Want to be an affiliate for eBay? I did, and when I went to find out how to hook-up it was not easy to find the right information. So, I thought I would help make this process a whole lot easier for other affiliates.

First you will need to sign-up at Commission Junction as an affiliate for eBay.

Then, go to eBay's affiliate tools and click on RSS Feed Generator.

The RSS Feed Generator is an easy way for affiliates to generate RSS feeds that include trackable links to items. The RSS Feed Generator has been embedded into eBay Advanced Search and allows affiliates to create feeds that meet predefined search criteria.

You can generate feeds in three simple steps:
- Go to the Advanced Search page.
- Enter the search criteria that you want the RSS feeds to satisfy
- Enter your affiliate tracking information at the bottom of the page and click Submit.
The Search results page includes an RSS feed. The item links in the RSS feed includes your affiliate tracking information.

Now, click on Create RSS Feeds to get started on creating eBay feeds for your website or blog. I use Magpie RSS reader code to read in my rss feeds.

I also came across a nice post by SuperAff.com called The Poor Man's eBay RSS to WordPress Hack that offers you some other options. So, here's what SuperAff had to say….

Here’s an eBay workaround I’ve found that helps make affiliate life a little easier:

Install and activate the firstRSS WordPress Plugin. This will allow you to display RSS feeds within your WordPress posts.

Tip #1: Open the firstRSS.php file and change the cache_time to something like 30 minutes so that your eBay listings will always be fresh. Also change the items_limit to a reasonable amount–eBay’s lowest search results option is 25. I don’t know about you, but a blog post with 25 auction items displayed isn’t all that appealing.

Tip #2: You can choose to display both pictures & auction titles/information or just the auction titles.
eBay RSS Feed Generator: Generate the rss feed for the items you want to display within your WordPress posts.

Tip: Because the feed isn’t going to refresh every second, set the listings to end in more than 1 hour (found in eBay’s advanced search area) so your visitors will always view live auctions from your blog.
When you’re wanting to display auction results within a post, simply insert [rsspara:URL] or [rsslist:URL] within your blog post where you want the ebay auction results to display. Replace the URL with the ebay rss feed url. To display all the auction info, use rsspara, rsslist displays the titles only.

Benefits: Highly targeted ebay items are displayed within your blog posts since you can get very specific with your search terms. This method also keeps your juicy data private since you’re not using a third party feed display setup.

Drawback: It takes time to go to eBay, make your search & create your rss feed. Not much time, but it still has a lot of room for more automation.

Solution: I created my own WordPress Quicktag for eBay RSS results (read here how to do that). Now all I have to do is click my eBay quicktag when writing a blog post and simply edit the search phrase to what I want.

If you’d like to grab my copy of the quicktag hack, here’s the file: eBay Quicktag. Just save it as quicktags.js and upload to wp-includes/js folder.

Important: Make sure to change the afcj=12345 to your Commission Junction affiliate PID to afcj=yournumber.

The eBay quicktag displays in front of the “more” quicktag. You can move that wherever you want.

When writing a post, simply click the eBay quicktag to insert the rss ebay code. Change “insert+keywords+here” to whatever auction search results you want displayed (remember to use + between each word).

Customization Tip: You can create a special div to wrap around the rss code. For example: Have an ad box that aligns to the right of the page within the post that just lists the auction headings. Have the background a different shade than the rest of the blog post. The sky’s the limit . Simply include the

in the quicktag info so that it’s automatically included and add the div to your CSS file.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN EVERYONE!!!

Brad Fallon says, StomperNet has exceeded my wildest expectations. At $800 a month to join the StomperNet, that has got to be some nice return on investment for Brad Fallon and Andy Jenkins.

The recent release of the StomperNet program was heavily monitored by the SEO and Affiliate Marketing communities … and apparently by Google as well.

In the early releases of their promotional videos for StomperNet, Brad Fallon used his own business website … myweddingfavors.com … as an example of how successful the StomperNet methods can be if followed. Brad brought a lot of traffic and attention to his business website for sure, but he might have also captured the attention of Google.

Google recently updated their Page Rank algorythms and shook up the internet business world yet again, and guess what?! Brad Fallon's myweddingfavors.com is no longer in the top 10 for its keywords wedding favors … not sure it's even in the top 50!

Now Brad and Andy say they don't use black hat techniques at all, and myweddingfavors.com had a ton of backlinks which Google should like as much as a flea likes dogs. So, if myweddingfavors.com followed all the Google rules … why did it get the G-boot?

Google punishes websites for no apparent reasons and of course, they will never tell you why they do what they do. I noticed they pulled all my PR on my blogs, but I've chalked that up to the price I have to pay for switching servers because I only use white hat techniques with my blogs.

Just like Brad and Andy, I'll never know for sure because Google is just a steamroller in the world of search. You know, they say affiliate marketing will be a bigger player than search in the next few years … the question is, do we take Google along for that ride too?

Affroogle.com from Affiliate Classroom is posed to light up the affiliate space with a little more Google activity.

Now, affiliates can add links for affiliate marketing services and websites to this Google-based search engine. This should further help define the affiliate marketing space for Google. But now the question remains, will this help us or hurt us? Given the recent dropping of many affiliates from the Google AdSense program without warning or in most cases, provocation … it will be interesting to watch how Google uses this information.

Should you add your links to Affroogle.com? I'm gambling the answer is Yes. Anik Singal of Affiliate Classroom is usually right on the mark with his business recommendations.

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