the ClickBank TOS prohibit the use of coupons.

DL Guard
website
Very disappointed as cannot get this software to work for membership sites. It’s primary focus seems to be protecting digital downloads.
No affiliate system.
$147 for two website install.

Rapid Action Profits
website
Expensive at $197 and appears to only protect downloads – not membership sites.
Has an affiliate system and coupons.
Extras such as split testing and one-time-offers.

MemberWing
website
$100 WordPress membership plugin. Allows different membership levels and can drip content.
No affiliate system.
No coupons.

Simple Member Pro
website
$197, but license good for unlimited websites.
Has affiliate system.
Has coupons with dollar amounts, not percentage off.
Script not encrypted so you can must custom modifications.
CMS system.
One time offers and dime sales.
Only integrates with PayPal.
Drip content.
Free demo.

Instant Member
website
$147 for 1 site
Affiliate system
Coupons
Works with PayPal and ClickBank
Drip content.

Delavo
Purchased this when it had a different name – expensive, unbelievably complex and difficult to configure. Waste of money. Maybe it’s improved but not worth checking out again.

Easy Member Pro
website
$97 for unlimited sites.
Has affiliate system, but not much else.

Yep. Works like a charm.

Star Wars Princess Leia Slave Adult Costume
Price: $49.99

Includes: Top
briefs with skirt
belt
choker
arm band
hair clips
headpiece.
Earrings and shoes not included.

This is an officially licensed Star Wars costume.

==============

After pressing the button a pop-up menu appeared on the right side of my screen with a search option.  I typed in the word ‘costume’ and said go find me a product.  About 4600 products appeared for buycostumes – which I selected.  The results show a thumbnail of the product, price, and description.  Basically, what I setup in my Preferences to have shown for a product.

Next to the product was a Big Blue Plus sign.  Clicking on the plus sign for the Princess Leia costume caused the above information to immediately be imported into this post.

I will now publish this post.

——

Done.  Looks nice.  Now I’m back to editing this post.  The new product does not appear in my Popshops online account, so this may be hard to keep track of if the product becomes unavailable or I lose my affiliate account with the merchant.

I also noticed the links go through Popshops.  No hiding the affiliate link for SEO purposes.

—-

Second edit.  After adding the popshops php code used for my regular, static websites that is designed to hide affiliate links and run all links through my domain url – no effect, even though the support page indicates it might work.  This is in Beta so I’ll assume it is not working.

—

Third edit.  Clicked on the link and checked my online popshops account.  Nothing.  I believe since this product was not added within a ’shop’ that it cannot be tracked or noticed in the online PopShops account.

However, I was able to modify the default product description.  I put product details on their own lines and created blank lines in a couple places.  This is extremely useful and one of the major problems with the PopShop accounts where product descriptions could be modified to make unique, but blank lines could not be added.  This has generally meant that descriptions are short and ugly.

Very nice.  But since the information appears to be ‘hard coded’ into the blog post, I do not believe pricing will automatically update.  And there is no option for the great feature of having a replacement product shown.

—

Fourth edit: After clicking through the link to the merchant website I saw the Commission Junction PID was for the wrong website. Looking at my PopShops account, the PID being used was for another website, but not IPU. Checking further, though, IPU has not been setup as a website profile within PopShops.

So, now I have setup the IPU PID profile in PopShops. I’m going to add the same product again, below, and see what happens (in the pop-up preferences I am also deselecting the option to show the price since it will not automatically update):

Star Wars Princess Leia Slave Adult Costume
Includes: Top, briefs with skirt, belt, choker, arm band, hair clips, and headpiece. Earrings and shoes not included. This is an officially licensed Star Wars costume.

—-

No effect.  Still has the wrong PID, and still no SEO’d url.

Bottom line: very nice feature I will probably use.  Tracking though, for the product popper, leaves a lot to be desired unless one manually takes action to fix the PopShops url – such as changing the link to a domain link that redirects through the Popshops url.  Since the PID is all on PopShops end it cannot be fixed here.  Some of these problems may be fixed with pages using already created shops, but this testing as strictly been for the product popper option for the Popshops Wordpress plugin.

Oprah Winfrey has sued dozens of Acai Berry Marketers for fraudulently using her name to promote their products.

The lawsuit filed in New York federal court for trademark infringement. The case is Oz. et al v. FWM Laboratories, Inc. et al, Case Number 1:2009cv07297.

Here is the initial list of defendants. The Oprah lawsuit reserves 500 additional names of defendants who can be sued in the action:

FWM Laboratories, Inc.
CPX Interactive LLC
Netalab Corp
Gillmap Limited
Minired UAB
Nutra Lane LLC
Central Coast Nutraceuticals
Pure Nutrients
B67 Nutra Pure Systems
SFL Nutrition, LLC
Acai Berry Breeze
Life Fit Labs LLC
Rejuvenate Worldwide
Healthbuy.com
Physical Enhancement Labs
MyColonRelief
XM Labs LLC
Rauscher Bekke, LLC
Body Solution
456 Vital Health Systems, LLC
JDW Media, LLC
Pure Vitamins
Xlent Health
Organica Research LLC
Incline Health Ltd.
Health Technology
Natural Source Store, LLC
0841092 B.C. Ltd.
Bottom Two Investments
Healthrezv, LLC
Healthy Colon, Inc.
Redux-V Holdings, Inc.
Easy White, Inc.
Jet Processing
Monavie AS, LLC
Brazilian Basics
L’Avenir
Ultra Green Products, LLC
Rezberries, Crush LLC
3V Marketing, LLC
James Russell
Mike Johnson
David Dube
Katherine Clements
Pawel Reszka
Mike Koens
Touvan Sughiarto
Ryan Bukevicz
Mark Swartz
Matthew Kelly
Sidney Fein