Setup Ebay Niche Site with phpBay Pro & Wordpress
How To Set Up A Wordpress Ebay Niche Site Using phpBay Pro
If you want to create niche sites, one of the easiest and most effective ways to monetize them is by adding ebay listings to your site. If you already have a wordpress site you can quickly and easily add dynamic ebay listings to your site with a plugin that integrates directly into the ebay affiliate program and displays listings beautifully within your site. If anyone clicks your links and wins an auction at ebay then you earn a %. If the visitor is new you can even earn a one time $25 payment for bringing a new client to ebay.
This plugin is called phpBay Pro. It is does have a cost of $49 $79,(price went up on 8/2/08) but it is easily worth that and after you read this page you might want to grab it at this price before it goes up again. What phpBay pro does is it allows you to integrating current ebay listings on your wordpress site super easy and very professional looking. All you have to do is in html view, click the ‘phpbay’ button and it inserts a line of code in. You modify the keywords results and it can be as simple as that. Those keyword listings on ebay will now appear where that line of code is. It can be as simple as pushing a button and typing in your keywords, although it is way more flexible than that! You can really lazer target down to very specific search results to give the most relevant listings to your traffic which in theory will increase your clicks and conversions.
What phpbay pro really does though is open up the entire marketplace of ebay to you. If people are buying it on ebay, then you have a potential niche market to profit from. Even more useful is if you already have a hobby wordpress site or blog you can monetize it with ebay listings. Let’s say you love etch-a-sketch doodles and have a wordpress site showing off your best doodles ever. You could with the push of a button add etch-a-sketches for sale on ebay to your site and make money if someone wins an auction after clicking your link.
This page documents the step-by-step process of how to set up phpBay Pro software on a Wordpress site. phpBay Pro costs $79 but if you are serious about trying this out it is well worth it and you can use it on multiple sites.
We are always looking for new and innovative ways to attack niche websites, and when we saw the eureka diary’s tutorial from the boys at wickedfire, and rgordon’s phpbay tips site, we knew that we had to give this phpbay site a shot. If you’re looking for a great way to make more (or any) money online, then phpbay pro lets you create niche websites on anything that you can buy on ebay.com.
Tools used to setup a phpBay Pro Wordpress niche website:
- domain name - we use GoDaddy but there are plenty
- hosting - we use DownTownHost Reseller Account ($14.95/month) but there are plenty.
- Wordpress (free) - use our Wordpress Setup Guide which covers the down and dirty process for getting wordpress set up, if you want a really robust wordpress kit you can check out wordpress goldmine which really goes in detail through exactly how to maximize wordpress and even the newest of newbies can use it.
- eBay Partner Network
- FTP Client - we use Ipswitch ws_ftp ($0.00) but also recommend Filezilla (free).
- Image editing software - Fireworks, Photoshop, MS Paint, etc.
These tools are the bare essentials you’ll need to set up a phpbay niche site on wordpress. This list doesn’t cover all of the tools, such as wordtracker and keyworddiscovery, which we use for extensive keyword research to help gauge niche potential. If you’re looking for a niche to pursue, here is a good video for using wordtracker to find keywords for competitive niches and there are some excellent free keyword research tools available at SEOBook. We also wrote a down and dirty guide to using wordtracker for keyword research.
If you already have a niche in mind or just want to get going, then proceed…
How to set up phpBay Pro on Wordpress:
- Purchase your domain, setup your hosting, setup your ftp client, then set up your Wordpress site. Use our Wordpress setup guide if you need help with this step.
- Get your copy of phpBay Pro ($49 one time fee with this link). Your copy of phpBay Pro allows you to make unlimited money making websites.
- Log in to your phpBay Pro members account.
- Click the download link then unzip contents of the phpBay Pro download to your computer.
- Open phpBayProManual.pdf and follow “Installation - Steps 1 and 2″.
- Login to your Wordpress admin and activate the phpBay plugin.
- Go back to phpBayProManual.pdf and follow “Setting up phpBay Pro in Wordpress - Steps 1-5″.
- Copy entire ——LICENSE FILE DATA—— text, including the top line i’ve typed in here, and paste it into a new notepad doc. Save it as license.key and upload to the /wp-content/plugins/phpBay folder.This step was removed in the latest upgrade, all you have to do now is put in your license key in the Wordpress Settings once you activate the plugin.
- Log into your ebay network and enter your campaign ID and a Custom ID #. (log in, click Campaigns, click Create Campaign if you don’t have one already).
- Select your phpBaypro settings. Use the manual you get w/ phpbay pro for figuring out which settings to select and this demo video they provide that goes over the basic settings. Here is what I clicked: Use SEO URL’s, Display Items with Images Onlye, Use mod_rewrite, Search Titles AND Desc, Display Sort Options, Display a Hover, Display Listings in Columns, and “2″ for # of columns, Use paging and set the max at 10, I removed the phpbay link for the time being.
- Edit your .htaccess code with what they provide you. (just pull down your .htaccess code and paste that information above anything else… you don’t have to paste the lines that start with the #.
- phpBay pro is now ready to pull and display ebay results with your affiliate code automatically added in. Use the manual to see how to fine tune your results to match exactly what you want. One of the most important thing is only searching in specific categories. You can get a numerical list of ebay’s categories here:
Once phpBay is set up, you are good to go. Go to your page and or post within wordpress and you will see the phpBay tag, where you can click it to start pulling in ebay results and if your users click and purchase on ebay, then you earn a commission. If we skimmed over some of the basics is because there are different processes for each different step. We do provide a more detailed guide to setting up wordpress on a site but the shortest answer is find a host who has a program called ‘Fantastico’ and ‘cpanel’ and setting up wordpress seriously will take just a few minutes. For each and every step to get themes loaded to trouble shooting, to the best seo optimization tips you can read through a great ebook called wordpress goldmine.
Our first phpBay Pro WP website:
Visit our first phpBay Wordpress site to see how a little work, mixed with some great online tools can reap great rewards. This Cheep Baseball Tickets site made money after being active for less than a week. Are your planning on going to a baseball game? If so, I know where you can find cheap baseball tickets!
Click the image to check it out for yourself.
Some other examples of phpBay websites:
Of course you want to see one the phpbay sites we created eh? Check out the best place on the web to find Cheap Baseball Tickets. There you have it, that took about 4-5 hours and it was the first one we set up. To maximize the site we probably have another 10 to 15 hours of work (depending on when you are reading this) to do for some marketing on the back end for better marketing and SEO reasons.
We were inspired to try phpbay by seeing some other examples, so I’m going to give them a shamless plug right here, as these are pretty quality phpbay sites. There are some pretty good examples of quality looking sites out there that integrate the phpbay plugin into their site to make affiliate money online. First site I saw that I really liked was this site that that lets you buy golfballs at a discount and this one that has a totally different look to sell blues fender amps. Both sites that utilize phpbay pro to monetize their sites.
Next up we will share the first months earnings results and some ideas on what we are doing to market the site and see about even more monetization.
Wordpress Themes
Free WP Themes
Downtown Java‘. I used Bob’s Limau Orange