Ebay phpbay site ranking front page of google was a fluke, boo.
Google 1 - Cheep Baseball Tickets 0
Ahh, how nice it was for those fleeting moments to find out that the phpbay ebay site we built was already ranking #3 overall in google for our targeted phrase of cheap baseball tickets, but as I expected it didn't last.
Those sweet rankings didn't even last the entire day! I screen grabbed the google results because I had a feeling it was some random shuffle up to the front and then quickly weed it back down.
As I was writing this, I just checked and found us at the bottom of page two so, it looks like we are establishing a baseline and see who are real competitors are for the front page rankings. It will be fun to see if we can compete in a 6 month time frame to be on the front page of google and by next baseball season be ready to really rock and roll.
Indeed there are some big sites above me like ticketsnow, cheap tickets and the powerhouse of my niche seems to be cheapmlbtickets.com dominating the first listing. It should be fun seeing if we can move up in the rankings.
Google has been sending almost all of the traffic so far but now we are down to the bottom of page two for 'cheap baseball' tickets. Better than nothing but #3 overall would have been nice. Time to get to work!
Stats and updates on our first phpbay ebay site
It's been just about a month now since we first launched CheepBaseballtickets.com, which is a wordpress site using a plugin called phpBay to integrate ebay listings professionally on your website. It makes affiliating for ebay through their ebay partner network very simple and even novice users can quickly eand easily become an ebay affiliate and have professional looking ebay listings displayed on your site.
Ebay Phpbay Stats
Stats so far are nothing crazy impressive, although this morning I just checked to see how well we were ranking for one of our major keywords and I was welcomed to a nice result, to say the least. Check out this Screenshot of google results 7/15 for cheap baseball tickets broad keyword search in the google. I'm hoping that this gives us a nice boost in organic traffic on the ole stat counte as according to google keyword data (new) there was around 4400 searches per month r. Traffic has barely peaked over 50 unique visitors per day so far, so hopefully this new ranking will help us out.
This months phpbay site earnings.
While we won't normally share all of our earnings results, this project is different and full disclosure because we believe that even the newest of internet marketing can follow some basic steps and create sites that can drive targeted traffic to ebay listings and give you real insight into realistic earnings potential, in the short term by creating a wordpress phpbay site.
Ebay partner network stats
We've been lucky so far and converted one ACRU for a $25 bonus and we had one large ticket purchase with over a third of our commission earned. One cool thing about working with the ebay affiliate network is that you can get someone to click on something as simple as a cheap NY yankee tickets listing but they end up buying a $5000 freezer. You earn a commission on the freezer even if they didn't happen to click on the freezer link from your page. Cool, huh?
Sure the overall earnings aren't anything that means we can stop working tomorrow, but we created a nice little income stream that adds to the overall bottom line, it's paying for itself as well as our cell phone bills this month. If we scale this out and create 10 of these sites, or even 100 of these sites then the earnings potential goes up.
We'll add more details as we see the results from the new rankings from google and see how long the search results lasts. Knowing google, we will be back down on deeper pages come tomorrow or maybe even later today, but hey... #3 out of 1.5 million results in less than a month isn't bad and we'll ride it for what it's worth and see how long we can maintain those rankings.
Wordtracker Keyword Research
This is a down and dirty how to use Wordtracker for initial keyword research:
Log in at Wordtracker.com (click that link for a free 7 day trial, full use).
Wordtracker Keyword Research & Suggestion Tool
Click on use keyword universe once logged in.
Once clicking that, type in a broad search phrase. I think of this as the master phrase, where you can then choose from hundreds of variations and add them to your keyword basket.
Let's type in Sleeping Bags, why sleeping bags? Because I'm working on setting up a phpbay wordpress site that allows me to affiliate for all types of sleeping bags.
and click 'proceed'
Then that pulls up a whole list of related keywordswords underneath, left hand column, it will look like this..
Then click a phrase on the left hand column (down near the bottom there).
That slaps up a list of phrases on the right.
Click the itty bitty white link at the top of those words that says 'click here to add all of these to the basket'
look down at the bottom middle of the screen, you'll see those keywords in the basket.
If I had clicked 'add keywords' prior to taking the screenshot the "0" would have been "157 as all of the keywords related to 'sleeping bags' would have been added to my basket.
Keep clicking on words on the left hand column and then clicking 'add all of these words to the basket' on the right until you have somewhere around 100-300 words to start.
This is just a broad search to get a broad look at what is out there and available.
Then click 'step 3'
Then just click the 'competition search' button (don't worry about clicking on the words down below at all, just check em all).
then click the 'google checkbox'
I stick with just selecting google for this example, but you can pick two if you'd prefer. Then click the 'proceed' button at the bottom right.
Now it begins running results, this is the step that will reveal competitive information on your phrases.
Give it a min or so to query the google.
Results are ranked by KEI which is a comparison of volume of searches (more the better) compared to the # of competing sites (less the better).
Let's take a look at our keyword results from the sleeping bag keyphrase search.
Disclaimer about these keyword search results - they aren't always accurate.
When you find something promising you always need to do a quick double check and check results yourself as well, and there is no way to tell if the results are on the money or not, I have had instances of them being wrong and estimates way off. Best advice I have is to first use your brain and secondly use wordtracker results to make sure you aren't missing anything easy to snag.
Keyword Research With Wordtracker Tutorial
This two video series provides you with a step by step tutorial on how to use the Wordtracker keyword generator for SEO and keyword research. If you are unfamiliar with Wordtracker this is a perfect tutorial to help you get started.
Understanding the Keyword Results
I work from the top down, right to left when analyzing the results.
- Competing - The column on the far right is the competing websites, or other sites that google has indexed for that keyword. The lower the better in terms of pure "rankability".
- 24Hrs - How many estimated searches per day for the specific phrase
- Count - How often the phrase appears in their specific database in the past 110 days from 'major metacrawlers)
- KEI Analysis - keyword effectiveness index, developed by 1stearchranking.net
Ok, so about these results: It looks like "teenage sleeping bags", listed there at #2 could be a no brainer piece of content to create. That's a great keyword to target. There are only 5 competing sites in the results meaning that if your page gets indexed then it will most likely rank for a phrase match search for that phrase.
Now just because a word has a high kei doesn't mean it is worth ranking for. You'll have to use your brain power to determine whether or not that phrase would be worth ranking for.
If you don't get a lot of results early on, right after you click on keyword universe, use a more broad keyphrase. "Sleeping Bags" will always get more results than "Brown Sleeping Bags" but in a competitive niche, you might need to delve down that deep to find a niche within a niche that has potential. Know what i'm saying?
Use common sense - if there is some random phrase that gets tons of searches it will be up to you to decide whether or not you could benefit your site in some way for ranking for that phrase.
Free Wordtracker 7 Day Trial
Visit Wordtracker through our links and you can access a free seven day full version trial. You can get a serious amount of keyword research done in seven days, enough to earn your next months payment for continued keyword research service.
Domain Names and Registration Information
Here, you will find domain name and registration information to help you choose and register a domain for your website. There are a variety of names that you can choose for your domain, but there are also some strategies that can help you along the way. Scroll down to discover how to choose a suitable domain name for your online business!
Domain Name Information
A domain name is the unique part of a URL that's used to identify a website or other type of online resource. A domain name has two parts, a unique name and an extension:
- A unique name identifies a web resource (like google or myfamouswebsite).
- An extension is a pre-defined ending like .com, .net, .ort, .biz, and so on.
So, the two parts of a domain name would look like this once put together: google.com, wikipedia.org, myfamouswebsite.com, and so on.
Domain Name Registration Information
When you register a domain name, you are replacing your website's IP address with a more user-friendly name. You see, an IP address is the long, uninteresting number that servers use to identify your site. So, a domain name makes it easier for BOTH search engines and people to identify and remember your site.
- If you think about it, this is the same process that all names take. That is, a name is used to identify something or someone and distinguish it/him/her from others. If there were no domain names on the internet, people would have to remember and type in an IP addresses to find a site - this would be like identifying everyone by their social security number instead of their name.
How To Choose A Quality Domain Name
The domain name that you choose is a crucial business aspect. You'll want to register a "suitable" domain name that's keyword rich, yet still simple for your visitors to remember (and tell others about). As for search engines, your domain should be keyword rich, state who you are and/or what you do.
- Research potential Niches for your website.
- Research Domain Names that are keyword rich
- Use Google Keyword Tool, Wordtracker, Google Trends, and Microsoft Ad Labs to compare domain keywords
- Register your domain name(s) at a trusted Registrar:
Bustaname.com | GoDaddy.com Review | Name.com Review - Setup your Hosting account
Your domain name is your .com or .net or .whatever to have. MyFamousWebsite.com is our domain name. Choose a brand name, a keyword rich domain name, or both.
Helpful Domain Name Information
- Use descriptive keywords in your domain name, so that it is easy to type and remember.
- Domain names can include a combination of letters, numbers and a hyphen (-).
- Domain names are NOT case sensitive. Spaces and symbols (other than a hyphen) are not allowed.
- Keep it as short as possible.
- Avoid copyright infringement. Be sure you are not infringing anyone's copyright with your site's domain name. Visit copyright.gov and search before you buy.
- The most well-known extionsion is .com, which means that most people type in .com when ending a URL.
- Google seems to like keywords in a domain name, so a keyword rick domain name will help you rank higher in Google search results.
Domain Name Tools
- Godaddy - Register your domains here, although there are other options like NameCheap, Register or just google it.
- Domain Name Finder - BustaName - Very cool tool for finding domain name combo's you might not have thought of, props to the Toronto SEO for the tip.
- Expiring Domains - Lots of places to choose from depending on how bad you want it.
Website Hosting
Find a Website Hosting service provider.
A website is a set files that reside on a website server. In order to setup a website you either need to have your own server or you need to rent server space on someone else's server. Since you probably don't have the time, money or expertise to buy and setup your own web server (or would you want to), companies have been around since the beginning of the internet to provide people with high quality, low cost website hosting. Depending on your needs there are a few different options:
Website Hosting
Use one of the following web hosts to setup new website:
- DownTownHost.com - Web Host Manager (Unix Reseller Account)
- SeekDotNet.com - Control Panel (WIN Reseller Account)
- WebHostingBuzz.com - Web Host Manager (Unix Reseller Account)
Website Hosting Video Tutorial
The video provided below is a video tutorial of how to sign up and use a web host service. It goes into detail and compares different options for web hosting as well as which services are the best deal and the most reliable choices for web hosting service providers.
Reseller Website Hosting
If you're going to develop 3+ websites, use DownTownHost reseller website hosting.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
WARNING - WE RECOMMEND PROCEEDING WITH CAUTION IF YOU DECIDE TO USE THESE HOSTS
DownTownHost - although I recommended DTH above and we have the majority of our websites currently on DTH servers, I've had a an experience with them that no longer makes me comfortable to recommend them as a reliable hosting service. we have a reseller package and it's a great deal for the amount of websites/space you get for the money. the real problem with these guys is if something goes wrong. over the course of our time with them (2 years) there have been two incidents where our websites were deleted and when asking for help in restoring we got the same excuse both times, that the server our backups were on crashed and they had to rebuild them.
July 2008
Brad
I currently have a reseller account containing 30+ websites. Is there a way to backup the files and databases for each website without going into each individual website and db? I'm looking for a process that will auto backup each site on a schedule. Let me know.Jorge
Hello Brad
No, unfortunately is not possible.
January 2009
Jorge
We lost a server with backups, entirely, however, backups are YOUR responsibility, not ours. And to not delete your own files it's your responsibility too.
Diego
I'm sorry that you can't understand that this is your fault, you deleted your tickets and you didn't have a proper backup of them when it's ONLY your responsibility.
more to come...