Using RSS Feeds To Generate Income From Ebay

[Roo]

Hi,
This is a condensed tutorial of one I published on squidoo recently about using an RSS feed from Ebay to provide very highly refineded search results which include an affiliate code. You can find the full tutorial here - Ebay RSS Feeds

*Having signed up with Commission Junction who will handle the reporting and payment of your clicks and sales, set up a Publisher ID, (PID) for the feed or page you will be publishing. This will allow you to track sales to that feed or page.

*go to ebay's advanced search, here on the first page of setting your search criteria you can add your PID so that it is embedded in the RSS feed of subsequent search refinements. Do make sure you actually set a search term here or no RSS feed button will be visible.

*Refine your search. You can do this by selecting from a multitude of options, getting the display to show highest or lowest price first, ending soonest or newly listed. Also, by refining using the search options showing on the left you can select whether new or used items are shown. Also if the items have specifics listed on ebay you can refine it much further. Such as showing only size 10 boots in a certain colour, or lenses for a particular camera.

*Once you have the search results you are happy with you can then grab the RSS feed. This is visible in the lower tool bar. Copy this link location and paste into whereever you wish to display the feed.

The original tutorial has a greater depth of information, screen shots and examples to guide you through the process. Ebay RSS Feed Tutorial

A couple of places I use this type of feed is on my squidoo lenses, as well as on Blogger. I would be interested to hear where others choose to place Feeds from ebay so please do add any good resources or social networks that permit the hosting of RSS feeds.

I hope others will find this useful.

 

[TeamPlayer]

To be honest RSS feeds is one area I`ve never really got into thus far. I don`t see any point in ignoring it any longer though so I`ll have to give it a go. Not being a techie sort of person I`m grateful for any hand holding on this.

I`ll let you know how I go on. lol

 

[Roo]

Well, that mustbe the shortest lived tutorial I have ever created!

Ebay announced today that they will be opening their own affiliate program on the 1st April. Closing all current programs on 30th April.

I'll see about doing an update when these changes happen as ebay aren't registering or opening their program until 1st April.

 

[Roo]

Ebay Partner Network is now Live!

It was an easy 5minutes to sign up and get confirmation!

Also, the exciting news is you can add tracking id's to each link you create!

I've updated the tutorial mentioned above, and all that's required now is for ebay to switch the feeds to live, as currently they aren't, but I suppose everyone expected somesort of hiccup when they launched, hopefully this willbe very short lived as I have a lot of feeds I want to start updating!

 

[temi]

Does anyone actually make any money from eBay affiliates? I would have thought its so popular everyone just go straight to eBay to buy or bid on stuff, please enlighten me.

 

[Roo]

Does anyone actually make any money from eBay affiliates? I would have thought its so popular everyone just go straight to eBay to buy or bid on stuff, please enlighten me.

The same can be said for almost any affiliate program with a well known company.

If you have a site dedicated to, lets say Chess, you may want to provide links to somewhere chess sets can be bought. Providing a live feed of chess sets on ebay may well prompt visitors to click thru and buy a chess set. Even if they click thru and don't buy a chess set a cookie has been placed on their PC so any other ebay items bought during that session will earn you commission.

There are a lot of Niche Websites that get a reasonable income from ebay commission using RSS feeds providing updated content of what is available on ebay. These are often referred to as BANS (Build a Niche Store) and there are many articles on how to do this successfully. In essence a lot of the squidoo pages I create are like mini Niche stores, providing information on the products or niche and providing live links to ebay items available.

It's not making me rich, but it is adding to my income streams!

 

[temi]

Thanks for that detailed reply Roo, I sort of guess that is how it works, I have tried web hosting affiliate stuff about 5 years ago, did not make any decent money so I have completely given up on affiliate stuff.

There used to be a guy in this forum called Paul KY on the other hand, he claim to make a few thousands a day on games and gambling related affiliate.

 

[Roo]

just updating that ebay rss feeds are now up and running. Quite surprised that this was fixed so swiftly!

Temi, ebay affiliates is like any other affiliate scheme, if you can make money from one, you can the other. The trick is to have content that attracts visitors that are likely to click through and buy products mentioned or featured on your site. Well, that's one of the tricks anyway!

 

[Mega B]

I have a Ebay Furniture api site which is still with CJ but will be changed over to Ebay within the next week and yes it is a very good site and once setup it just runs on autopilot,another site i have is Property one and that is also a Ebay feed into it:thumbsup:

 

[Roo]

Nice furniture store mega, great example of what can be done using ebay affiliates. I'm just curious as to how you drive traffic to it as it seems that it doesn't have a great deal of 'organic content' so I wouldn't imagine it would get much search engine traffic.

 

[Roo]

just updating a week into the new ebay Partner Network, seems people have already shortened this to ePN.

I have had a few people report that when generating rss feeds they get an invalid feed, this seems to be being caused by people not entering a custom id along with the campaign id. So a simple thing to fix.

Tracking reports from ePN seem to be showing clicks ok, almost in real time, but already I have noted that ebay are dragging their feet on reporting sales/commission. This isn't that unusual for anyone used to ebay affiliates as they used to be quite slow in reporting previously. It seems that the main issue is that people may click-thru, win an item, and then as payment isn't 'cleared' until later, earnings are credited until then. Though there is another theory that the delays are longer than this and only appear when positive feedback is left. I could go on with more theories, but if anyone has some definite facts on this it would be nice to read them!

 

[Mega B]

Nice furniture store mega, great example of what can be done using ebay affiliates. I'm just curious as to how you drive traffic to it as it seems that it doesn't have a great deal of 'organic content' so I wouldn't imagine it would get much search engine traffic.

Cheers mate,adwords is the main driving force behind the site,craiglist and also looking to use Miva:thumbsup:

 

[ev8321]

Hey guys, just curious as to the conversion rates that ebay pays.
Also, is there a difference between a referral when its a buyer compared to a seller.

Does a referral constitute a sale, a bid, or just simply a sign up?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Roo]

Does a referral constitute a sale, a bid, or just simply a sign up?

Thanks in advance.

You get nothing for a bid unless they then win the item, straight sales through buy-it-now also earn commission. Though getting a new user to sign up is a nice little earner, though they do then have to go and complete a 'purchase' before you earn. I think if they also sign up for a 'store' via a link, it earns you more.
'Sales' work as a percentage of the final value fees charged to the seller.

As for conversion rates, it will take a couple of months before the new ebay partner network beds down and can give accurate figures on this. The figures for CJ though were - £3.14 epc(3 months), £4.44 epc(7 days), for uk. Impression conversion rate is impossible to work out as so many users have links to ebay that have noimpression tracking.


*epc (earnings per 100clicks)

 

[Mega B]

Roo just opened the EPN account,how many id's did you have to make i have 13 sites running the CJ pid codes but have not set them up in EPN i reckon this is going to be a nightmare :-(

 

[Roo]

Roo just opened the EPN account,how many id's did you have to make i have 13 sites running the CJ pid codes but have not set them up in EPN i reckon this is going to be a nightmare :-(

it only takes a few minutes to set up a campaign, though I imagine 13 could take upto half an hour, though once done it;s easy. Alternative you could run them under the one campaign and rely totally on the custom-id for tracking info. Just use a prefix for each site "dolls-p1" "cars-p3" "books-pg4" or something similair

 

[Mega B]

2nd option is the one:thumbsup:

 

[Roo]

I've just been messing around with ebay rss and widgets to display stuff, and am quite pleased with the results. I'm only just getting the site converted from what was supposed to be a local directory.
It's now a site showing niches on ebay in a local area. (well the directory was local!)
I've made a good start on the motors section so far, though would be interested in any comments or feedback!
The South Bristol Auction Directory - Used Cars In Bristol

 

[tb987]

You have a 404 on this page Roo http://www.southbristol.co.uk/Prices.html

I wonder how Joomla would deal with these ebay feeds - I'll have a play and let you know might be better than Spring Widgets.

 

[Roo]

You have a 404 on this page Roo http://www.southbristol.co.uk/Prices.html

I wonder how Joomla would deal with these ebay feeds - I'll have a play and let you know might be better than Spring Widgets.

Will sort out the 404 later, the navigation needs a bit of an overhaul really since changing the site, a number of the pages need removing totally if I'm going to go in this new direction.

I've heard a lot about Joomla, mainly it's very popular! Though I've yet to play with it. I'm just playing around with this domain and webspace to see if itcan raise some revenue but I may have to indulge in some marketing to make it a success.

I think Joomla will have to go on the back burner as my next project is going to be wordpress based as I've come across a great tutorial on making a niche store using ebay feeds and WP plugins that I want to checkout. Currently I just want to see how ebay clicks convert here before doing that.