Celebrating My Record $221.04 EPN Day with 5 EPN Tips

The other day I had a record breaker day on my Ebay Partner Network account – $221.04!

I’ve been an affiliate for roughly a year and a half and so far this has been my best day yet. $100 days can be sometimes normal for me,  but never anything over $200

So to celebrate my success I wanted to make a post about everything I’ve learned along the way – what’s been most successful for me in really bringing in the money… Please read on..

1. Make your EPN site about a niche product.

Instead of making a general EPN site about “computers” niche it even more, maybe Dell Computers or Intel Motherboards, etc.. The better your niche then the easier its going to be for you to dominate those keywords.

Here’s a pretty good post on selecting a niche for EPN using Ebay Pulse to find out whats popular http://www.wpcontempo.com/how-to-choose-a-niche-for-your-ebay-partner-network-affiliate-site/

Some niches convert well, and some do not. Try to pinpoint the niches/products that have hungry buyers.

2. Before you register that domain!

Here’s a HUGE hint and something thats going to possibly save the destruction of your site (I lost 2 of my top earning sites to this newbie mistake): DONT PUT ANY TRADEMARKS IN THE DOMAIN.

Chances are good that the companies will come after you, and all your hard work will be flushed down the toilet. It’s happend to me twice, and losing a site earning $300-$500 per month is a pretty painful experience (to say the least).

And the shitty part is they don’t come after you when your site isn’t doing well (they can’t find you). They only come after you when you start ranking top positions in Google  (doh).

3. Get PHPBay!

I’ve tried BANS, all I can say is it pretty much sucks. I felt really trapped with BANS, and I’ve heard Google is really slapping BANS sites so I would advise against using them.

One reason I like PHPBay is there’s just so much flexibility. The programmer Wade has made a ton of improvements since he first released it. Now you can put in Ebay auction listings on your Wordpress site and they won’t even look like auction listings.

4. Give it a “Store” look to increase conversion.

I was using the Cutline theme for my EPN blogs when I started out. I would have my “money pages” at the very top, but in retrospect this looked really amateur.

A few months back I decided to follow this PHPBay Tutorial from Eureka Diary (looks like they have since changed the domain on it) – the writer trigatch4 is also an avid poster on Wickedfire.

Anywho, I believe the Wordpress template setup I learned to use from this tutorial has really helped in conversions. It probably improved my bounce rate as well, since my blogs have taken a brand new look/feel. I attached a static front page which mentioned some of the most popular products people were searching for, so they could easily find more EPN listings or info on them.

4. Time for some content.

My biggest EPN site has roughly 120 articles on it, all keyword targeted for different products. I’m front page in Google for a ton of terms – I receive over 1,000 visits per day with that site and my earnings average around $30 a day or so.

I HIGHLY recommend you dump a ton of quality content into your blogs if you want to attract any kind of visitors.

The best keywords warrant 1,000+ word articles covering every possible aspect of the keyword.

This will make it a lot easier for you to dominate Google with a quality article.

5. Linkbuild, linkbuild, linkbuild.

Keep track of your keywords and URLs so it makes it easy for you to build links to each of your posts. I do this in an .xls spreadsheet.

Always use keyword variations when building links. If your targeting “Eddie Bauer Coats” for example, switch up your anchor text when building links: “Coats by Eddie Bauer”, “An Eddie Bauer Coat”, “Eddie Bauer’s Coats”, etc… You get the idea. This makes the links you’re building look more natural, and Google likes anything natural.

Keep your linkbuilding campaign consistent. If you build a boatload of backlinks in one week, then none in the next, Google is going to raise a red flag. But if you build roughly the same amount of backlinks week in and week out, Google will pay no mind to you. Consistency is key.

Linkbuilding is an ultra important aspect you don’t want to leave out. I’ve noticed most webmasters either have high quality content but aren’t great when it comes to linkbuilding, or someone is great with linkbuilding but the content is atrocious. Don’t make this mistake, if you need help in one area or another don’t be afraid to outsource.

6. Other random stuff.

If you’re having trouble getting approved for EPN check this post.

I also know that EPN will cancel your account if they feel your traffic is low quality. I did in fact have this happen to me once but I was able to get my account reinstated thankfully. A couple of my sites had super low EPC, so I just disabled the auction listings on them to avoid getting my account canceled (that would be tragic). They weren’t making much money anyway, so I don’t mind.

Update: 3/20/2009

A reader sent me an email today. I thought I might as well share the added tips/info here:

“I have around 8 sites with EPN, 2 of the sites make up the majority of the earnings. I guess the 80/20 theory was true. I cut off EPN on my lower earning sites, I don’t want my EPN account canceled.

Start with 5 sites in 5 different niches. Focus them around products, you can check out Ebay Pulse for ideas. If you want a general idea of the profitability of a niche you can use the Google Adwords Traffic Cost Estimator and it will tell you the Cost Per Click advertisers are paying. The more they pay generally the more profitable the niche is.

I outsource pretty much everything I do now, from backlinks to content. I’ve now even hired someone to post content to my blogs and I’ve found I can build sites faster this way.

But when I first started I was writing and posting everything myself. I wasn’t big on link building then but once I started really linkbuilding I could see how much of an effect it had on my traffic and earnings.”

Similar Posts:

• Spinned Article Marketing Case Studies
• Contextual Link Building For Dummies
• 5 Super-Easy Ways You Can Build Links in the Next 30 Minutes
• My Quest in Linkbait Mastery – Part 2
• How to Get Your Press Releases Listed in Google News and Get Free One-Way Backlinks

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