I am very happy to say that WordBay got approved for listing on the WordPress plugin directory, so it’s kind of officially launched now!
Save the congratulations though, because this did cause a couple of issues:
1) I realised that I had left the new, fancy graphical icon out of the release package - doh! And I wondered why people were asking me about that!
2) The WordBay plugin directory name now has to be changed to lower case - “wordbay”, because that is how the files get packed in the WordPress plugin repository. Which means that if you already have WordBay installed, you need to deactivate it, update the files with version 0.92 (just WordBay.php actually) and change the name of the directory to lower case - “wordbay”, and then reactivate the plugin (having refreshed the Plugins screen). Let me know if there are any issues with this - sorry for the hassle, it took me by surprise. And just getting a plugin uploaded to the repository is darned confusing if you’ve never used it before, let me tell you…
Hidden sales?
By the way, has anyone noticed a strange phenomenon in their EPN earnings? Firstly, they seem to be improving, secondly the daily and other reports are not showing all the transactions, or else they are posting them very late! I downloaded the transaction report and found about 3 times more sales than were shown on the web interface. I’m not complaining, but there is something strange there!
Posted on June 10th, 2008 by admin
Filed under: Uncategorized
Just read about it at DP, and came right over. I will try this out tonight. Congrats on getting in the WP directory.
You’re going to make phpbay very unhappy. BANS does sub directories, so I’m hoping you’ll be working on that…
Hi, thanks for the comments!
I must admit I had no idea phpbay existed when I started putting WordBay together, in fact I didn’t even really know what BANS was - I was still just dabbling with affiliate marketing and thought, wouldn’t it be cool if I could populate my blog pages with eBay listings. I see now it looks really similar, even the way the links are masked!
I had no intention of competing with other products, but have no intention of charging for WordBay either. Want the truth? I would love to charge a few pennies for WordBay but I am no programmer and cannot guarantee the necessary quality of support. And I have a completely different full-time occupation anyway! So I will rely on the odd generous user donating, or sharing impressions, that’ll do me.
By the way, by sub-directories, do you mean sub-CATEGORIES? I’d love to improve functionality more, but I fear that will mean moving over from the RSS feed to the eBay API - that would be great, far more flexibility, but far more work too…
Yes, thank you for the correction that is what I meant. You probably know that ebay partners can grab an RSS from the advanced search already but it doesn’t include the subs either. They also have a tool called “editor kit” and that has some good points but some limits too.
So now that you’re experimenting too it’ll be interesting to see where things go. So here’s what I’m seeing so far.
That’s cool, everybody does now.
-glad to hear money wasn’t your goal; because you’ve to a donation button over here, and on the options page; a donation button on the top of the plugin, your affiliate code in the middle, a 5% deduction bottom at the bottom…
-my version says version .9 and I downloaded from the latest release page, some of the wording indicates it’s actually .92 as of the 10th?
-Can’t figure out how to get it going, is there something on the “Write post” menu I should be looking for after it’s activated?-That’s ok I just found the instruction page with all the detailed code to insert. (maybe add a link in the body of download page to the installation page)
-Which version of WP will it work with just 2.5.1 or 2.3.3 also? ok, I see what happened. 2.3.3 doesn’t have autoupgrade, but when I installed it on a 2.5.1 blog it was able to autoupgrade to.92
-might change “Not found what you were looking for?” to “didn’t”. And on the options page you’ve got “Remember to choose eBay Motors here, too, if you have chosen an.” is there more to that?
-defaults to products in the UK, is that where you are?
So I’m less tired than I was last night, but I was able to give it a nice look over and I think it’ll be a great alternative out there in the community. Hope my input is useful.
Now THAT’s feedback! Thanks dude.
Yes, the donation options are a subtle hint! In other words, I want people to use and donate, but don’t want all the hassle of properly technically supporting the thing :D. Actually, it would be nice to cover the time spent working on it, because it’s almost totally unjustifiable at the moment, unless I start earning a bit more from my own niche sites with the plugin! I actually have a real job which is nothing to do with programming.
In order to include the possibility of sub-categories the easiest way would be to let people type in a category code into a field in the back-end. The category codes are listed somewhere on eBay. Otherwise I would have to start using the API, as eBay sub-categories are frequently shifting around and I would have to have the admin panel fetch an updated list from the API. So I will consider the manual option - thanks for the suggestion.
Yes, the editor kit I am really not keen on simply because it’s JavaScript - doesn’t get indexed, case rested. Not such a problem if you are monetising a site with existing good traffic, but no good if you are trying to create a niche site from scratch.
Will add a link to the install page just to make sure people don’t get confused. I hope I am not causing confusion with the version numbers - the new option in Wordpress is great, to automatically update plugin versions. It does this by connecting to the repository, so I will always make sure that is up-to-date.
Thanks for the correction - “Didn’t find what you were looking for” is better, will change! And as for that sentence about eBay Motors - no idea what happened there! It was supposed to say “…if you have chosen an eBay Motors site”
I am not actually in the UK - I am a UK expat though so I guess that was the reason for my strange lapse - I noticed that too, everything else is set to US, but the site ID is UK… showing my true coloUrs! Will change that too, might mess things up for someone.
Much thanks for the input - I won’t chase you for a donation now
I will keep working on improving it as much as time allows. I am also a user of the plugin and use modified and UNmodified version on a number of niche sites, so I do have an interest in it being as good as possible!
Looks like a great start and congrats on getting listed as an official plugin! You should set the default impression share to like 5% and leave a short note about it in the admin panel that it is set to that so people don’t throw a fit. But that way you will get a lot of lazy people leaving it there as is.
Maybe also ask that they link to your own blog stores as a favor to help get your sites indexed and ranked better ;).
I haven’t used bans myself but it’s a “stand alone” store setup which is nice. But I actually prefer the wordpress plugins because adding it on top of wordpress really gives you a lot of options and a ton of resources since there are plenty of free themes and plugins to help make it even better.
The two main wordpress plugins that are out there, that I know about, and which are paid plugins, are:
phpbay and bayrss
You should be able to find what features are really helpful by seeing what they include as they have been developing theirs for a while and probably included a lot of customer request and such.
I wrote about them all and about a basic test blog here: http://dotdriven.com/index.php/12/affiliate-marketing-101-bootstrappin-myself/
Not much on the specifics of each though but I hope to do that in the future. Maybe when you get a bit further along and compare them against yours to really show how great wordbay is ;).
Keep it up though!
Hey “DotDriven” - thanks for some more awesome feedback!
I thought I was fairly transparent about the sharing, but I guess it is shoved down the bottom a bit. Now, the question is do I make it blindingly obvious, or rely on people actually reading the instructions properly? I’ll think about it - I like things to be as transparent as possible.
Re: backlinks, thanks for the idea - I did think about adding a footer link, but again I really didn’t want to limit people’s use of the plugin. Maybe you’re right - a backlink or two to my stores would be nice!
Yes, I think things are very flexible in combination with WordPress - I haven’t used the standalone packages, but for someone with at least a bit of coding knowledge this WP + plugin combination really gives you lots of possibilities.
Your write-up is great - as I say, I really didn’t set out to emulate the other packages, but I guess “borrowing” a few ideas won’t get my kneecaps broken or anything! I have tons of other ideas too, like geotargetting and harvesting search referral terms and doing something nefarious with them. But it all takes TIME… argh!!
Thanks for your encouragement!
I haven’t actually started using this yet, just been reading the comments here and at DP. But from what I’ve seen so far great job.
About that earnings difference between the web report and the download, yeah! I just checked it out. I’ve got double the earnings I thought this month, starting with the first of the month. They aren’t that far behind, are they? What’s up with that?
#1. I had to change my directory to WordBay to get it to work
#2. When I click on one of the ebay items it just gives a 404 error,I have SF URLs
and ideas?