Late last week I purchased the Phpbay Pro eBay affiliate plugin for Wordpress and have been playing around with it the past several days. I built 3 sites and also installed the plugin on DotWeekly to play around with it here as well, so I wanted to share a little review about it. Phpbay offers more than just a Wordpress plugin btw, they offer API options and PhpZon which is an Amazon affiliate.

So what is PhpBay Pro? It is a plugin that allows you to display products listed on eBay on a web site you create to help you make money with your site. The plugin works through the EPN or eBay Partner Network affiliate program. You will need an EPN account if you use the plugin, and it is free to sign up.

Cost? I paid $79 for Phpbay Pro for Wordpress.

Install? Installing Phpbay Pro via Wordpress is likely "harder" than most plugins you may have installed if you used WP before but is manageable if you simply follow the directions. If you happened to notice DotWeekly down a little bit earlier today, it was because I screwed up my .htaccess file when updating it with what is needed with Phpbay.

The .htaccess file is pretty easy to update, as the code you need to add to your file is provided in the Phpbay settings page, I just happened not to see a .htaccess file for DotWeekly and I just uploaded one. When I uploaded the new one, it replaced the "hidden" one and messed up my site.

Overall, the install part is fairly easy after you do it once. There are 3 things to upload via FTP (images, auction.php and the plugin) and you have to add or modify the .htaccess file.

Settings? The settings are very easy to update via Settings / Phpbay Pro in your Wordpress backend and I had no issues with this. There are a lot of options, so choose wisely with what you want.

Theme? Since the 3 sites I built were new installs, I had to pick a theme I liked to use PhpBay Pro with. The theme will really depend on how you use Phpbay and doesn’t have to be a "free" theme, it is just what I picked. 3 of the sites I did, I made like a "store", so the plugin is the majority of the site and the theme reflects the site a lot IMO. I searched around and found a couple free themes and kept  trying them until I got one that I liked for each specific site. This took a little bit of time, but now I have 3 different themes I know work well. I used ThemeLab to find the free themes.

How does it work?

After you install everything, the system (phpbay) basically runs off code you put into a page or post you write. The code is simple but you have 18 options within the code. Keywords, categories, how many items to display etc. Based on what you put into this short code, is what will display or what will not display. Using the short code allows you to pretty much get results to show exactly as you wish. The short code is heavily explained and is included with the download. Again, if you follow the directions, it is pretty easy to follow but I do think they could redo the way the short code works or is displayed. Basically, each "option" is a numbered section of the short code. You do not have to put in an option for every one, so when you have empty ones, they are blank but you have to have as many fields as the last option you wish to use. This makes it hard to put the right numbers in the proper field.

Example: (Code/Keyword, amount, , , , , , , 2, 3, , ,/Code)

It is easy to get lost in your count with those , , , , etc. If you use all 18 options, which you do use.. it sucks counting out the spaces.

The importance of the short code is vital to showing the most relevant items, so you learn to live with it. The short code allows you the options you need when building the page or inserting a block of relevant products in text.

Samples of sites I did with PhpBay Pro using Wordpress? I will display two of them and explain a little bit about both.

CheapRemotes.com ~ This domain has a little bit of traffic already, specific to remote controls, so I thought it would be better to display relevant products to the visitors instead of parking the domain. Building the site and doing a little bit of SEO will help it get search traffic as well, which parking was not doing. I used sub pages to further break down the different types of remote controls in the right side bar and listed specific types of remote controls based on keyword research I did. The theme has a tech feel to it and I stayed pretty basic on the unique content I wrote for each page. You will notice I didn’t write a whole lot, but I think enough that will help the site! Again, with the short code, you can display items that have bids, by keyword, remove keywords, specific price ranges, locations, buy it now etc. Some remotes didn’t have much listed, so I set it to show a fair amount but not too much. Some keywords had a bunch of listings, so I choose to display items that maybe had at least 1 bid.

ColorWax.com ~ This domain also had some traffic and actually was built using BANS script. eBay changed link structures and BANS no longer worked. The owners of BANS were looking to sell the site recently and well.. you know how that goes. So anyway, I rebuilt the site using PhpBay Pro and think it turned it nice. I think PhpBay also has more options and is easier to use than BANS.. so I am happy BANS stopped working.

ColorWax.com is a really small niche, but based on my research, it appeared that people were looking for Color Automotive Wax. So I set it to default to show different color automotive wax and based the site on auto detailing products. I added several other popular brands of auto detailing products as well as other car cleaning products.

As I stated, I played around for about 15 minutes and added a couple small things here on DotWeekly using Phpbay also. I added a Domain Store which is solely run off of PhpBay Pro. Very similar to the above two sites but just giving you another option for a specific page on your site.

You can also just add in products directly into your posting as well if you like and use really any keyword or category to match what you are writing about.

If you build mini sites, have a blog or several blogs, I think the PhpBay Pro Wordpress plugin is easily worth the $79 purchase price. You can build some very detailed sites using Phpbay and most you build, people will have no clue. (you can remove the "Powered By PhpBay" if you wish as well.

Let me know what you think of the sites and the included products in the posting. I know there are many more options to this plugin to use that I have not even touched on, but I have only had it less than a week and already have 3 full sites up and running (with 2 making money already). I wanted to get my feet wet with it and the best way to do that often times, is to use it. I’m sure I will discover many more cool features and functions the more I use it. If you use Phpbay, I would be interested to hear your thoughts on it. If you are considering purchasing it to try it, feel free to let me know if you have any questions and I will try my best to help.