I have a few blogs that I setup awhile back that are virtually on auto-pilot. The content is all unique, automated and 100% free. Also, backlinks are created automatically. For these blogs I usually just put a banner in the sidebar, sometimes I float AdSense to the right of each post, sometimes I add eBay auctions underneath the posts or on a separate page. Also, I usually put some sort of ad on the main page above all the posts.

One of the blogs, on the topic of acai berries, has a conversion (worth $41) every 2-3 days. Did I mention that I don’t really do anything to it anymore? I just let it run on it’s own merit.

Free Blog Content

To get the unique blog content, automatically added, and for free, I look to SK or AMA. It depends a lot on the topic, which network I choose. AMA has a large selection of specific and broad categories to choose from. SK has just broad categories. However, with SK you can also specify keywords for the content that you want. So for the acai blog I used SK. I picked a few categories, like Health, etc. then entered the keyword “acai”. Initially I set it to 10 a day until I reached 10 posts, then changed it to just 2 a day. If the specific category that you are looking for exists on AMA, that’s another great choice for free blog content.

Auto-Backlinks

You can use plugins that will automatically Social Bookmark each post as it gets published. Auto Social Poster is a good choice, plus there’s an Onlywire auto-submit plugin (free) floating around. I haven’t used it so I can’t account for it’s quality. Plugins like these have to be constantly updated to keep up to date with the bookmarking sites, so it’s more likely that a free plugin developer may drop the ball. Granted, the OnlyWire plugin requires just one API call, so it may be a freebie that stays up to date. Let me know.

Also, the free content you get from either AMA or SK has links to 3rd party websites in it (that’s why it’s free), well, a lot of times they link to other blogs, which initiates a trackback link, so you will be automatically getting backlinks from niche related blogs on occasion.

That’s all I really did for, no effort, free, auto-backlinking on these blogs.

Semi Auto-Backlinking

There’s another process that I use for getting backlinks to these blogs. There’s a bit of work up front, then it’s automated after that. You submit an article in a special format (generally 2 or more articles merged together) to SK or AMA. The articles, when processed by SK and AMA, will generate several unique versions of the article. Each version contains your choice of hyperlink(s).

The anchor text can be random and so can the URL, so it’s a good idea to do some deep linking, perhaps to a category page, or a review page if you included one on your blog. Now, slowly over time, you will get backlinks from niche related blogs, which is really just the reverse process of getting free blog content to your blogs (like mentioned above).

There is a fee to do these submissions. It is a monthly fee and lets you initiate as many submissions as you want during your subscription period. It generally takes about 2 months or more for 1 submission to run its course (for slow, natural link building), but you can run multiple submissions simultaneously for as many sites as you have.

Last I checked, when signing up for the free version of AMA, you get to try the normally paid service for free for a short time.

More info: Getting Auto-Content And Auto-Backlinks For Your Auto-Blog

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

• Introduction
• Installation/Activation
• Configuration
• Testing
• Per-Post/Per-Page Settings
• Geo-Targeting
• Making The Images Clickable
• Replacing WordPress Search With eBay Search
• Inserting phpBay Code Into Theme Files
• Buy phpBay Pro (20% off coupon: DA9CD69F42)
• From Picking A Market To Building/Managing Your phpBay (Or BANS) Site

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…

1. 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 :)
2. 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.
3. Go to your Theme Editor (Appearance > Editor) in your WordPress Control Panel.
4. Open the file ‘Search Results – search.php’ from the right side.
5. 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.

6. Click ‘Update File’.
7. 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.

More info: phpBay Pro: The Extended Manual – Replacing WordPress Search

BTW, did you notice that I added a couple extra sections to the manual? I will also be covering SEO and PPC keyword tracking. Also, I will explain how to add phpBay code into your themes and give an example of when that might be useful. Those sections will be up in a few days. So far, I have had the luxury of having these posts pre-written because they exist already in a PDF manual I wrote. The new ones however have to be done from scratch, plus added to the PDF. I shouldn’t be delayed too long, if at all, I still want to try and get a post a day out to you. Anyway read on for the steps…

Table Of Contents

• Introduction
• Installation/Activation
• Configuration
• Testing
• Per-Post/Per-Page Settings
• Geo-Targeting
• Making The Images Clickable
• Replacing WordPress Search With eBay Search
• Inserting phpBay Code Into Theme Files
• Buy phpBay Pro (20% off coupon: DA9CD69F42)
• From Picking A Market To Building/Managing Your phpBay (Or BANS) Site

Making The Images Clickable

To make the images in your auction listings clickable you just have to make a quick change to one or two of the template files that phpBay provides.

There is one file to change if you use columns and another file to change if you don’t. It doesn’t hurt to change them both in case you switch between a single column and multiple columns on occasion. Here’s how…

1. Download the files ‘template.ebay.results.html’ and ‘template.column.results.html’ located in the ‘/wp-content/plugins/phpBay/templates/’ folder, to your computer.
2. Open ‘template.ebay.results.html’ with a text editor. If using TextPad, right-click it and click TextPad and it will open with TextPad. If you double clicked it, it will likely just open in a browser and you won’t be able to edit it, so you will want to open it like mentioned.
3. Locate the line with the code: (it’s all on one line, it’s just wrapped in the image below)

   

   and change it to: (again, it’s wrapped)

   

4. Save the file and re-upload, overwriting the existing file.
5. Now open ‘template.column.results.html’ with a text editor.
6. Locate the line with the code:

   

   and change it to: (wrapped code below)

   

7. Go back to your test page and Refresh (F5) it to see your changes.

Next we’ll replace the WordPress search with a search that displays phpBay results instead.

More info: phpBay Pro: The Extended Manual – Making The Images Clickable

Table Of Contents

• Introduction
• Installation/Activation
• Configuration
• Testing
• Per-Post/Per-Page Settings
• Geo-Targeting
• Making The Images Clickable
• Replacing WordPress Search With eBay Search
• Inserting phpBay Code Into Theme Files
• Buy phpBay Pro (20% off coupon: DA9CD69F42)
• From Picking A Market To Building/Managing Your phpBay (Or BANS) Site

phpBay Per-Post and Per-Page Settings

There are a number of settings that you can specify on a per-post or per-page level. I will go over some popular ones. The phpBay manual can be referenced for more details.

There are 18 total parameters that can be set, with the only required one being the ‘search term’ which is the first parameter. phpBay will check the global settings for the settings to use for any unused parameters. All parameters are separated by commas and have to be used in the proper order, but again, not all values have to be set. In the previous example we used just 2 of them.

The 1st parameter as we know, is the search term. If you want to add multiple terms, just separate them with the pipe symbol “|” (above the Enter key usually). For example:

The 2nd parameter is the number of auctions to display.

The 3rd parameter is the eBay Category ID. This is a great way to add different pages to your site broken down by catgeory. Also, for example, if you want to search for ‘jewelry’ but only Wholesale Lots, you would need to add a category ID, otherwise you will get results from multiple categories.

Click here for the US Category list and their corresponding ID’s. Don’t worry, the correct results will still show up when looking at other countries auctions.

Here’s an example for ‘jewelry’ auctions in the ‘Wholesale Lots’ category. I will leave out the number of auctions (2nd parameter), to show you how to skip parameters that you do not want to use:

The 4th parameter is for exclusion keywords. Add words separated by spaces, as a way to filter out some auctions that show up in your results that don’t belong or that you do not want.

Another parameter I like to use is the 12th one. It is used to specify a Custom ID on the page (or post) level. That way you can fine tune your tracking. Now, in addition to tracking at the site level, you can now track at the page/post level.

If you turned on ‘paging’ in the global settings, and you specify a value in parameter 2 (number of listings to show), then you will need to turn off paging for this page/post. To do that, set the 17th parameter to a 0 (just the number zero).

Next I will get into setting up geo-targeting for phpBay which is a free upgrade that will automatically show auction listings specific to the visitors country.

More info: phpBay Pro: The Extended Manual – Parameter Settings

Table Of Contents

• Introduction
• Installation/Activation
• Configuration
• Testing
• Per-Post/Per-Page Settings
• Geo-Targeting
• Making The Images Clickable
• Replacing WordPress Search With eBay Search
• Inserting phpBay Code Into Theme Files
• Buy phpBay Pro (20% off coupon: DA9CD69F42)
• From Picking A Market To Building/Managing Your phpBay (Or BANS) Site

Setting Up A Campaign On eBay Partner Network:

Setting up a unique campaign per site rather than using the default is a good idea because you will be able to track the sites that are making you sales and how much they are making.

1. Click ‘Campaigns’ from the top menu.
2. Click ‘Create Campaign’ from the secondary menu.
3. Enter a Campaign name and click ‘Create’.
4. Make note of the newly created ‘Campaign ID’.

Configuring phpBay:

Go to Settings > phpBay Pro

1. Enter your license number in the top box and click ‘Update Options’.
2. In the ‘Affiliate Settings’ section enter the Campaign ID that you just created, and in the ‘Custom ID’ box, enter the name you gave the Campaign. Click ‘Update Options’.

The rest of the options are a matter of preference but I will go through the settings that I usually choose.

1. Choose the country that you are targeting mainly. This setting won’t matter much later because we will be setting up geo-targeting and the country will automatically be selected based on your visitors location.
2. Under the ‘Basic Options’ I always turn on the following: ‘Use SEO URLs’, ‘Display Items with Images Only’, ‘Use mod_rewrite on eBay Images’.
3. Under the ‘Visual Display Options’ I always turn on the following: ‘Display the eBay Logo?’, ‘Create Clean Product Titles?’, ‘Display Sort Options?’. You can turn on ‘Display Listings in Columns?’ if you want. I do sometimes. Most themes usually fit 3 columns. If the theme won’t fit 3 columns, you may want to turn off the eBay logo and the sort options too because they likely won’t fit either. You’d have to test it to be sure.
4. Under the ‘Advanced Options’ I always select ‘Time: ending soonest’ from the ‘Select Sort Order:’ drop down box. This setting won’t matter if you didn’t turn on ‘Display Sort Options?’ under the ‘Visual Display Options’ though. This is also the section where you can turn on ‘paging’ and set the max number of listings if you wish, but those values can be overridden on a per-page/per-post level.
5. Don’t forget to change the URL to your affiliate URL in the ‘Enter your affiliate link:’ box, under ‘phpBay Pro Affiliate Settings’, or just remove the text altogether.
6. Click any of the ‘Update Options’ buttons and go through to make sure all your settings have been saved correctly.

If you turned on either ‘Use SEO URLs’ or ‘Use mod_rewrite on eBay Images’ under the ‘Basic Options’ as suggested, after saving your settings, you will see a box at the top called ‘.htaccess Code’. That code will need to be copied and pasted into your .htaccess file. Use the steps below:

1. Click inside the textbox and the code should all be highlighted. Right-click and click ‘Copy’ to get the code to the clipboard.
2. Go back to FileZilla. Go to the root of your WordPress install. You should see a .htacess file near the top. Download it to your desktop. If it’s not there, press F5. If it’s still not there, it may not have been created yet. A quick way to create it is to change your permalinks. You probably should change them anyways. Go to Settings > Permalinks and change the ‘Custom Structure’ to something like:

   /%category%/%postname%/
   OR
   /%postname%/

   and click ‘Save Changes’. Now go Refresh (F5) FileZilla and download the .htaccess file.

3. Open the file in a text editor. Be careful, some text editors jumble this file and therefore screw it up when re-saved. I use TextPad which displays/saves it correctly.
4. The code from the phpBay Settings page should be still on your clipboard. If not, go back and grab it and paste it (right-click > paste) at the very top of the .htaccess file and Save it.
5. Upload the .htaccess file back to your server and overwrite the existing one.

phpBay is now configured and ready to be dropped into posts and pages. Now let’s test it out…

More info: phpBay Pro: The Extended Manual – Configuration

Table Of Contents

• Introduction
• Installation/Activation
• Configuration
• Testing
• Per-Post/Per-Page Settings
• Geo-Targeting
• Making The Images Clickable
• Replacing WordPress Search With eBay Search
• Inserting phpBay Code Into Theme Files
• Buy phpBay Pro (20% off coupon: DA9CD69F42)
• From Picking A Market To Building/Managing Your phpBay (Or BANS) Site

Assumptions

This guide assumes that you know what phpBay is, that you have a license for it, that you have an account with eBay Partner Network and that you have the latest version of WordPress installed.

If not…

1. Learn about phpBay here.
2. Use this link to buy phpBay and when prompted for a discount code, use: DA9CD69F42 to get 20% off.
3. Sign up with eBay Partner Network here.
4. Use the WordPress auto-install on your host if available or try the 5-minute install instructions here.

You may also want to check out this 9 step guide if you would like to start from the ground up.

Next post: phpBay Pro Installation/Activation

More info: phpBay Pro: The Extended Manual – Introduction

I very well may have been over-marketing my sites, wasting my efforts, according to what I read in this guide. Anyway, it is a step by step guide, very well written, and gives instructions for both BANS and WordPress (with phpBay). Here’s an example site that they created with WordPress: http://forgedgolfirons.com/

You see, the auctions aren’t up front and in your face. They want to promote VALUE, and that is in the reviews and guides they wrote. They say they want to give value, then just bring the targeted customer closer to the till to make the purchase without focusing on any mind tricks or voodoo (my words, highly paraphrased). They want to fill a need, then the sales just follow.

They focus mostly on development. They don’t market like crazy and scramble for backlinks and setup tons of profiles on social sites. I venture to say that they almost have the “build it and they will come mentality”. They walk the walk. They’ve been doing it for over 4 years. These guys (BANS guys remember) aren’t going to lay out lies for obvious reasons. I have to honestly say that without the reputation behind them I wouldn’t believe it would work. I am a big advocate of creating lots and lots and lots backlinks. I spend a good part of my day doing it for some of my partnered sites.

Perhaps it’s time to switch more to this model. It suits me more to be honest. It’s the part that I’m good at and that I love. I’m actually seeking partners for this right now. Someone to create the content and I would do the rest. Build 2 sites, 1 site for me, 1 for the writer. If you are a writer, get the guide, get on the same page with me with this thing, then get a hold of me. If you are a marketer, get the guide, then make some loot!

More info: Niche Sites 9 Step Guide

• Ready made sites on eBay
• My blogs for sale

More info: Ready Made Money Making Blogs And Web Sites

Create Some Quick Feeder Blogs

First what I did, which might change the way you look at it, is I created 2 extra blogs to add to the sale. But, truthfully, I put both of the extra blogs together in just a couple of hours. I didn’t do any extras to them like I do on the main blog. They were used solely as feeder blogs to the main money blog. I dressed them up with a nice theme from WooThemes…and why not? It takes just as much time to add a premium theme as it does a free one. Actually, it’s usually much quicker to configure a WooTheme using the built-in administration area, but you would only know what I mean if you ever used one.

Anyway… I added a block of AdSense to the feeder blogs although I’m thinking now it might have best to leave it out. Also, I added the RSS feed of the main blog to a widget in the sidebar of the feeder blogs. Other than that I just created some basic red, white, black and blue text banners and linked them to the main money blog. I added one to the sidebar, 1 floating to the right of each post and one below the featured post. Really, using a WooTheme can dictate the placement of the banners, I just fill in the gaps. It’s very simple. Oh, and for content, I used Syndicate Kahuna (or Article Marketing Automation) to get free, unique, niche specific content. Get the max allowed articles per day until you reach 10 or 15, then change it to 1 a day and your blogs are ready to go.

Install Geo Targeting So That Your Money Blog Is Monetized For Practically Any Country

The first thing I do to maximize the monetization to as many countries as possible is add a one page eBay store to the main blog using the phpBay pro WP plugin. Almost every niche has products being sold on eBay. Typically when I build a blog using phpBay, I break things down into categories and create one “post” per category. I use posts so that when I submit my RSS feed to the RSS directories, the auctions may be included in the listings. But for the niche blogs that I intend to sell, I simply add a one page listing using one generic keyword. Sometimes I have to add some negative keywords to filter my results. For the most part, this “upgrade” takes about 10 minutes.

Geo Targeting For CPA Offer Ad Placement

Ok, this simple addition to the blog is very powerful and adds quite a bit of value.

As an example of how I used this in the past… I was promoting a certain offer on my main blog which paid $35 but was only for U.S. traffic. The same product, but on a different CPA network paid $30 but catered to both U.S. and Canadian traffic. Then I found another similar offer paying $29 which catered to U.S., Canada and the U.K.

I could have simply chose the $29 offer which allowed me to promote to all 3 countries but instead I chose all 3 offers and used a custom geo targeting script so I knew which offer to show based on the customers country.

Here’s how it works in a nutshell. I added one line of code to the very top of the “header” file in my theme. This line of code triggered a script (and since it is in the header, it is triggered on ALL pages) that looked at the IP Address of the visitor, compared it to a database of IP Addresses to determine the visitors country. The script stores the 2 letter country code in a variable. Now, if I want to place an ad in the sidebar for example, I run a simple if-test to say something like… if the country is “US” show the HTML for the US ad, if it is “CA” then show the HTML for the Canadian ad…and so on. It’s actually very very simple to implement. I will be giving away my custom script (with instructions) later today or tomorrow to the readers of my newsletter, but you can get everything that you need for it to create your own from the MaxMind web site, specifically this page here.

MaxMind GeoLite Country Free IP Address to Country DB

Regardless of whether you use my script or create your own, if you use the MaxMind approach, you may want to keep your IP address DB up-to-date. It gets updated monthly. Personally, I don’t sweat it too much. I might update it every few months if that. There is a DB that they offer for sale, as well as a free one. The free open source database that MaxMind provides offers 99.5% accuracy which is good enough for me :) I guess it returns “US” for all AOL users, but for my purposes that’s fine.

Customizing The Ad For Each Country

A cool easy thing to do for your ads is to customize them for each country. For example, you might put something like “Now available in Canada…” and/or display a small Canadian flag on the ad for Canadian users.

What To Do When You Don’t Have An Offer For A Specific Country

Obviously with the example above I am only able to present my offer to 3 different countries. What do I do with the rest of the traffic to squeeze out the money making potential? I do one of two things. Sometimes I display an ad promoting the auctions. Since the auctions are on a page and generally there is just one small link in the navigation bar pointing to it, it doesn’t hurt to display an ad promoting the auctions to all of the “extra” countries. eBay allows you to promote to several major countries and with the geo-trageting in place in your phpBay plugin it will automatically show auctions specific to the country of the visitor. Incidentally, the free geo-trageting upgrade to phpBay uses the same MaxMind database discussed above.

Now, if you don’t want to promote the auctions for whatever reason or your niche doesn’t have any products available on eBay you can just display AdSense ads to all of the extra countries.

There you have it…those 2 things, I believe, increased the value of the blog(s) to the point where I could command a much higher amount. Hope this post helps you and gives you a bit of interest in blog flipping. Best of luck.

More info: 2 Great Ways To Increase The Value Of A New Blog That You Want To Flip

phpBay Pro is a WordPress plugin that allows you to list eBay auctions directly into a post or page. It is extremely simple to use. I’m going to point you to a phpBay Pro example site as well as provide you with a phpBay pro coupon which will allow you to get 20% off the price. To jump to the coupon code just scroll to the bottom or top of this post.

Features of phpBay Pro

Even though phpBay Pro is very easy to setup and use it does have many powerful features. I won’t get into all of them in this post but here are a few…phpBay offers SEO benefits, eBay category targeting, keyword targeting and with a few quick minor enhancements you can get keyword tracking and geo targeting.

phpBay Pro Example

You can specify several parameters for the auctions but all that is required is a keyword (or keywords).

If you want to fully customize the listing you can also specify the number of items to display, the category number as found on eBay, exclusion (or negative) keywords, a postal code to show local auctions, a seller ID for a particular seller, a min price, a max price, a min and max bid, whether the auction should have a BIN price, an alpha-ID for tracking purposes which can be hard coded globally or by post or set with a variable, how to sort the auctions, a specific country, the number of columns and whether to display only items with free shipping.

As stated, the above are optional parameters. Most can also be set globally.

Here’s a quick example of eBay auctions inserted into a post. I specified the keyword “affiliate” for the auctions. A couple of other non-default options were set globally, like including only auctions with photos for example. EDIT: A new feature in the latest version is to turn off “paging” at the post level. I did that in this example as well, plus I set it to just one column.

Notice that when hovering over an auction link it appears as though it is a page on this blog that you will be brought to. That’s the SEO benefits of phpBay at work. These pages can be indexed. Also, if you check the properties of the images, they also show as being local when in fact they aren’t.

[phpbay]affiliate,5,,,,,,,,,,phpbayex,,,1,,0[/phpbay]

phpBay Pro Extended Manual

If you want to learn how to do some upgrades/tweaks to phpBay, including setting up geo-targeting (which shows auction listings specific to the country of the visitor to your site), then check out the extended manual. Additionally, if you want to learn how to build a phpBay site from the ground up, check out this 9 step guide from the creators of Build A Niche Store (BANS), which covers everything from picking a market to building and managing your site. They cover both phpBay and BANS in the guide. An excellent read.

phpBay Pro Example Site

I created a Marvel comic books blog/site displaying Marvel comic related auctions using phpBay Pro that you can look to as an example.

phpBay Pro Coupon

To take advantage of the phpBay coupon, use the phpBay link below and enter the coupon code: DA9CD69F42 when prompted.

Click here to buy phpBay Pro now

More info: phpBay Pro Example Site And phpBay Pro Coupon