If you want to earn some money from your website or blog, the eBay Partner Network is an interesting option, and I’ve reviewed some free eBay affiliate tools that make it easier to use.

As well as banner ads, as an eBay affiliate you can display auction listings. These add constantly updating, hopefully relevant, content to your pages and provide you the chance of earning commissions. (I say ‘chance‘: your visitors have to click on the eBay links, and also buy something from them!). So it depends at least partly on your powers of persuading strangers to buy things that appear at random

If you compare EPN with Adsense, it looks more interesting on your website, there are more steps required for it to earn you money, but the commissions you’d earn could be higher if you’re selling something valuable.

It’s possible to create eBay adverts free within your eBay Partner Network account. There are also free and paid scripts available, some as WordPress plugins, which automate this process and make it easier or better.

A couple of years ago, a program called BANS (Build a Niche Store) was very popular for this purpose, and was used very widely until Google recognised its software ‘footprint’, took a dislike to it (duplicate content?) and de-indexed a lot of BANS sites, especially the more ‘thin’ affiliate type websites on .info domains. However, BANS may make a comeback in future (it’s half price now), and in the meantime, eBay Partner Network remains a popular way to add content and possible earnings to your website. Whether or not it gets ‘Google-slapped’ though will take time to see: many people say that if you have enough original content and the auction listings are adding to your site rather than being your site, you ought to be ok.

I’ve reviewed 9 non-BANS scripts, tools and plugins for this post:

• eBay Link Generator,
• Ebay Editor Kits,
• Ebay RSS Feed with Javascript,
• RSS2HTML,
• WordBay (free WordPress plugin with an optional ‘Generosity’ percentage to donate to the author),
• Free eBay Store (free WordPress plugin which uses the developer’s campaign ID 10% of the time),
• Affomatic (free WordPress plugin),
• phpBay Lite (free WordPress plugin),
• phpBay Pro (paid WordPress plugin).

What you’ll need before you start using eBay scripts:

Get Accepted into the eBay Partner Network

First of all you’ll need to get accepted into the eBay Partner Network. This will only work if you already have a reasonably decent website that has genuine content and isn’t spammy or under construction. See this post at WPContempo for a good discussion of how to get accepted by the eBay Partner Network.

eBay Affiliate Tracking Codes

Once you have an EPN account, you’ll need to have this data ready for your plugins or scripts:

1. Your eBay Publisher ID
   If you don’t know this, you can find it by logging into eBay Partner Network, going to Tools and then Link Generator. Generate a link, and when you look at the code, the EPID is the number after ‘&pub=’
2. Campaign ID
   A Campaign ID is a unique 9 digit number that you embed within your links to associate the traffic you drive with your account. The first Campaign ID you have is assigned to you by eBay. You can find it in the “Campaign” tab in the main menu. Later on, you can create separate campaign IDs, so you can use statistics and reporting tools to track how each one is doing. Campaign IDs are valid across any eBay programs you have been accepted into.
3. Custom ID:
   A Custom ID is a text label you can add to help you track the performance of different links. In my case, I made up a code word as a custom ID for each script I tested.

The Legal Bit

You will need to check the Terms and Conditions of eBay Partner Network for each eBay site you use, as well as terms and conditions for any other tools and services you use, especially if you are accessing and displaying eBay listings with third party scripts.

It would also be worth checking for comments on the EPN forums.

The eBay Affiliate Scripts and Tools

1. Ebay Link Generator

   The Link Generator is one of the free tools available under the ‘Tools’ menu option within your eBay Partner account. It generates a text link to an eBay page, which could be a Home Page, Search Results, Item ID, Store or Custom URL.

   Geo-targeting is available for eBay home pages, item IDs and for search results on eBay US, eBay UK, eBay AU, eBay CA.

   Since there is an option to produce output code in HTML instead of Javascript, the Link Generator could be used with WordPress.com blogs (if you can get one accepted by eBay), however, the HTML option is only available without geo-targeting, so you would have to pick one eBay country to link to.

   To use Javascript within a self hosted WordPress blog post, upload it as an external javascript file in your scripts directory, eg myscripts/myscript.js. Use the part of the link code that’s between the '<script>' and '<script>' tags. Next, post this code where it should go in the WordPress post, using the HTML editor, not the Visual editor (don’t open this post in the visual editor again, or it will mess up your javascript):

   <script type="text/javascript" src="/myscripts/myscript.js"></script>
   <script type="text/javascript">
   <!-- myscript();
   //--></script>

   Then copy and paste the rest of the link, starting with the '<noscript>' tag, into your post.

   Once you’ve generated the link in either HTML or Javascript, you can easily edit the link text or replace it with something else like an image if you need to.

   Here’s an example, with and without geotargetting:

   • A Javascript link, searching for , with geotargetting.
   • An HTML link, again searching for ‘eBay Business‘, but this time targetted at eBay in the Netherlands. (I noticed that with this search many of the products are the same in different countries, but in this case with the language in Dutch and prices in Euros!).

   If you’re going to use more than one eBay link on your page, this will work more reliably if you turn them into functions in the same external script file, and call the file from your WordPress header.php theme file.

   Here’s a WordPress codex page about using Javascript with WordPress.

   However, this could end up with your site loading lots of unnecessary javascript on each page. If you are planning lots of eBay content, the plugins will be a better option.

   Pros:
   This method is free, and customisable, including geo-targeting to your visitors’ locations.

   Cons:
   This method doesn’t add any eBay content to your blog, and requires fiddling about with Javascript if you use geo-targeting.

   Back to the list

2. Ebay Editor Kits

   Here’s a screenshot of a 300×250 Editor Kit showing results from the ‘‘ Software category:
   
   
   

   Editor Kits are one of the free eBay tools you can use to create ads within your eBay Partner Network account. The Editor Kit allows to to set up a ready made eBay search to appear in a box on any web page or blog post you paste the code into. Editor Kits offer various options for changing the parameters of the search, and the display box it appears in.

   Click here to see a copy of the form.

   Pros

   The title and size of the listings box area, colours used, sorting order and number of listings can be customised using a data entry form.

   You can also choose whether or not to show an ebay search box, what search keywords and category to restrict your search to, whether to search the description as well as the title, what to do if no results are found (eg show search box), and whether to show postage cost, paypal icons, ‘buy it now’ items only, items with images only, and whether to open links in a new window.

   Results: without restricting search by category, some irrelevant results were included.

   Cons

   This method does not allow for geo-targeting, unless you create it separately yourself.

   If you’ve joined eBay Publisher Network in more than one country, you will only get credited for results if you create your Editor Kit on the same eBay site (e.g. eBay.com, eBay.co.uk) that you joined first.

   Searches are confusing and hard to set up, because searching with Editor Kits doesn’t get the same results as when searching eBay’s website. For example, in my case, searching for ‘dogs’ was as likely to match with ‘no dogs’, but I found that the ‘no dogs’ results could be excluded by putting double quotes around it in the ‘exclude these words’ box. I also had to search for ‘dogs’ not ‘dog’, as there were no results otherwise. So it seems to look for specific whole words, rather than matching parts of words.

   I also discovered that if you restrict your search to a category, it doesn’t include subcategories.

   The output was in Javascript, so search results on the page are invisible to search engines and also to anyone visiting with Javascript disabled.

   Since the code produced is Javascript, it also can’t be used on a WordPress.com blog.

   Back to the list

3. Ebay RSS Feed with Javascript

   This option uses the RSS Feed Generator within the ‘Widgets’ section of eBay Partner Network’s free tools, then converts it to a Javacript display using the Feed2JS web service.

   Here is a screenshot of some listings produced in this way:

   

   eBay Listings produced using RSS Feed Generator and Feed2JS

   Pros:
   I thought the results with this method were tidy and well presented.

   Cons:
   The Javascript script is called from another website, adding to the possible delays in loading the page. However, there is an option for installing the script and running it from your own server.

   As far as I know, Javascript listings are invisible to search engines, so these listings will not be indexed in Google or give your site the benefit of freshly updating content as far as the search engines are concerned. I don’t know what effect Javascript would have in terms of the ‘footprint’ that has caused problems with php scripts in the past.

   More seriously, the Javascript is also invisible to real visitors who either can’t use it or choose not to. In particular, for people with some kinds of disabilities, this is a serious usability problem. So an alternative to the Javascript must be provided in order to keep the website accessible.

   I’ve been looking in every plugin site and forum I could find, but still could not find a working method for reading in an RSS feed and displaying it as HTML inside a WordPress blog post.

   However, one possibility is to develop an HTML version of the page, generated outside WordPress using RSS2HTML, and offer a link to that page for visitors who can’t use Javascript.

   Back to the list

4. RSS2HTML

   RSS2HTML is a utility that converts an RSS feed into HTML output, which has the advantage of being more accessible and able to be crawled and indexed by search engines. It is available in standalone and remotely hosted versions.

   As far as I can tell from their help files and forums, RSS2HTML cannot be added within a WordPress post or page, although it can be used on static HTML pages or in the template files. However, there may be new plugins for including code that could handle this.

   RSS2HTML is available from Feed For All.

   Back to the list

5. WordBay

   WordBay is a free WordPress plugin. It had an optional ‘Generosity’ setting which sets a percentage value for times when the commissions earned would be donated to the author, however this has now stopped to avoid conflicts with the eBay Partner Network Terms of Service.

   After installing the WordBay plugin, there are some settings to enter in the plugin’s administration interface, and then it’s easy to insert eBay listings into your posts. You just enter keywords between [wordbay][/wordbay] tags in the HTML editor, and the ‘WordBay readme.txt’ file in the WordBay installation zip file clearly explains how to combine keywords for searches, and exclude others. For example, [wordbay](“old lamp”,”old telephone”) -green[/wordbay] will find all items with either “old lamp” or “old telephone” in the title, but excluding the word “green”.

   Here is a screenshot of a WordBay display, without any CSS modifications:

   

   Screenshot of Wordbay results display, unmodified except for resizing to fit here

   Here’s another WordBay screenshot, with a couple of CSS changes to make it look clearer:

   

   Screenshot of WordBay results with CSS changes

   Cons:

   • You can only set one product category (or ‘All categories’) for the whole website.

   Pros:

   • It’s free
   • It’s fast loading.
   • There are lots of Geo-targetting options.
   • You can set a product category to search in, which will make your results more accurate and should be useful for niche websites
   • Listings are incorporated into the web page as searchable HTML. The default layout is nice with a bit of tweaking, and does not look like eBay listings.

     WordBay uses encoding to avoid creating the kind of software ‘footprint’ that appeared to be the downfall of many websites built with BANS (Build a Niche Store). I’m not sure ‘aHR0cDovL2J1eS5jaGVhcC5jb20vYnV5LzEvNzEx’ is one of my main keywords, but it’s better than being deindexed anyway For the same reason, it’s also possible to move and rename the ‘buy.php’ file.

   • Wordbay automatically sets the Custom ID to be the page url, which seems to me like a great advantage in reporting and tracking the success of each page on your site.
   • Wordbay can be set up to include search boxes leading to eBay search results displayed within your own site.
   • Other options include whether to include an ebay signup link, minimum number of bids, price range, specific seller IDs, geo-targeting, setting up different category codes to use in different countries, and default country selection for various situations.
   • WordBay appears to be a well-supported plugin. When I first tested it a few months ago, I was trying to display listings from a foreign eBay site, and the geo-targeting wasn’t working for the prices and currency. I contacted the author, received a couple of replies attempting to track down the problem, and while it was not fixed immediately, it was fixed in the next plugin update. So I am impressed that the author is very helpful and this plugin is being supported and maintained. I was happy to leave the ‘Generosity’ setting in wherever I used it, but when checking the author’s website today I noticed this message:
     

     If you were previously sharing impressions with the Generosity option please set this to 0% – there may be an EPN TOS issue with this and I would rather not risk any trouble. Thanks to everyone who supported WordBay in this way.

   Wordbay is available from here: http://www.itsgottabered.com/wordbay/

   Back to the list

6. Free eBay Store (WordPress plugin)

   This plugin is free, but uses the author’s campaign ID 10% of the time. Here is a screenshot of some sample results output by the Free eBay Store plugin, on the ‘‘ theme:

   

   Pros:

   • This plugin is very simple to setup. After installing and activating it, you only need to insert a line of code wherever you want it to appear in a post, and edit a few parameters (campaign ID, keywords, rows, columns).
   • Results can also be displayed in a widget.

   Cons:

   • It only uses the US eBay site (a deal breaker in my case), although the author says on his website that a version that works with eBay sites from other countries will be available soon.
   • There’s no way of choosing categories, searching descriptions or sorting results.
   • It’s very slow to load on the page – the code may be called from another site?
   • The store displays a link back to the author’s home page, which is fine with me, but sometimes people prefer not to link out much, or to make all their tools look in-house.

   The home page for the Free eBay Store plugin is: http://geeklad.com/free-ebay-store

   Back to the list

7. Affomatic / Ebay for WordPress (WordPress plugin)

   When I tested Affomatic, it was available from http://www.affomatic.com/ebayfree2.php, but it now seems to have moved to http://affiliatemarketer.info/ and changed its name to Ebay for WordPress.

   So I don’t know if it may have been sold recently, or if the original author is moving more into an affiliate marketing business.

   Pros:

   • This is a free WordPress plugin, with no sharing of profit. However, you do have to enter your email address to get a download link. I signed up again in case there was an updated version, and found a few text changes and tidier looking listings, but got the same search results.
   • The admin interface has options to enter keywords, categories, sort and limit the number of results, and choose your eBay country (but see below).
   • Searches work on the US eBay site.
   • After downloading the Affomatic eBay plugin, I received another email with a $20 discount code for another WordPress plugin, Keywords to Websites, making it $79 at the time of writing. Keywords to Websites uses keywords to generate websites using content and ads pulled from various sources, including eBay, Amazon, Twitter, Commission Junction,Yahoo Answers, Youtube, Linkshare, Google news, and more – interesting but beyond the scope of this review!

   Cons:

   • You have to enter your email address to get a download link, which signs you up to an affiliate marketing newsletter, product offers, etc.
   • I did not get any results appearing at first. I noticed that after I chose UK as the eBay country, the list of categories to choose from was not the same as eBay UK. So I found the list in the PHP file and changed the appropriate category code to the one used on eBay UK. But even then, I didn’t get any results for searches within that category, and no relevant search results for ‘All categories’.

     After finding a category with results that matched, I clicked on the ads and found that although it took me to eBay.co.uk, the prices were in US dollars, and the items were all shipping from the USA. So I think it was still searching the American version of the category. To confirm this, I ran the same search with Affomatic set up to use the eBay.com US site, and the search results were the same, with the prices changed to dollars on the page.

   • There’s no CSS file to tidy up the appearance of the listings, so you’d have to create your own for this. Here’s a screenshot to show how Affomatic listings appeared out of the box (resized slightly to fit). The background colour comes from the web page background, not from Affomatic itself:
   

   Screenshot of Affomatic eBay listings

   Back to the list

8. phpBay Lite (free WordPress plugin)

   phpBay Lite is the scaled down free version of phpBay Pro. If you’re serious about your eBay affiliate progams, and considering using phpBay Pro, it’s worth at least trying phpBay Lite first, if only because the sign up email includes a 20% coupon / discount code for phpBay Pro. If you do this, you’ll need to uninstall phpBay Lite to get phpBay Pro working.

   After you install phpBay Lite, set the Affiliate Type and Ebay PID in your admin -> options -> phpBay Lite control panel.

   When you are ready to add auction listings to a post, you will see a new button on the button panel above of the post, which says “pBL” (for phpBay Lite, in the “Code” tab). To add eBay listings to your posts, you place your cursor where you want to display the auctions and press the pBL button to insert the code.

   There are two parameters used in the tag that appears. The first is the keyword(s) of what you want to list, and the second is the number of listings you want to display. For example:

   [phpbay]apple ipod, 10[/phpbay]

   When entering the keywords, separate them with spaces instead of commas, and use a comma at the end before entering the number of listings to display.

   When looking at the results on the page, the formatting was nice, but only 3 listings appeared instead of the 10 that resulted from entering the same search on eBay’s website. I don’t know why, but I found this happened often with all the eBay tools.

   Here is a screenshot of some of the listings produced by phpBay Lite, without any CSS changes. I think it looks clear and tidy:

   

   Screenshot of listings produced by phpBay Lite, with no CSS changes

   On checking the source code, the listings are there in HTML, not Javascript, so it would be providing freshly updated searchable content to my web pages.

   Pros:

   • phpBay Lite is completely free, but you do have to register with your name and email address.
   • It comes with simple instructions for installation, setup and use.
   • You can choose whether or not to display the eBay logo. eBay’s terms may require the logo to be displayed, however, in at least one case I rearranged the listing display and found it more convenient to position the eBay logo myself.
   • You can choose which eBay country to search, which determines the language and currency to use.
   • You can specify a maximum number of listings to display.

   Cons:

   • It makes you wonder what you’re missing out that would be in phpBay Pro!
   • You can’t sort the listings, so it’s best used where you don’t anticipate many results.

   This is what phpBay Lite says I’m missing:

   “For the ultimate Ebay plugin for WordPress, upgrade to our phpBay Pro product. It provides more options, mod_rewrite, masked affiliate urls, support for specific categories, min/max price, min/max bid, items by specific seller, geo ip targeting, column or row layouts, alternating row colors, hover over item highlighting, paging of results, access to our members only forum and many other features!”

   Well that does sound useful, especially the specific categories. I like phpBay Lite, but I will have to limit its use to searches where category restriction isn’t necessary.

   Back to the list

9. phpBay Pro (paid WordPress plugin)

   I ended up buying phpBay Pro for its combination of non-US eBay listings and the ability to narrow searches down to specific categories.

   It’s more complicated to install thatn phpBay Pro, but comes with step by step instructions. Once installed, it works in a similar way to phpBay Lite, except there are more settings to define at the start. The greatest advantage I found was that you can also add category numbers between the phpBay tags to get more relevant search results.

   In terms of support, I’ve been very impressed. I had trouble with the installation at first, because I still had phpBay Lite installed. I posted a question on the phpBay help forum, and the author replied within 15 minutes. Later on, I had another problem caused by interaction with another WordPress plugin, and again it was solved in the help forum.

   Back to the list

So if your blog is not self hosted, you may be limited to the Link Generator. Otherwise, you have the most options if your blog is aimed at a US audience. If it’s not specifically US, or not only US, phpBay Lite or WordBay could be good options, since they both produce HTML results and can be used in different eBay countries. If your site is focused on a specific niche (or eBay category), WordBay may be your best free solution. If the products you want to sell are easy to find and you want to vary the number of listings from page to page, then phpBay Lite is a good option. And if you’re looking for more flexibility overall and you’re prepared to buy a script, phpBay Pro is professional and well supported.

Links

• eBay Partner Network
• WP Contempo: How to get accepted by the eBay Partner Network
• EBay Partner Forum discussion of the BANS (Build a Niche Store) script before the widespread deindexing.
• Interesting post about .info domains and the great BANS deindexing on May 1st, 2008:
  Why Would BANS Sites On INFO Domains Be Deindexed?
• Google Burned my Website to the Ground!
  Interesting discussion of separating original and affiliate content to avoid a Google deindexing
• Feed2JS web service is available here: http://feed2js.org/index.php?s=build
• RSS2HTML is available from Feed For All: http://www.feedforall.com/
• Wordbay is available from here: http://www.itsgottabered.com/wordbay/
• Affomatic is available here: http://www.affomatic.com/ebayfree2.php
• phpBay Lite and phpBay Pro are available from this url: http://www.phpbay.com/

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