Villa State

This guide will be based on promoting physical products and building sites populated with eBay items. I found it that it is so much easier to understand how affiliate marketing works and to make it a steady income. Please note, I don’t put all my eggs in one basket, so I have many stores, some physical eBay stores, and some Digital Items stores, but either way, I hope this guide is going to show you how to do it!

The good news is that you do have to invest a little time into Affiliate Niche Store Business, and with decent effort you will start seeing the money! And one final note, all the information I provide here is based on my own experience and I know it works. I hope you enjoy reading this guide and I hope it helps you understand how Niche Marketing Works. I will try to keep it as short as possible and to the point!

Getting Affiliate Links
One thing you should know is that I am really not a website tech person. I can write, and I can do basic design so if you are afraid of how will you build niche sites, I can tell you it will be easy! The first one is the hardest because it is all new to you, but after that it gets a lot easier!

Keep this in mind, you have many software’s now days that are so easy to use, that you build a site without seeing any codes. But we will get to that later. So if you are afraid of website building, don’t worry, it is not that difficult.

To make it a successful business you really don’t have to invest more than $100-200 bucks a month! So it is very inexpensive.

These are the accounts you will need to have. They are free, but necessary for you to make money!

Before you sign up you may need a website first. I would suggest getting a free blog up such as http://blogger.com. And WordPress.Org In your blog write anything that comes to mind about anything, the purpose of this blog will just be to open an account. The blog can be treated as a small website and in most cases it does the job to get your accounts approved! Here are the accounts you will need to sign up for eBay Partner Network for affiliate program (it’s located at the bottom of eBay’s page it says affiliates).

What items have you sold?
To see which products have been sold using your eBay affiliate ID, goto REPORTS and click on Transaction Download. Get the text file and see the sold eBay product numbers. Search the ID number in eBay and see which item you have sold. This is really interesting!

Extract your sales information
If you have trouble reading the text file, then use one of two scripts currently available which extract the information and displays it nicely.

The best is TWW ePN Item Tracker, copy the php file onto your server, upload your txt file and see the dates, sale price, ebay revenue, your revenue, acru and item information with thumbnail picture, number of bids, seller and buyer and a link pointing to the ebay item. I’m not sure the ebay revenue is actually correct and the script does not work with eBay France. Also the calculation of the totals was incorrect but it’s still a valuable script and since it’s on your webserver, your data is kept private.

You can also use the online MyepnReport. Simply upload your text file to see the campaign id, auction description, buyer and sale price. The advantage of this script is that it works a little better with auction from ebay France. You can at least see the buyer and item description and click on it to see the ebay product page. But the owner of the online script might have access to your data. I don’t really care, what is he gonna do?

I’ll discuss later in this building ebay niche stores tutorial how you can use PHPBay WordPress Plugin to display the ebay products on your WordPress niche stores and make money.

Choose your Niche
Choosing the correct niche of products to sell is a vital process! It will impact on your success. So spend some time looking for the ultimate niche and do your homework properly!

On the long term, it’s better if you find a niche you are personally interested in. You will have to work many hours on the topic you have chosen so choose a topic you enjoy to read about or work with.

I recommend using the eBay categories to get ideas for your niche.

1. For Ebay US see the categories available
2. For Ebay France see the categories here

Go through the numerous categories on the page. If you don’t have enough categories, click on “See all * categories..” at the end of all main categories to see even more categories.

eBay Pulse shows a snapshot of the current searching trends and hot picks on eBay. See what are the top searched products on eBay within any category. Information on the popular searches, largest stores and most watched items. This is a GREAT tool to choose your niche of products!

Use the eBay popular products tool to see the best selling and most popular products in any category.

Use Niche Level Drilling
Level 1 : Technology, Sports, Travel
Level 2: Computers, Basketball, Paris
Level 3 : Laptops, Basketball Shoes, Hotel Paris
Level 4 : Mac Laptops, Nike Basketball shoes, Hotel near Champs Elysees
Level 5 : Macbook Air laptop, Air Jordan shoes, Ibis Hotel Paris
Level 6 : Green MacBook Air, 1998 Air Jordan shoes, 100 EUR Ibis Hotel Room

Each next level is a sub category of the level above it.
You are drilling down the levels to find a specific niche. See article on epntips.

Technology > Computers > Laptops > Mac Laptops > Macbook Air laptop > Green MacBook Air
Sports > Basketball > Basketball Shoes > Nike Basketball shoes > Air Jordan shoes > 1998 Air Jordan shoes
Travel > Paris > Hotel Paris > Hotel near Champs Elysees > Ibis Hotel Paris > 100 EUR Ibis Hotel Room >

You should choose a niche at level 4, 5 or 6. The lower the level, the harder it will be to make money but if you are VERY good, then you could make a lot more money since you are reaching a wider audience. But higher more specific levels will be faster and easier to setup with a relatively good ratio work/income. Make sure ebay has a sufficient amount of products to sell in your niche! That’s generally not a problem!

Target Keywords
You need to think right now about the keywords or key phrases you want your niche store to rank well in the Google serps (Search Engine Result Page).

Let’s say you have chosen to sell a level 4 category with “Mac Laptops”. “Mac Laptops” is still very generic and you’ll have a hard time ranking in the serps so transform this into a level 5 category by adding one condition, the laptops are “used”. Your new level 5 category is “Used Mac Laptops”. This keyphrase should be a lot easier to rank in the serps.

Now that you have your main keyphrase; “used mac laptops”, search for additional related keywords and keyphrases. Use a synonym dictionary on the internet and record all the additional keywords. The WordPress Plugin PHPBay will use your keywords to display the eBay listings in your pages.

Google Adwords Keyword Tool
Goto Google Adwords Keyword Tool and input all your keywords and keyphrases. Think about making some of your keywords plurial by adding an “s” and typing the different forms of your keywords. Make sure you choose the correct language and country you are aiming for! Google Adwords Keyword Tool will then give you some additional related keyphrases and tell you the number of times each query has been searched in Google. Sort the list by “Average Monthly Search Volume” so the most searched keywords are on top.

Find the Best Ratio
Open a spreadsheet in Microsoft Excel and type in your favorite keyphrases. “Used Mac Laptops” would probably be your first choice. “Used Apple Laptops” in second, “second hand mac laptops” and so on…

In your spreadsheet add :

1. Your keyphrases
2. The monthly search volume per keyphrase
3. The number of results in Google when you search for the keyphrase ie: Used Mac Laptops
4. The number of results in Google when you search for the exact keyphrase by putting quotation marks between the keyphrase ie: “Used Mac Laptops”

Use the mathematic function in your spreadsheet to automatically calculate the ratio between “Monthly Search Volume” and “Number of Results”. Find the keyphrase which has the best ratio. Low competition but high search volume.

Extra Keyword Tools
You should use Google Trends to compare two or more keywords (or phrases). This keyword tool will tell you which keyword was searched the most between, for example, “mac laptops” or “apple laptops”. Also useful to see the increase or decrease in search volume over time (last couple years). You can also see the results according to geographic location. Very clever!

Use the Keyword Suggestion Tool by WordTracker to get some additional related keywords and see gross search volume data for each keyword.

Keyword Forecast by MSN is another tool to compare the popularity of two of more keywords over time.

The tool Keyword Mutation Detections by MSN displays common misspellings or alternative spellings of the user’s input keywords. You might get additional traffic to your site by intentionally mispelling words.

Blog Citation Trend Tool by IceRocket will allow you to compare different search terms and tell you how many blog posts have been written and published for each search term (keyword). This might be useful to know which keyword is most used by your competition within your niche.

Domain name
Check your favorite domain names comprised of your keywords or keyphrases and see if they are available for purchase.

With or Without Dashes
If you want to buy a domain name without any dashes (-) like usedlaptops.com make sure Google is able to break down the words. Goto google.com and type in usedlaptops, Google automatically corrected the keyword and broke down the attached words; Try “Used Laptops” instead of “usedlaptops”. If we type usedmaclaptops, no correction is proposed, Google might understand the different words but did not correct the search phrase. In that case, I might prefer buying the domain name with the dashes to help Google break down the words inside the domain name; used-mac-laptops.

Now buy your domain name with the top keyphrase you have found which have the best ratio. This might be a difficult task since so many domain names have already been bought.

Rules to Buying a Domain Name

1. Buy a domain name with your favorite keywords
2. Don’t make it too long! “second-hand-mac-laptops.com” is too long! “used-mac-laptops.com” is ok.
3. You could choose any extension you like. Some people say the .info are less valuable.

Build your WordPress Niche Site
Google loves WordPress so I would recommend it to everyone for their niche store. Install WordPress, install PHPBay and select your theme.

Good themes for niche stores

1. Simple and clear
2. Emphasis on the content
3. User Friendly
4. SEO Friendly
5. Professional looking. Looks like a boutique and not a blog!

How to categorize your wordpress site
Create one main page for each of your main topics. If you are selling “Used Apple Laptops” then you could create one page per laptop model:

• Macbook
• Macbook Pro
• Macbook Air
• Powerbook
• ibook
• iBook G4
• iBook G3
• Price
• Under $200
• Between $200 and $500
• Over $500

If you have any sub-categories, then add a new page and use the main topic page as the parent page in WordPress. This way you categorize your niche store.

I always like to include Price range pages. “Used Apple Laptops under $200″ “Between $200 and $500″ “Over $500″ … People on the internet are often shopping by price!

Also, I like that all my categories are always accessible directly from my homepage in a sidebar for example.

Create 4 basic pages

1. Link page (used for return link for directories)
2. Sitemap page
3. Contact Us page
4. Privacy Policy page (Your site will look more professional and trustworthy)

You need Content!
For EACH and EVERY page and post, write a good amount of GENUINE & ORIGINAL content! Without original content across your niche store, Google will not like your site!

On all your pages

• Write a good paragraph of description about the products selling on the page. No Copy Paste!
• Make sure to include your keywords and keyphrases into your text and put them in BOLD
• Interlink the pages on your site. On each page and post, add a link to your homepage using your main keywords.

On your Homepage

• Include your best written text describing all the products you are selling
• Compliment your website, My boutique is the best because…
• Include numerous keyphrases in your text
• ALWAYS display some products. I like to have 10 products displayed at the top of my homepage so users can click right away. Read “Ebay Cookies”.

Add New Content
Google loves new and original content. I recommend you write a short article on your topic once or twice per week and add it on your site in a “Buying Guide” category for example. Inside this article or product review, include your keywords in bold and link to your homepage and other pages. Sometimes I also include 5 or 10 products using PHPBay.

Ebay Cookies
One note of information about making money with Ebay Affiliation. When a user on your niche store clicks on a product and visits the ebay site, ebay puts a cookie file on their computer. This cookie stays on the computer for one week or one month and if the user buys anything on ebay during that period of time, you will get commission for the sale, no matter what. Knowing this, your primary objective is for ebay to put that cookie on the users computer. That’s the most important! So you want visitors on your site to click on a product before they leave your site! For this reason you display a small list of products on your homepage.

PHPBay WordPress Plugin
PHPBay is a plugin for wordpress that displays eBay products on your pages and posts. It’s very easy to use and very configurable. You could use a free wordpress plugin for ebay affiliate but you won’t have as much success. If you are going to take this business seriously, I recommend PHPBay. Don’t waste your time with free stuff, it can’t compete with a professional plugin. Also, just forgeted Build a Niche Store (BANS) which is more expensive and not as powerful as wordpress + PHPBay.

With PHPBay, inside your page or post, type in the search query, how many items to display, the category number, exclusion words, price range etc… In the css stylesheet you can change the appearance of the results, in rows, columns.

PHPBay allow you to cloak the link and image link and adds nofollow so Google doesn’t notice your site is an affiliate site. You don’t want Google to see all your links are pointing to eBay!

Improve your PR (Page Rank)
Your niche store will never become successful if you do not work to improve your PR!

Backlinks
Most important are backlinks pointing to your site. You want as many backlinks as possible and preferably coming from related sites or pages. Make sure the backlinks do not have a rel=”nofollow” ! A backlink with a nofollow tag tells Google not to pass any link juice so it is essentially worthless for your PR.

1. Add your niche store to all the directories you can find. Most will ask a return link which is why you have created a page called LINKS.
2. Visit Forums and add your link in a well written message so people don’t think you are spaming.
3. Create a Squidoo Lense to get a “dofollow” backlinks
4. Ask webmasters if they like to trade links
5. Write original Press Releases and submit them to Article/Press Release Directories

Tip to find valuable related backlinks
In Google, search for your top keyphrase, “used apple laptops” for example. For each of the top 10 results, look at their backlinks by searching “link:sitename.com”. This will show you the top sites or directories linking to the competition. You also want a backlink from those sites since they are the reason your competitor is ranking so well for your keyphrase.

Tips for your site description
When submitting to directories, prepare 10 different descriptions about 250 characters in length. You do not want all the directories to display the same description! The backlinks will be more valuable if the text description is more unique.

For your site’s title, use various combinations of the primary keywords. ie : Used Apple Laptops, OR, Apple Laptop Used, OR, Mac Used Laptops …

Make Money
The three most important things to be successful are :

1. Choosing a good Niche
2. Having enough content
3. Getting valuable backlinks

Honestly, you can’t go wrong if you work hard at those three things.

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