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Review Site With eBay Auctions And Customer Reviews

Keith James Lock — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 19:44:44 +0000

I had several emails lately asking how I create my review sites after reading the N1Way guide. The answer to that question depends a lot on the niche or my goals with the site. There are a lot of things to consider in the creation of the site...

Do you use BANS or WordPress with phpBay? My answer... WordPress with phpBay 99% of the time.

Do you use posts or pages when using WordPress? My answer... Posts 100% of the time (think RSS)... plus there's way less manual work, use the archives page for what it is meant for.

Where do you get the content? For some of the sites that I want to test or just set on auto-pilot I will use free, unique, automated content. With the automated content, sometimes I check each article before publishing and integrate the appropriate auctions into the posts. For some, the real auto-pilots, I will just insert some generic phpBay code into the post template file.

For 100% unique content (without the backlinks that are in the free automated content), I either look to DigitalPoint forums, TextBroker.com or write it myself. Then I will integrate the auctions in as I publish them.

What about comments?

Sometimes I use comments, sometimes I don't. Depends on the niche and if it seems to go well with it. Plus, as you may know, monitoring comments can be a bit of a pain sometimes, so with the auto-pilot sites, I just turn them off. Also, if your post ranks for a certain keyword, then some say it may lose the ranking of that keyword if there ends up being several comments over time because the page becomes diluted. Even though that may be valid, on the sites that I consider the most important, the ones I pay the most attention to, I will leave comments on but with a twist...

The WordPress Review Plugin

There is this amazing plugin (I discussed it in the post: Create A Review Site Using WordPress) that can be integrated very well with the sites that you build following the N1Way guide. With this plugin, previous customers of the product that you are promoting, can leave a review and a rating. The plugin takes over the comments in your blog to gather this data. It will also calculate averages, etc. and show Amazon-style ratings on the product posts. It will even put in the necessary microtags that the search engines can read when trying to review data for certain queries! If you aren't sure what I mean, look up hReview, more search engines are looking at this data and showing preference to sites that implement it. With the WP Review plugin, the microtags are all automatically integrated.

You could probably get fancy with custom fields and some changes to your template file to include auctions below the comments as well. A bit advanced. If enough people ask I will post on how to do it.

phpBay Pro: The Extended Manual – Inserting phpBay Code Into Theme Files

Keith James Lock — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 05:05:16 +0000

It's been about a week since my last addition to the phpBay extended manual. My intention was to post a new piece of the manual each day until completion, but you know how things go. I've been quite busy. And, well, I'm going a bit out of order as well. I was going to write about phpBay keyword tracking, and I still will, just not today. I'll get to it soon enough.

This post covers inserting phpBay code into theme files. I came up with a cool idea for using it and thought I'd share it. I have a couple blogs that are 99% hands off, and have automated content, and I wanted a way to insert some auctions to the end of the posts without having to do it manually. Doing it this way you will end up with exactly the same auctions at the end of each post, which won't be as targeted, but it's still proven to work.

You could add some extra php code to show different auctions based on the current category, but I won't get into that here. If I get enough requests in the comments I'll edit this post.

This will be handy if you have an auto-blog on one main topic. I'm sure you can think of some other applications for it, this is just one purpose.

Look through the table of contents below if you want to jump to a different section first. Below the TOC are the quick steps to add phpBay code to your theme files.

Table Of Contents

Remember, phpBay has a sidebar widget you can use, but if you want more control, and want to add auction listings to the bottom of all posts, follow these steps...

In your WordPress admin panel, go to Appearance -> Editor.
On the right side you should see a file called Single Post (single.php), click it to open up the file in the editor on the left.
In this file there should be a command to show the post content. Look for the_content(). Just below that you can insert the phpBay code.
You can use any and all parameters here just like you would in a post or page, the example below shows just the keyword and the number of posts.

EDIT (June 9th, 2010): Use the code below if you want to show different auctions based on Category ID or Post/Page ID...

First.. you want to get the ID, to do that for the catgeory, under the 'Posts' menu click 'Categories', hover over the category name and in the status bar (bottom of browser) you will see a URL. The URL links to a page that allows you to edit the category. Don't click it, instead just look at the end of the URL... the catgeory ID is after the 'cat_ID=' part.

It's a similar process for posts/pages. Go to 'Edit' under 'Posts' or 'Pages'. Hover over the post or page name and in the status bar at the end of the URL you'll find the ID just after the 'post=' portion.

Now.. for most themes you can use the Category ID and/or Post ID values in single.php. For pages, use page.php.

The code for showing phpBay ads for a specific category... (replace {ID} with the actual Category ID that you found using the steps above)

NOTE: I just remembered... you can also use the category name rather than the ID if you prefer.

Text File With Code

For displaying ads for a specific post you usually just add proper phpBay code to the post add/edit screen. However if you want to show ads for a specific post but have more control of where it goes (instead of just the body of the post) then you can do that by editing the theme. Just use the code above but instead of the 'in_category' command use 'is_single'.

phpBay Pro: The Extended Manual – Replacing WordPress Search

Keith James Lock — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 15:30:16 +0000

We've come a long way in the extended manual for phpBay, but there's still a lot of good stuff coming up. We've already covered what I think are the basics, features that I believe should be part of the core. We got into phpBay geo ip targeting and of course making the images link over to the auctions as well.

Today I want to cover converting the WordPress search to a search which shows eBay results using phpBay instead. It's not something you would want to do on all of your sites though. For example, on this blog, I still want people to find post content when doing a search, although I still use phpBay on some of the pages of this blog. This change is more for sites that are strictly designed as eBay stores. Also if you use the Search2Post plugin from psp-tubes.net, then you will already have a plugin that performs this task, and then some. In addition to showing eBay results, Search2Post also creates a post on-the-fly with the search results. That way, new content is created over time. Anyway, let's get into it...

Table Of Contents

Replacing WordPress Search With eBay Search

You may want to replace the WordPress search function to show eBay listings rather than regular search results for the sites existing content. To do this you just have to replace some text in your theme's search.php file. Note: This doesn't work for all themes, so be sure to do a backup in case it doesn't work for you. Here are the steps...

Go to your theme folder with your FTP program (FileZilla). The theme folder will be located here: '/wp-content/themes/{theme name}/' where {theme name} is the name of your theme of course :)
We want to edit the search.php file but we should make a quick backup first. One way is to download the file to your computer. Rename it. Upload it again. Now you have a backup on the server in case you need to fall back to it.
Go to your Theme Editor (Appearance > Editor) in your WordPress Control Panel.
Open the file 'Search Results - search.php' from the right side.
Locate the line:

and then scroll down near the bottom and look for:

You will need to remove all the code between (and including) those 2 lines and replace it with:

Click here to get this code in a text file.
Click 'Update File'.
Go test the search function on your site. You should see a list of auctions as the result of a search. If not, and you get errors, check back through the code. Worse case scenario you can just restore your backup search file. To do that, go to your theme folder in your FTP software. Delete the file search.php. Locate your backup file (the one you renamed earlier) and rename it back to search.php. You can rename it right on the server. Just right-click and click 'Rename'.

That should do it. The next step is going to cover keyword tracking for SEO. In other words, you could see which keywords are used in the search engines to find your auctions, and that ultimately end in a sale. This upgrade is also FREE!

Any questions, please post below.

phpBay Pro: The Extended Manual – Geo-Targeting

Keith James Lock — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 04:01:14 +0000

This post is a continuation of the phpBay Pro Extended Manual. You can use Table of Contents below if you want to start from the beginning or jump to a different section.

Table Of Contents

There is a free plugin available that will automatically display auctions for the country of your visitor when they arrive on your site. Note: This is different than the WordPress Geo-Targeting Script that can be used for displaying any type of content to visitors from other countries. This one is specific to phpBay.

The plugin was created by Alan (a phpBay Pro user) and is available free (donation-ware) from his blog after opting-in to his newsletter. Let's get the plugin now...

Visit http://www.psp-tubes.net/wordpress/phpbay-plugin
Scroll to the very bottom because it is mostly an out-dated post.
Enter your name and email and click 'Send me the plugin'. You may be brought to a page that says 'Whoops! That Page Isn't Here'. Don't worry, there is just something funky going on with his subscription pages. Perhaps he should switch to Aweber ;) At any rate, you should quickly get an email with the Subject: 'ACTION REQUIRED: Confirm your subscription.'. Click the link in the email to confirm your subscription. You will again probably be brought to a page that says 'Whoops! That Page Isn't Here'. Again, don't worry. You should be receiving another email shortly with the link for the plugin.
Open the email with the Subject: 'phpBay plugin download details'.
Click the 2nd link in the email to download the plugin.

Now that we have the plugin, let's get it installed...

Unzip the file
Upload 'geo.php', 'combo.php', 'country.php' and 'geoip.inc' to '/wp-content/plugins/phpBay/includes/' on your server. Note: You will be overwriting 2 files, 'geo.php' and 'combo.php', so you may want to backup the ones on the server first. Renaming them on the sever before uploading the new ones will work.
Download the free database file from maxmind.com. Click here. Under the 'Binary Format' section, click the link 'Download the latest GeoLite Country Binary Format' to save the database to your computer. It will be compressed in .gz format. The free tool WinRAR can decompress the file, much like unzipping a file.
You will be left with a file called 'GeoIP.dat'. It needs to be uploaded to '/wp-content/plugins/phpBay/includes/' in Binary mode. If using FileZilla to upload, go to Transfer > Transfer type > Binary. You can check maxmind.com for a new version each month. I, myself, just update it every 6 months. When updating, just overwrite the existing file on the server.

That should do it! To be certain it works, switch the default country in the phpBay settings to one other than your own temporarily. Make sure the sorting options or the eBay logo is displayed (discussed earlier) because having one or both of those turned on will also turn on the country dropdown box. Now visit the test page that you created earlier. You should be now viewing auctions in your own country rather than the default country. If you still see the default country it might be because the page is cached. If using Firefox you can usually press Ctrl+F5 to fix that.

Notice something about the auctions? The darn images aren't clickable. We'll get to that next.

Ready Made Money Making Blogs And Web Sites

Keith James Lock — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 21:42:44 +0000

Hey everyone, just wanted to let you know I setup a couple new pages here. They both have ready made web sites ready to make money. One is a list of on-going auctions from eBay with mostly templated sites. The other is a list of blogs that I'm currently selling. Both have sites at great deals, so if you want to skip the learning curve or save a bunch of time, give one a try. Since there are no advertising expenses here I offer mine at lower prices. Also, I'm in a good mood cause I'm loving the warm weather so at the moment I have a "hot weather" special going on. Check them out.