Posted in | 18 Comments
Building a Youtube Ebay Amazon Mashup Affiliate Site
Mark at 45n5 has just announced that he earned $99.60 from one of his affiliate sites from one commission. Of course, this does not represent his usual earnings, but it is still pretty exciting.
It made me look further at the type of site he was buiding. He calls it his Youtube Ebay Amazon Mashup Affiliate Site, and he is giving out the script for free.
The script takes your keywords and builds a site, one page per keyword. On the page, it has a YouTube video, some Amazon products, and some Ebay auctions. You can add AdSense if you wish. It works best on product-type niches, because the earnings come from commissions on the Amazon products and the Ebay auctions.
He made it sound so easy, so I decided to try it out.
Well, first you have to get some API keys – one from Ebay and one from Amazon. In addition, if you are not signed up for Commission Junction, you will need to do that to get the affiliate id’s for Ebay, and you will need an Amazon affiliate id. You no longer need a Youtube ID.
It takes time to get all these keys and ID’s, but you only have to do it one time.
After that, I had some trouble because YouTube has changed their developer API since it was purchased by Google. The old script was no longer picking up the videos. Mark fixed it today, so that should be ok.
Once everything is set up and you have created your first site, the rest are easy. I actually created one on a subdomain of my dog site while my boyfriend was making tea this evening. (My first site took a long time – this was my second site.)
The dog one was pretty easy because the videos all seemed ok. However, on some sites, you might need to be careful of what videos show up. On the sample site I set up to show you, I had to eliminate some keywords because I did not like the videos that showed up.
I think you could take parts of this script and adapt them for different purposes. You could eliminate the video part, or hand-pick your videos.
I have never tried an automated script for creating sites before. I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was, and how nicely the site turned out. I can see that this will be really useful.
Mark just creates these sites as standalone sites and forgets them. I think it would work better to have them as subdomains on established sites, so you could link to them from your established site and get traffic right away. Otherwise, you will have to work on getting traffic somehow.
Here is the sample site that I set up for you to see, on a domain that I just happened to have, that I was not using: Custom Patio Design. I did modify Mark’s script to use better colors, and I added AdSense.
If you feel comfortable making some small modifications to a couple of files, this script could be very useful to you. (Mark has a video on how to make the changes to the files.)
- Pat Doyle
Trackbacks/Pingbacks
- Best Headlines of the Week - November 2, 2007 | Nathania Johnson - [...] Building a Youtube Ebay Amazon Mashup Affiliate Site - Pat Doyle [...]
- Some Surprises From Christmas Amazon Ebay Mashups… » Pat Doyle - [...] I had a few surprising things happen when I created an Amazon Ebay mashup site for Christmas. I posted ...
thanks for mentioning the script
I agree 100%. The first time is a little confusing because you need to understand what the “keys” are and stuff, but after that making them is a breeze.
also remember it’s creative commons with attribution. anybody can feel free to mash it up even more.
mark
That is great Pat. I really like the patio website. Pretty cool idea.
Yes, it’s really fun. I can think of a lot of uses for this now.
A big hat tip to you Pat and of course to Mark for putting this together. Folks who have even an inkling they might profit from something like this should give it a test flight … there is nothing to lose.
RE: the API’s … to all, go forth and get while you can. For example I have a certain Google API I got a year or more ago that Google has now stopped giving away … always take free opportunities like that “just in case”
This is very good, Pat. I gotta let Mark know that as well. It’s put a few more ideas into my head.
Interesting script, thanks for sharing… this is actually the first i have heard of it.
Dave, good idea about getting the API’s!
Glad everyone likes the script. I think it’s really cool, and can be modified to be used for many things.
Hi Pat,
Great job. I’m about to give the script a try. Care to share how you made the site/template look so different (and great). I really like the patio and christmas designs.
Scott
Hi Scott, I just changed the template a little. I think I changed the template.php and maybe one of the others. Maybe one day I’ll do a post about it. Thanks.
what is the ebay script set to display? it isn’t most recent. I really can’t tell.
Hi M, I’m not very good at php, and I’m not sure if I ever got the ebay part of the script working correctly. (I never got any commissions for the ebay part – just from Amazon and AdSense.) You can get the latest version of the script from Mark at http://www.45n5.com/ (see the link above in my post). He would probably be better at answering your questions than I would.
We’ve developed an ebay affiliate product that is very easy to use. (http://www.hitprofit.com)
Since eBay is no longer with CJ, has any one changed the script to use the new ebay network partner associate ID.
I believe Mark has said that he is not going to update the script. You will have to make the changes yourself or use something else. I am going to be trying BANS.
Very interesting read. I think I’ve come a little too late to take advantage of the Ebay marketplace but I will keep this valuable information in mind.
I didn’t expect that affiliates start several years ago. Up to now, not all people are aware about the in and out of affiliate marketing.
Hi Pat,
Great tutorial, will try to use it with my new site
Regards,
Janet Gify
I’m still studying the flow of affiliate marketing as an online business. Still looking forward to be a better affiliate marketer. Hopefully soon, I get my first dollar.