Why Should You Use PHPBay For Your Next Niche Store?

Wordpress is easily one of the most easiest and most powerful CMS's you can use today. Combine PHPBay with Wordpress and you have unlimited possibilities. Here's a few reasons why you should consider using PHPBay for your next niche store.

1. Easily Create Super Targeted Niche Stores, No Longer Worry About Being Accepting into A Large List of Affiliate Programs

When creating a typical affiliate site, you have to deal with a big list of merchants which you need to apply to and sometimes you'll get rejected.

If you get rejected for their affilate program you simply can't promote their products (it sucks, trust me... I've been rejected countless times by merchants). This means lost revenue for products or services that are really lucrative.

Making an EPN site is not like that at all.

Once you are accepted into EPN you can create super targeted niche stores and easily make money selling any of the many products E-bay offers for sale - literally anything and everything.

2. Earn with the Ebay Affiliate Program, PepperJam, Mediaplex, TradeDoubler, or Affilinet

While PHPBay is a popular plugin to use with the Ebay Partner Network, some don't realize that it's also compatible with other affiliate networks as well.

3. Choose What Products to Display with A Simple Keyword

Inserting the code to display relevant auctions is as easy as a simple copy/paste of the code. There is also a button you can use in the editor which will quickly drop the code on your page. All you have to do is enter in the keyword and how many listings you want PHPBay to display. If you want to finely tune it wil other options you can further enter in those options but you don't have to if you don't want to.

4. The Plugin is SEO Friendly

There's no complex coding involved that's going to make the Google spider confused - inserting PHPBay is a simple 1 line copy/paste or a click of the button through the editor.

The auctions displayed on your site will change nearly everyday. Not only will these auctions have keywords which you're probably targeting already, but Google will read the changes to your page as you updating the content.

5. Consider Marketing in Different Countries, PHPBay Supports Over 17 Different Countries

With so many internet marketers competing over the dollars of US consumers, you might want to consider the UK market which is still to some degree largely untapped. There are other countries in Europe like Germany which also do a lot of spending online, and there are plenty of earning possibilities if you can handle making a site that targets foreign language buyers.

6. A Full Array of Options Available to Tailor your Auctions to Your Visitors That Will Make Them Click

List items by zip/postal code if your site is targeted towards a certain region, or choose to display listings in different languages and currencies depending on what country you choose.

When building niche stores being able to do these kinds of things has become invaluable for me. If I can read the demographics of my site, I can make an easy estimation on the type of products I should be showing my visitors. The more accurate I am with this, then the more sales I'm going to see and the more money I'm going to make!

7. The Members Only Forum - A Wealth of Knowledge

Are you stuck for ideas on what to do with the plugin? Check out the member forum where you can find discussions on how to earn money with PHPBay. Sometimes members post their sites for others to see, which sometimes helps me get ideas for new PHPBay sites. It's insightful and inspiring to see how others are earning with the plugin.

If I have a question I can easily get answers from different perspectives - the forum is literally a mastermind of loyal PHPBayers.

Keep Track What People Are Buying on Your PHPBay Sites to Increase Revenue

Pay close attention to the buying habits of your visitors with the reports EBay allows you to download.

I have a hunch that few EBay affiliates take real advantage of these reports - don't fall into the trap of just checking your daily earnings, clicks, and then logging out.

You may or may not know that you can see what items were purchased through your affiliate links if you dig deeper under the Reports section.

I suggest doing this at a bare minimum of once a month.

Why Track What People Buy?

Keeping track of what items are hot will give you a good idea on what items you really should be focusing on. If you're building backlinks to your site, note what items are selling well so you can build related backlinks and boost your SERPS for these items as well.

You're going to want to get targeted traffic that is interested in the hot selling items. The reason is simple: it converts better and makes you more money.

For example, on one of my sites a certain kind of laptop bag is a good seller. I make sure I have good rankings for these laptop bags by building latop related backlinks so I can drive as much of this traffic to my site as possible. I know these bags can also be hard to find, yet Ebay lists a good assortment of them.

This is a perfect example of focusing in on a profitable product so you can make the most revenue from your site as possible.

How To Download Your EPN Transaction Report

1. After you login to your EPN account, click the "Reports Tab".
2. Click the "Transaction Download" sub header.
3. Select your start and finish dates, this will call up the days you want your report data to consist of.

Now you can either download through a text file or through an Excel file. I prefer Excel since all the rows are neatly aligned and the data is easier to read.

The reports are easy to understand. They show sale amounts, category numbers, item IDs, etc. Unfortunately, they are a pain to manually garner any information from them.

A Simple Tool that Makes Reading Your EPN Report Much Easier

Check out the EPN report analyzer over at MyEPNReport.com. They have created a tool that will read all the data on your EPN report and give you something that you can quickly scan over and read a lot easier. There are similar tools out there but I like this one the best.

Simply download the text file of your report and then upload it to the site. It will tell you the auction title and link, the buyers ID, sale price, and more. This will easily give you an idea of what's selling well and you won't have to fumble with item or category ID numbers.

You will probably notice that there's a fair amount of items that aren't related to your niches that you get credited for. That's the nice thing about being an affiliate for E-Bay, people might click through your site to check out one item and then end up buying something completely different!

Working PHPBay To Success - Simple Strategies that Make You Money

Here I am going to give you a simple step by step forumla that you can use to easily make money with PHPBay. This niche store script makes it surpsingly easy to make money online, and with a little work and patience you can have an army of sites earning monthly revenues for you.

Let's get started.

Step 1. Build sites

First things first, don't expect to build one or two sites and have them be your top breadwinners. You're going to need to build multiple sites to see what niches are worth the majority of your time and what just aren't panning out like you expected.

Another reason you should build multiple sites is so you can diversify your earnings and you won't be too hurt if something happens to one of your best sites.

How many of you have built a new site, and after a week or two, BAM! (in my best Emeril impression) you start getting traffic like mad? Visitors are coming, they are clicking links, and you start seeing some reward for all your hard effort? You know what I'm talking about, right? Most of us have seen this and think to ourselves "man, this is the life, it actually works!"

Then about 3-4 weeks later, everything comes to a screeching halt. You've gone from 300-500 visitors per day, to 10-20 visitors per day. Why? It's the Google Sandbox. It has many different names and some even suggest there is no such thing, but we've all seen the pattern, right? Call it what you will, the pattern is obvious, noticeable and predictable.

So now what do you do? You have no visitors, you have no earnings.

So you think to yourself "I'll start link building and adding fresh content." Doesn't work, does it? In most cases I've seen, it doesn't. Once in that preverbial sandbox, expect to be there for a good six months to year. I know exactly what you are thinking..."I'll be broke, this ain't cool, what a waste of time!" Right? Not exactly!

We know the predictable pattern, right? One site is good for about 3-4 weeks before it heads off into the sandbox. What if, you build 2-3 sites per week?

A few hours on a site, even if you are doing this part time, 2-3 sites per week are doable.

Here's why I suggest this and how you can really turn things around and start earning:

If you build 2-3 sites the first week, those sites are going to be good for about a month's worth or earnings at best, initially. Not because it's a phpBay Pro site, but because this *generally* works (with google) for just about any site. I've experienced it dozens of times.

So, the next week, you build 2-3 more sites. The next week, 2-3 more sites. Now, when your sites from the first week start fading away for their sandbox period, you have another set of sites that are still in their prime. And when those start fading away, you have another set, and so on and so on. And they all overlap, because each site is going to be good for 3-4 weeks, but you are building a few per week.

So there is the foundation to get started with. If you want to earn, invest a few dollars in a few domains each week.

Consider registering a handful of domains and getting content posted on them and a link or two so Google can find it. It's a good idea to begin aging these domains immediately.

Step 2. Get Links to Your Content and Site

I promise you, if you don't do this part, regardless of how you go about doing it, your site is worthless. Getting links to your site is absolutely critical, even for the first phase above in building your sites. Some say you should be building links to your sites about 60-70%% of the time, with the rest of your time spent on content and design.

I'm going to share with you ways I build links, to help you get started.

When you release a site, you need to get it linked so search engines will find it. This is easy to do.

Building Links with Forums

How many of you have an account at Digital Point Forums (uh, that hasn't been banned by the sometimes zealous moderators?) How about another forum? You have signature links right?

Rotate your sig links on the forums you are on. Here's why. You aren't worried about Page Rank. You just want to get the search engines to your site.

When you release 2-3 sites the first week, use your signature spots to get those links in there, for nothing more than getting the search engines to your site. The next week swap them out. That's it, it's really that simple, just use those sig links from virtually ANY forum, just to get the search engines to your sites.

You can also linkbuild with do-follow forums. Drop some sig links and participate in popular discussions. I've found some pages in do-follow forums that have PR.

Directory Submissions

Next, buy some directory submissions. They are not the "premium" links we all want, but it will help you that first month your site is up. Try to order these on day one or two when your site goes up.

So where do you go to get someone to do directory submissions? Digital Point, of course. There's people there that will submit your site to hundreds of directories for 10-20 bucks. Here's the link to find them.

If you are really on a shoestring budget, and have more time than you do money, go here.

Every day, members there release new directories where you can get a free link. Granted, it's going to take some time and you're probably going to think "jeez, I should probably just pay someone to do this" after you submit the first few, but it's the quickest and cheapest way to get links. I know...you're thinking that these are new directories. Yes, they are. And these guys are spending money to get links to their new directories. It's a vicious circle. Don't worry that they are new directories. It's a link, and search engines will see it as a link, and it's a start if you are on a tight budget.

A Warning about Renting Links

DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY BUYING A MONTHLY PR5,6,7 LINK. It will take a few months, at least to see any benefit, and while it may increase your Page Rank (which is cool, I suppose), traffic is what you want and PR does not equate to traffic. I once had a PR6 site (amazon site) that hit PR6 while still in the sandbox. I was shocked and excited with the PR Update. Didn't change the traffic though. 20 uniques per day on a PR6 site isn't cool. Just follow the instructions below for link building and don't waste money buying paid monthly links. We want "pay once, stay for the life of the directory or blog" type links.

Article Writing and Article Directory Submissions

I can't stand writing articles. I can, and I've written many to promote my sites over the years. Two ways to go about this. Pay someone, or do it yourself if on a tight budget. I'm going to share with you why this important and it will lead into the next section, which is buying blog posts.

First, though, let's go a bit deeper into the article writing. Why is it important? First, you can submit your articles to free article directories where others can use your article. Don't worry about the fact that others are going to use it, the benefit here is, you get a link back to your site. Links are important, right? You better believe it!

Article directories/sites are a great way for you to get other free links, if you are on a tight budget. Write up a 250 word article or two about your site. You can find lists of free places to submit articles to on Digital Point forums.

Now, if you have a budget, go here.

You can get articles written, 250 or 500 word articles for 5-10 bucks. Find someone to work with, about six to ten of these written, all on the same niche for the same site.

With these in place, you have two options. Submit them to a free article submission site and get a back link, OR, buy blog posts. I prefer buying blog posts.

Make sure you're submitting to Ezinearticles, they are the top name in article directories and will provide the most powerful links.

Buying Blog Posts

This has been very successful for me. I don't use "text link ads" or anything like that, where you have to pay monthly, or your article or post is gone. Forget about them. It will cost you too much money in the long run.

Instead, go here.

Every day, established blog owners offer to write, or post on your behalf, a post to their blog...generally with 1-3 links max per page. I generally will do 1 or two links on a post, even if more are offered.

You have a choice here. Let the owner write the post, which (in my experience) will be less quality and shorter, OR, you can sometimes get a discount if you write the article. And sabes que? (means "And guess what?" in English) You've written a few articles of your own, or had someone write 6-10 for you above. All *unique* content, ready for a backlink on an established blog. Cost will be $5 -$50, depending on how powerful the blog is.

Don't worry if it's a PR2 or PR3. Just means it's been around for a while, and their site will probably gain in the next update, which means yours will too. If you have a budget, try to purchase 6-10 unique blog posts to get your site going.

I like to purchase blog posts for multiple sites at once. Don't be afraid to haggle with them and request bulk discounts. Ask if they offer a bulk discount first instead of offering up the number, sometimes they will drop their prices significantly less than you expect.

Social Bookmarking

Another good way to get your sites indexed as well as get some backlinks from social bookmarking sites that don't use redirects or the "nofollow" attribute. I like to social bookmark a few of my articles to my sites - it's a little similar to directory submissions but you can submit social bookmarks for any article/deeplink within your site.

Check out the Top 30 Social Bookmarking Sites here.

Step 3. Go to Step 1 and Build More Sites!

Just repeat the process and over and over. Keep building sites with unique content, get links for these sites, and then build more sites. This way you'll be able to find out what your best earning sites are. Consider culling the losers (sell them or let them sit) so you don't focus your time or investment into sites that don't perform for you.

Look at why your best sites are doing well. Is it the niche or do they just get good traffic? Look at the CPC earnings. You might want to build more sites in related niches to try to replicate your high earnings with new sites.

For EPN my best site has a 3 month average of $16.72 EPC - my worst site is a low $3.84 EPC (but interestingly enough boasts a high Google adsense EPCs).

Which brings me to another point, some niches work great with EPN and others can be monotenized better with Adsense or other affiliate programs. Just keep testing.

After Your Niche Sites Are Built: Monthly Maintenance

Month one is now over, you have 8-10 new sites, and you are starting to see some results. Keep building. Keep doing the same things above, creating new sites (even if just 2 per week).

In your second month, go back to your first eight to ten sites. Either write, or have written, one or two articles for those sites, then either submit to an article submission directory, or buy more blog posts. Just a few, no need to go crazy. This will keep a few fresh links to your first month's sites, as they start to drop off. This will keep your sites getting a few links per month (at minimum, you can opt to do more) while in the sandbox.

Keep your linkbuilding process natural and gradual, in the end you will see results.

Six to Eight Months Down the Road

By now, you've got the process down. Your earnings are steady, even though sites continue to fall off into the sandbox. Every month, you try to get a few links to your very first sites created (and those since), and suddenly, a few start to show signs of more traffic. They are slowly coming out of the sandbox. Now you have a steady stable, while you continue to build more.

Some are NEVER going to be successful. No matter what you do, no matter how you play by the book. They are a loss. Don't worry about them, because some will pan out and work well for you others aren't worth the time or investment.

One last thing I want to share. You can certainly take the easy route with these sites, and just create pages that have a bunch of ebay listings, with no unique content. I know a lot of my customers do this. These are going to be disposable sites. They will probably never recover from the sandbox and probably have a shelf life of 1-3 months, then they are toast. If you are doing this, it's probably not a good idea to invest that much time effort as I've outlined above. Do try to get some links to them if you can, but they are going to be disposable. Once you've milked earnings from them, they are pretty much done.

However, if you are willing to put some time/investment into them, try to write unique content for each page. 2-3 paragraphs of unique content for each page/post that has ebay listings. Two paragraphs at the start of the page/post, your ebay listings, then a final paragraph after the ebay listings. Try to get your keywords in those paragraphs, bold one, italicize the other, underline one, etc.

Some Final Tips

1) Don't get too caught up in the blog template. Try to use colors that are attractive with a simple, clean "easy on the eyes" template. Something like the Limau Orange template.

Remember your goal here: You want traffic and you want those visitors to click a link. Everything else is just extra. Get them there, get them to click and go to Ebay.

2) Once you do the first two weeks, it will probably become second nature to you. You may spend a day, maybe two at the most, to create, link, blog posts/articles. If you have time and are not on tight budget, try to do a few more. The more you make, the more you earn.

3) Some sites are never going to do well. It may be a tough niche, it may be that google, yahoo, or msn just views the site as such as to not do much for it. Don't worry about those sites. Focus on the ones that are, or begin to start earning and continue to repeat the process.

4) If you are buying a domain, setting up Wordpress, adding some Ebay listings, and hoping down the road it's going to work out...I'll be quite frank with you. Good luck! It just doesn't work that way. If you have an aged domain/site, and you are adding listings to, you'll probably do well. If you don't have that, though, use the above, get to work, and start doing the basic things needed to be done, to create a revolving door of earnings.

The Main Advantages PHPBay Pro Has As A Niche Store Script

If you're looking for a niche store script to monotize your site with, then consider all of the benefits PHPBay brings to the table. Hooking this script up with your Ebay Partner Network account on a Wordpress blog makes for a very powerful way to make money with your website without annoying the heck out of your visitors.

Let's look at the 5 best benefits this niche store script offers.

1. Flexibility

You can put PHPBay ads where you want them to appear on your blog post, as well as the number of items you want it to display. You can choose to list products based off of keywords, the highest or lowest priced items first, items from different countries, along with countless other options at your disposal. Intertwine PHPBay ads between the content in your posts for the best earnings potential - other scripts won't allow you to do this and are unfortunately very limited with what they can do.

2. Easy to Use

The PHPBay plugin is very easy to use. You install it just like any other Wordpress plugin, with an upload by FTP and one-click activation via your control panel.

Once the plugin is activated a one line code can be placed in your posts when you want the PHPBay ads to appear. The only thing you need to know is what keyword (item) you want PHPBay to display and how many different items you want it to display.

3. Unlimited Products to Promote

There's no doubt about it, the Ebay marketplace is vast. The nice thing about this is that there's an unlimited amount of different products to promote. Create a niche store about lawnmowers, brand clothing, computer parts, sunglasses - pretty much whatever! No longer will you have to hassle with finding quality affiliates, and then worry about whether or not they will accept you into their program or not. Just plug and play with the PHPBay script on each of your websites and you're good to go.

4. High Earnings Potential

The Ebay Partner Network is very generous with the commissions they give their affiliates. Not only do you get a revenue share on the bids your referrals make, but if they sign up for a new account with Ebay and become an active bidder you will receive a whopping $25 for referring that new customer. A large portion of my monthy earnings comes from new accounts, I'd say it's roughly 50/50.

5. For Use with Wordpress: Handsdown The Best Blogging Software On the Internet

Before I even knew about PHPBay I was using Wordpress to manage the content on my websites. The reasons were simple: Google absolutely loved Wordpress blogs! The SEO benefits, pinging capabilities, and the vast amount of plugins I could use to make my site do amazing things were just a couple of the reasons I went with wordpress. Managing my content is super easy, and if I want to change the look of my blog I don't have to pay for an expensive redesign - I just upload a new theme and activate it with the click of a button.

When you make a new website consider the powerful combination Wordpress + PHPBay has and test the earnings you get. Chances are you will be pleasantly suprised on the earnings you get from the traffic you receive.