Like many other people this month, I have had to spend time re-doing all my Ebay affiliate links now that Commission Junction is not involved. I have links to Ebay on this blog, on my Build A Niche stores, and on some of my niche sites. All of them had to be changed.
Many people might think or feel that Build A Niche stores are the only way to successfully make money from the Ebay affiliate program. I wasn’t suprised, however, when my first official commission from Ebay since the change came from one of my nich sites and not my BANS sites. It is true that BANS is a great way to make money from Ebay but it is not the only way. In fact, you can produce a makeshift “BANS” store on any web page including normal blogs or Squidoo pages. (If you do want to buy Build A Niche Stores you should only be paying $53.00 for it and NOT $97.00 for BANS!)
How To Make Money Without Buying Build A Niche Stores
Lets say you have a niche blog or Squidoo page about “marbles”. You have looked at the competition and decided that you want to target blue marbles, green marbles, red marbles, large marbles, and small marbles. You hope to get people to your blog who are interested in buying all kinds of marbles and to that end you write 10 – 20 different posts and articles about the joys of owning marbles. All this is standard for any niche site you might make.
The real purpose of your site is to tell people that the cheapest prices for each kind of marble is on Ebay and to direct them there through your link. The tool you do this with now is very similar to the “flexible destination tool” that was used with Commission Junction.
All you need to do is go to the Ebay affiliate section, find the “link generator”, and type in the search term you want to link to. In the case below, I am creating a link to a page that will pull up all ebay auctions for the term “green marbles”. The link type is “keyword search” and after filling in the Campaign Name you push “generate link” and it will give you a link with your affiliate ID in it that will take your readers to the search term page you want them to go to.
If you do this for each type of marble on your blog or Squidoo page (the blue, the green, the small, the large, etc), each time saying something like “Please go here to find the best prices on ”green marbles“, you will have in essence made yourself a little “BANS” site. It won’t be quite as fancy with the auction pictures and all but it will be just as effective if you get the right kind of motivated search engine traffic.
Getting people who are acutally interested in buying marbles to your site would be the hardest part but once they are there and click through to Ebay, you stand to get the commission if they buy. This is nothing different than what Build A Niche Store is. BANS is nothing more than a portal to Ebay. It is a fancier portal than what I am suggesting but my method is free. Any time you write about an item that can be bought on Ebay you might remember to link to it to get the possible commission. You have nothing to lose!
I’ve just made the move over to eBay, im using the phpbay lite Wordpress plugin which brings pictures and all. Its free and works great.
Very good idea and that too we wont have to spend anything…I am going to try this on my niche site (spiderman related niche) to see how it works
I’ve been using their Sniplet Widget a lot but I haven’t tried out the link generator yet. I’ll have to look at some ways of integrating it into my sites.
Hi there.I from-Russia.I registered on ebay affiliate,but-my account wasn’t approved by-moderator.What can you recommend to receive approve in ebay?I have some scripts for working in niches,and I’ll receive all traffic from-Google and other SEs.Thanks
E-bay’s link generator tool is arrow aligned
perfectly and when released hits the exact
desired spot perfectly. Hows that?
PHPbay elite and the sniplet widget. You know ive been trying to figure out how to do this on my own, im a hands on sort of blogger good thing I got your feed saved me some time for sure.
Oh rave clothing what a crazy niche man
Glad you pointed this out, I think most affiliates are making money selling BANS to newbies than the newbies are.
By pointing this out, you are letting people know that there are many tools out there that can be just as effective!
I guess most of what we pay for is somewhere on the internet for free. It just depends on how much time versus money you have. Sometimes too, you get some support with the program if you pay for it. I always look for the free stuff first.
Is it possible to do the exact same through Link Generator, yet post your affiliate link in classified listings, portals, and other similar spots to simply direct traffic to an ebay auction page? In other words, can you just post links around via Link generator without having to blog or create some sort of web page relevant to the products you’re marketing?
Erin,
A link is a link so I think you can. They are REALLY long links, however, so you would need to post it somewhere where you can disquise the link or maybe use TinyUrl.com.
I had forgotten about TinyUrl.com, thanks for the tip! I’ll give it a shot :)
Very informative post. Thanks for letting us know about making money online with ebay without even purchasing BANS. I am going to try out what you said in your blog. Thanks
Nice blog So glad i found this article the info is well writen,I will be using this and i cant wait to see your new articles.
Is it possible to use the link generator and the phpbay lite on Squidoo lenses?
I think this sort of thing could have potential down the bottom of a blog post showing say up to 5 contextually related ebay products, however the payout on ebay i have heard is low..