Money-Code

Coding For Online Success

Month: January 2008

January 29, 2008
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eBay FUD

FUD = Fear Uncertainty Doom. So the press has been going wild about the 50% eBay seller fee cut. After the wave of panic has come and gone, and some basic understanding of what’s going to happen, it appears this could be a great thing for eBay affliates after all. Basically, they’re going to cut listing fees (to help sellers relist items that did not sold), but have raised the FVF (Final Value Fee), which is what we get a cut of!

I’ve been watching the Digital Point Forums as well as the eBay Affiliate forum on the subject, and things should work out in our favor. I’m still working with my four sites a month goal, but still working on other merchant sites. I’ve even been exploring Amazon again.. (shudder).

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January 24, 2008
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eBay to Cut Seller Fees

So the buzz on the street lately is about eBay cutting seller fees due to weaker 2008 results. You can read the full article here: http://www.cnbc.com/id/22808450/for/cnbc

Here is a excerpt that was used at the digital point thread that initially caught my eye.

Cutting Sellers’ Fees

EBay plans to cut the fees it charges sellers on its auction site, according to a presentation of the company’s quarterly results.

Responding to complaints by its key network of auction sellers, eBay will reduce the upfront fees sellers must pay to insert new listings on its auction sites along with reductions in the final transaction fees they pay on successful sales.

“We are going to make breaks from the past,” Donahoe told investors on a conference call to discuss eBay’s 2007 year-end results.

Over the next week, eBay will announce changes in pricing of its services and improvements in the way buyers can rate sellers, Donahoe said.

“We are going to get very aggressive about making eBay easier to use,” said Donahoe.

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January 23, 2008
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Takes money to make money

Yep people, you’ve heard it before, but what does that really mean for us in affiliate marketing? Frankly, it can mean a few things. It could mean investing in software (ie: BANS, phpBayPro, etc). It could mean investing in hosting (dedicated servers, shared hosting accounts, etc). It could mean investing in more domains. It could mean paying for traffic (PPC). But along with the saying ‘It takes money to make money’, I always like to follow up with ‘If it doesn’t make dollars, it doesn’t make sense’.

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January 18, 2008
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How to search Amazon’s catalog with Amazon’s Associate Web Service

This is a small tutorial on how you can retrieve products from Amazon’s Associates Web Service. I’m not the biggest fan of Amazon’s affiliate program. The biggest reason is the one day cookie. I like programs that produce results, and I’ve always struggled with this program. When I talk to others that do have success, it definitely seems like you need a large volume of visitors, and it appears to be quite seasonally dependent.

Regardless, I wanted to show how you can make calls against their web service. The first step is to be a Amazon associate (https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/). Here you will get an associate tag (usually something-20). This allows you to receive commissions by creating widgets, etc. But we want to use the AWS (Amazon Web Service), so you must be a Amazon developer. So this step will involve us going to the Amazon Web Service web site (http://aws.amazon.com). After creating account you will need to create a token. Basically, this is a password used to login to Amazon’s web service. Look for a button on the upper right hand section called ‘Your Web Serices Account’, click on AWS Access Identifiers. Look for something down in the content called Access Key ID. You may need to generate them. To make the calls we’ll need the Access Key AND your Amazon associate tag.

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January 14, 2008
by admin
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Readers vs. Buyers

I’ve been corresponding with a few people.. and also found myself talking about this at lunch the other day. This is usually a good sign it’s blog post worthy.

When trying to monetize your site, you immediately think of what products or banners or offers to lay in your site. This is fine, but this thought is often a “after thought”, meaning when the site was originally created, it wasn’t designed to be a monetary site by initial design. Sure, you’d like to make some cash, and adding some banners or adsense make sense. The problem occurs months later when you realize that your site doesn’t convert. One thing to be aware of, and if you’re not aware of this by this time, I seriously wonder about your choice to get into this business, is that all web sites are NOT created equal. Meaning, when you create a web site, it won’t convert as good as everyone else by default! Each web site has a different focus and TARGET.

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