eBay’s new affiliate program, eBay Partner Network, is an excellent source of income for product-related blogs and websites. It takes some skill, however, to integrate eBay links and images into content and templates. The program offers several creatives that can be pasted into sidebar widgets. However, I found them to be slow-loading as well as poorly converting (to sales).

I decided to make my own eBay Sidebar Widget. You can see an example of the widget (GPS on eBay) running in the sidebar just to the right. Does it make money? Yup, it does. That’s why it gets a prime position.

I have outlined the steps below. The WordPress PHP widget and TWP auction code are free.

Steps to make your own eBay widget

1. Download and install the WordPress PHP Code Widget.
2. Download TWP Auctions.
3. Upload the files twpauctions.php and twpfunctions.php to your root directory.
4. Go to your Widgets Page and add one PHP Code Widget.
5. Paste in the TWP code into the PHP Widget.

You will need to configure the TWP code according to the instructions in the readme file. The TWP code supports negative keywords so you can filter out cables, batteries, accessories, adapters, etc.

The final code should look something like this:

<?php
$epn_campaign_id = "0000000000"; // EPN campaign id
$customid = "Post"; // EPN custom id (optional)
$keyword = "ipod -charger -case"; // put your keyword here 
$display = "2"; // how many items to display
$country = "us"; // see country_codes.txt for info
include "twpauctions.php"; ?>

I chose to display 2 ads to emulate a 300×250 ad widget although the eBay widget height is a bit more than 250px.

Make sure to use the correct version of TWP depending on whether your server is running PHP 4 or PHP 5. And, don’t forget to put in the correct campaign ID from the eBay Partners Network. Also, it is best if you have a theme with sidebar that is about 300px wide.

You can the style the widget by adding the following classes to your stylesheet:

.execphpwidget
.execphpwidget a
.execphpwidget a:hover

Most AuctionAds publishers are simply keyword stuffing their ad code. Guessing keywords is the surest way to get RON ads. By optimizing keywords, publishers can greatly improve the targeting and quality of their ads thereby increasing the conversion rate as well as sales.

Set Minimum/Maximum Prices

Use the minimum price attribute to eliminate low-price ads.

auctionads_ad_kw = “keyword1 minprice:25”;

For example:

auctionads_ad_kw = “iPod minprice:25”;

eliminates any iPod ads less than $25.00.

Use the maximum price attribute to select low-price ads.

auctionads_ad_kw = “keyword1 maxprice:25”;

For example:

auctionads_ad_kw = “iPod maxprice:25”;

selects iPod ads less than $25.00.

Use Stop Words

You can eliminate unwanted ad variations by using stop words (aka, negative keywords).

For example:

auctionads_ad_kw = “iPod -case -armband”;

will exclude ads for iPod armbands and cases. You can combine minimum price and stopwords:

auctionads_ad_kw = “iPod -case -armband minprice:25”;

Advertise Popular Items

Use a service such as eBay Pop to identify items with high-volume sales on eBay. Clicking on a item in eBay Pop will give the keywords (including stop words). For example, clicking on Motorola V3 under Cell Phones shows the keywords:

Motorola V3 phone -case

In the AuctionAds code, it becomes:

auctionads_ad_kw = “Motorola V3 phone -case”;

If you want pick you own keywords, make sure to do some test searches on eBay. If you don’t get at least 2 pages of results, you run the risk of getting RON ads instead of what you want.

Rotate Ads

AuctionAds ad units can automatically rotate a group of keywords. Separate your list of keywords with a semicolon.

For example:

auctionads_ad_kw = “keyword1; keyword2; keyword3”;

also can be written with spaces

auctionads_ad_kw = “keyword1; keyword2; keyword3”;

will rotate evenly between the 3 keywords. In effect, Keyword1, or keyword2, etc.

A comma instead of a semicolon allows for either/or:

auctionads_ad_kw = “keyword1; keyword2, keyword3”;

will rotate evenly between keyword1 and either keyword2 or keyword3.

One caveat: Don’t use commas with negative keywords or minprice. Use semicolons.

International Traffic

If you are not US-based or have a high percentage of international traffic, be careful using multiple keywords, stop words, or attributes. When visitors in the US click on an ad, they are taken directly to that item on eBay. If they are in another country it directs them to that country’s eBay site and conducts a search based on all the keywords you selected for the ad. Needless to say, a search based on (keyword1 + keyword2 + keyword3) returns very poor results.

To further complicate matters, the eBay search engine treats the attribute ‘minprice’ as another search term. Also, stop words loose their minus sign. Not good! For publishers outside the US, I suggest using a single highly-targeted keyword. Make sure to test the ad by clicking through to your local site. Test, test, test!

The Cache

Once you make keyword changes in might take a few minutes and/or a few page loads to see the new ads. This is due to caching on the AuctionAds servers. On extremely low traffic pages, you might still occasionally get a RON ad.

Tags: eBay, AuctionAds

The new eBay payout structure will really help the smaller affiliates, more than doubling commissions on new active users to eBay (without having to send large volume). Because AuctionAds uses the top tier, increases are not as large but still significant.

Current AuctionAds Tiers

• $22 per Registered Sign-up
• 65% of eBay Revenue

New AuctionAds Tiers

• $35 per Registered Sign-up
• 75% of eBay Revenue

If you haven’t signed-up AuctionAds, do so now!

Tags: AuctionAds

The way AuctionAds works is that all publishers in their system come under one affiliate at eBay which means the earnings for everyone will be a lot higher than if any one individual became an affiliate (see eBay’s sliding pay out scale). For a limited time, AuctionAds will pass 100% of revenue generated on to the publisher. When the promotion period ends, AuctionAds will begin to take a little bit off the top of any money you earn.

Set-up is similar to other ad networks (e.g. AdSense, Chitika ) in that you select the ad parameters (ad size, colors etc) and then are given code to put into your blog. Ads are geo-targeted to your visitor’s local/country eBay site.

Program Details

Cookie Life: 30 days
Second Tier: Yes
Ad Formats: 11 ad formats + text link
Ad Targeting: Keyword
Languages: English only
Payment: PayPal ($50 minimum)
International Sites: Yes
Traffic Minimum: None

AuctionAds launched on March 6th. As of March 15th, they had surpassed 5,000 publisher sign-ups! A few days ago, they added a handy URL converter that lets you convert any eBay URL into an Auction Ads link. Now that’s cool!

Sign-up for AuctionAds and get started earning money. You can see an example of an Auction Ad (185×150 Small Rectangle) to the left. If you want to put an Auction Ad inside a WordPress post or page, you can use the AdSense Deluxe plugin or the Easy AuctionAds plugin (link below).

AuctionAds update April 6, 2007

Almost 7,500 publishers
23,530 items won on eBay through AuctionAds
464 new users active on eBay from AuctionAds
219 countries generated traffic
1 melted MySQL server

AuctionAds update June 7, 2007

On their 3 month anniversary, AuctionAds has 17,138 publishers. You can see how they are growing from the bandwidth graph below. So hurry and sign-up, if you haven’t already done so!

WordPress Plugins

There are two new 3rd party AuctionAds plugins for WordPress:
Easy AuctionAds
WordPress AuctionAds Widget

AuctionAds update January 11, 2008

AuctionAds has been re-branded as ShoppingAds. You can read about it here.