Check My Automated eBay Blog Money System

16 replies
It's my first post and I'M FINALLY TAKING ACTION!

I plan on making money by creating a blog that lists diamond ring bargains that can be found on eBay. Each item will be listed with eBay affiliate code for me to make money if/when people buy. The plan is to have the diamond ring bargain items posted automatically to the blog. If successful it means I can then create other blogs that list other bargain items.

You can (if you want) watch what I do by following this thread.

Here's my money making plan

Where I have written (Done) I have completed the task. You can read individual posts in the thread to read details of the actions I took and how I overcame errors. This list will be updated when I complete new tasks.

(Done) 1) Choose domain name for blog and register it (I will provide domain name I choose).

(Done) 2) Install Wordpress software

(Done) 3) Install and configure theme

(Done) 4) Install Wp-O-Matic plugin to read eBay RSS affiliate feeds and post affiliate links automatically on the blog

(Done) 5) Create eBay feeds that find diamond ring bargains and get Wp-O-Matic to read them (I have developed a way of finding bargains on eBay. That is I can find items that other searchers will not find. This means that the items will get fewer visitors, fewer bids and hence go for a lower price.)

(Done) 6) Setup cron job to get Wp-O-Matic to create the blog automatically

(Done) 7) Install plugins to make blog more search engine friendly (Will detail which plugins I use)

(Done) 8) Gather ping sites and get blog pinged to get places to crawl and index the blog (Will detail which ping sites I use)

9) Create XML sitemap to get search engines to crawl and index the blog (Will detail which plugin chosen)

10) Submit blog to social bookmarking sites (Will detail which ones)

11) Learn from the experience and create other blogs (Will detail what I learned)

Why?

Doing this thread for 3 reasons:

1) to make me take action and carry out my plan - will feel obliged to now I have gone public.

2) to encourage other people to take action - I am not a guru or anything special. I am just an ordinary guy - if i can take action (and possibly make money then anybody can).

3) to help give some information for other Warriors - I am a teacher so I get a buzz by educating people.

Thanks

Thanks for reading my first post.
#automated #blog #check #ebay #money #system
  • Profile picture of the author xDennis
    Hello Muhammad,
    Thanks for posting! I wish you the best of luck. I am subscribing to this, I run an eBay business and part of my business is finding great deals that I can flip. I love finding new ways to find the deals! This sounds very interesting, thanks for sharing.

    Dennis
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  • Profile picture of the author Muhammad Hassan
    Hi,

    The bargains I will be creating the blog for will be diamond rings.

    Misspellings

    In choosing the domain name I considered choosing a name that
    had a mispelling of diamond in it such as dimond, but I decided not
    to do it. I originally considered misspelled names because one of
    the ways of finding bargains on eBay is finding misspellings. (there
    are other better ways of finding bargains).

    I decided not to go with misspellings in the domain name because
    when I did a search for them on Google none of the early listings
    had the misspelling in the domain name. I assumed that misspelled
    domain names was not an important factor. Should I have checked
    Live.com and Yahoo.com?

    There were misspellings in the page titles, but that would be taken
    care of with posting eBay items onto the blog with misspellings in them.

    Choosing the Domain Name

    Went to Google search on Firefox and looked at the suggestions it
    gave. Best one for my blog was 'diamond rings cheap'. I made a name
    with cheap diamond rings and hyphens(-). I found the name
    cheap-diamondrings.com and registered it.

    Name is not memorable, but has only 3 keywords and all relevant for
    the blog.

    GoDaddy.com

    Registered with GoDaddy.com. Did a search for 'godaddy codes' on
    Google and on the first site found OYH3 which saved me some money.
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  • Profile picture of the author traces2757
    Good luck to you, Muhammed. I'll be watching.
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  • Profile picture of the author Muhammad Hassan
    Hi

    Wordpress

    Went to host (hostmonster.com) and to Cpanel. From Software/services section chose SimpleScripts to install Wordpress. Used SimpleScripts because it had latest version of Wordpress 2.7 - Fantastico De Luxe would have installed older version of Wordpress 2.6.5. Installed into top of the domain cheap-diamondrings.com and not a subfolder.

    FlexibilityTheme

    Download FlexibiltyTheme with Burst Fade Header and Square 3D RSS Icon (flexibilitytheme.com) and installed into the wp-content > themes folder.

    Went to Wordress Dashboard > Appearance and activated the flexibilitytheme. Used theme options to make 1 sidebar on right, stop displaying feature box and other alteration to fonts etc.

    Free theme to save money, but still lots of customisation. Chose red colour as red is psychologically said to produce more impulse buying.
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  • Profile picture of the author Louis Raven
    Are you aware of the eBay affiliate flaws?

    The main being if an englishman clicks your affiliate link and signs into eBay.com you'll get NO commission.

    The eBay affiliate program is strictly for geo targeted blog/websites.

    Good luck with your plan it sounds solid.

    Louis
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    • Profile picture of the author Harvey Affcash
      Originally Posted by Louis Raven View Post

      Are you aware of the eBay affiliate flaws?

      The main being if an englishman clicks your affiliate link and signs into eBay.com you'll get NO commission.

      The eBay affiliate program is strictly for geo targeted blog/websites.

      Good luck with your plan it sounds solid.

      Louis
      This can be overcome.
      Geo location script that will alter eBay's TLD dependent on the location of of the visitor.
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      • Profile picture of the author Virtual Banker
        Originally Posted by Harvey Affcash View Post

        This can be overcome.
        Geo location script that will alter eBay's TLD dependent on the location of of the visitor.
        but this is just the scraps. Americans convert about 4-5x the rate of people in the UK or other Western Euro Countries

        and since US sends about 10-15x the traffic of other eBay countries combined(disregarding 3rd world traffic which never coverts)

        meaning that even with Geo-location you will still make at least 50x more from the US program unless your site is specifically targeted to a specific countries niche market.
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  • Profile picture of the author mudmat
    Great idea Muhammad! Keep working on it and I'll keep tabs on your thread..
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  • Profile picture of the author Muhammad Hassan
    Hi

    Wp-O-Matic

    wp-o-matic is a Wordpress plugin that reeds RSS feeds and makes individual posts of each item in the feed. With the eBay feed it will make a post for each individual eBay item. It does not put all the eBay items into one post.

    I like this because the post titles are the eBay item titles so they hopefully provide lots of long tail keywords.

    The plugin can be found at:

    devthought.com/wp-o-matic-the-wordpress-rss-agreggator/

    Getting it to read eBay feeds

    When run with an eBay feed it displays a single post of:

    Please specify a query! error 9003


    To solve this problem and get it to display the eBay items just take the rss feed url and make a tinyurl (tinyurl.com) of it and put tinyurl as the feed url in wp-o-matic.
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  • Profile picture of the author butternyk
    best of luck and keep us updated
    Signature

    Please do not use affiliate links in signatures

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    • Profile picture of the author melorhani
      Thanks for the info. I'll always coming back here to read your thread.
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  • Profile picture of the author Muhammad Hassan
    A cron job gets a program to run automatically at what time you set. I am setting the cron job to run at 2am every morning to run the command that will load fresh eBay items onto the blog.

    On cPanel goto Advanced section and click Cron jobs. I chose Advanced (Unix Style) button.

    I entered the following values in first 5 boxes:

    0 2 * * *

    to get the command to run at 2am daily.

    I entered

    /usr/bin/curl http: //www .cheap-diamondrings.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-o-matic/cron.php?code=xxxxxxxx

    into the command box. This command is given by Wp-O-Matic - Choose settings on Worpress admin then choose Wp-O-Matic and Options. Use the code given and not xxxxxxxx.

    Please Note: It has spaces in the code above (http: //www .), but you should enter the command without the spaces. I had to put the spaces in because I do not have enough WarriorForum posts to post a link.

    I then clicked Commit Changes button on cPanel page.
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  • Profile picture of the author MarketingZen
    Nice one Muhammad a nice variation on the automated blog model, how are your conversions since starting?
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  • Profile picture of the author Muhammad Hassan
    To find diamond ring bargains (or any bargains) on eBay you have to find the items that other people will not find. Because other people will not find them they get fewer visitors. Because of the fewer visitors they will get fewer bids and hence a lower price.

    So how do you find these items? Find items that have not been listed to attract visitors or have mistakes in the listings. There are 6 ways of doing this.

    1. Spelling Errors

    Items with dimond ring will not show up for a search for 'diamond ring'. So search for spelling errors.

    2. Words Joined Together

    Items with 14kdiamond ring will not show up for a search for 'diamond ring'. So search for woirds joined together.

    3. Fewer Descriptive Keywords In The Title

    lovely diamond ring will only be found by a search for 'diamond ring'.

    10k gold diamond engagement ring will be found with a search for gold ring, diamond ring, 14k gold ring, diamond engagement ring, gold engagement ring etc..

    So
    search for items with fewer descriptive keywords.

    4. Ring Is Not In The Title

    Because ring is not in the title a search for 'diamond ring' will not find it. So search for items where ring is not in the title.

    5. Listed In The Wrong Category

    When people look at the diamond ring catageory they will not find the item because it is not listed there. So search for diamond ring items listed in the wrong category.

    6. Starting Price Too High

    If starting price is say $10 it will not show up on first few pages if searcher does a search for 'Price: lowest first'. So search for diamond rings that have a starting price of $10.



    Although all 6 methods will find bargains I am only going to use the first 4 methods to list bargains automatically on the blog.
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  • Profile picture of the author Muhammad Hassan
    Hi,

    Installed plugin WordPress Platinum SEO Pack which can be found at:

    wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/

    I just went with the options already set.


    I changed the permalinks (how post pages URLs are made up) to be more search engine friendly. Went to WordPress Dashboard > Settings > Permalinks and placed '/%category%/%postname%/' for the custom structure.


    I made program changes to the Wp-O-Matic plugin so that it put 'Grab this' at the start of the post title and 'Bargain' at the end of the post title. I thinks having an action verb 'Grab' at the start of a post will make it more likely to be clicked on when listed in search engine results.
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    • Profile picture of the author Muhammad Hassan
      The blog can get a large number of posts each day so i didn't want to ping after every post as I was afraid of it being seen as spam. I wanted to just send one ping daily.

      I did this by using the PHP script at:

      webscriptexpert.com/Php/Read rpc list from file and ping all - for your blog!

      and deleted all the 'echo' statements which display information on the screen. I then set up a cron job to run the script daily at 3.00am.


      I get a number of ping sites and pasted them onto the form at pingler.com and looked at the results it ptoduced to see which were still working. I used the working ones in the ping list.

      Here is the ping list I used:

      api.moreover.com/RPC2
      api.my.yahoo.co.jp/RPC2
      blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC
      blogpeople.net/ping
      blogsearch.google.ae/ping/RPC2
      blogsearch.google.at/ping/RPC2
      blogsearch.google.be/ping/RPC2
      blogsearch.google.bg/ping/RPC2
      blogsearch.google.ca/ping/RPC2
      blogsearch.google.ch/ping/RPC2
      blogsearch.google.cl/ping/RPC2
      blogsearch.google.co.cr/ping/RPC2
      blogsearch.google.co.hu/ping/RPC2
      blogsearch.google.co.id/ping/RPC2
      blogsearch.google.co.il/ping/RPC2
      blogsearch.google.co.in/ping/RPC2
      blogsearch.google.co.it/ping/RPC2
      blogsearch.google.co.jp/ping/RPC2
      blogsearch.google.co.ma/ping/RPC2
      blogsearch.google.co.nz/ping/RPC2
      blogsearch.google.co.th/ping/RPC2
      blogsearch.google.co.uk/ping/RPC2
      blogsearch.google.co.ve/ping/RPC2
      blogsearch.google.co.za/ping/RPC2
      blogsearch.google.com.ar/ping/RPC2
      blogsearch.google.com.au/ping/RPC2
      blogsearch.google.com.br/ping/RPC2
      blogsearch.google.com.co/ping/RPC2
      blogsearch.google.com.do/ping/RPC2
      blogsearch.google.com.mx/ping/RPC2
      blogsearch.google.com.my/ping/RPC2
      blogsearch.google.com.pe/ping/RPC2
      blogsearch.google.com.sa/ping/RPC2
      blogsearch.google.com.sg/ping/RPC2
      blogsearch.google.com.tr/ping/RPC2
      blogsearch.google.com.tw/ping/RPC2
      blogsearch.google.com.ua/ping/RPC2
      blogsearch.google.com.uy/ping/RPC2
      blogsearch.google.com.vn/ping/RPC2
      blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
      blogsearch.google.de/ping/RPC2
      blogsearch.google.es/ping/RPC2
      blogsearch.google.fi/ping/RPC2
      blogsearch.google.fr/ping/RPC2
      blogsearch.google.gr/ping/RPC2
      blogsearch.google.hr/ping/RPC2
      blogsearch.google.ie/ping/RPC2
      blogsearch.google.in/ping/RPC2
      blogsearch.google.it/ping/RPC2
      blogsearch.google.jp/ping/RPC2
      blogsearch.google.lt/ping/RPC2
      blogsearch.google.nl/ping/RPC2
      blogsearch.google.pl/ping/RPC2
      blogsearch.google.pt/ping/RPC2
      blogsearch.google.ro/ping/RPC2
      blogsearch.google.ru/ping/RPC2
      blogsearch.google.se/ping/RPC2
      blogsearch.google.sk/ping/RPC2
      blogsearch.google.tw/ping/RPC2
      blogsearch.google.us/ping/RPC2
      feedsky.com/api/RPC2
      hamo-search.com/ping.php
      newsblog.jungleboots.org/ping.php
      ping.bloggers.jp/rpc
      ping.blogs.yandex.ru/RPC2
      ping.fc2.com
      ping.feedburner.com
      ping.kutsulog.net
      ping.myblog.jp
      ping.namaan.net/rpc
      ping.snap.com/ping/RPC2
      ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
      ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
      ping.wordblog.de
      r.hatena.ne.jp/rpc
      rpc.reader.livedoor.com/ping
      rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
      rpc.technorati.jp/rpc/ping
      rpc.twingly.com/
      rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
      wasalive.com/ping
      xping.pubsub.com/ping
      services.newsgator.com/ngws/xmlrpcping.aspx
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