Great news from EPN (eBay Partner Network). EPN is extending the migration deadline until May 31st, 2008. The original deadline was April 30th. About one third of affiliates haven’t switched-over to EPN from CJ yet. I think that was the main reason behind the extension. I really think it was a good move from EPN. It showed that they actually listen to affiliates.

Migration deadline extended until May 31st
April 25th, 2008

We wanted to thank all our affiliates for your effort in switching your links to the eBay Partner Network. We’re off to a great start and we are happy to report that in the three weeks since launch, more than two thirds of our affiliates’ traffic has already moved over to the new system.

Several of you have asked for a bit more time in migrating your links. Because we know there are some special circumstances that may require this, we have arranged to extend the migration deadline until May 31st. This will apply to Half.com and all eBay countries migrating EXCEPT Belgium, Netherlands, Hong Kong, and Singapore, which will still expire on April 30th).

Read the rest of the news

If you are a BANS (Build a Niche Store) user, make sure to update your BANS 3.0 script immediately. As you know, eBay affiliate program is leaving CJ and going inhouse as of April 1st, 2008. I think the major bugs have been addressed and it’s pretty safe to move-in now. I just finished updating all of my BANS sites. It was easy.

Adam and Kelvin did an excellent job providing the update files within the days of EPN launch. That’s why I have high hopes for BANS. It takes less than 5 minutes to update your BANS to BANS EPN.

One important thing. After updating your script, log-in to your admin panel and update the “campaign id” You can create a new campaign in EPN’s control panel. Copy the EPN campaign id and replace your old CJ id with it. That’s the only thing required to make BANS work with EPN.

Create a New Campaign

Find the Campaign ID

If you need help with updating your BANS sites, let me know. I will be able to help.

Hi everyone. I just came up with another set of niche topics just for you. These topics are randomly picked, so the research part has to be done by you. The list is sorted by the average CPC. Here is the link:

50 Random Niche Topics - Set 2

*In this list, the total searches are not included and marked as NA.

Here are some random niche topics for you to explore. If you feel stuck, this list will help you get some topics that you’d never thought of before. Click the link below to see the list.

50 Random Niche Topics

Today, I want to share with you a very easy niche marketing model that can make you money. It is easy and it has to do with videos. If executed right, you will be able to make money with free content.

The Concept

Basically, you create a niche blog with videos from free video sites. The key point here is finding the right niche. That sounds familiar? It all starts with finding a right niche audience. Once you find your audience, head over to one of the free video sites and get the link from them. Before you do anything with them, make sure to read their TOS.

For example, If your niche is about “wedding proposal”, you can create a blog and collect videos of various wedding proposals from video sources. You can show the video directly from your blog, but some video sites don’t allow you to do it for commercial purposes. So again, read their TOS. If they don’t allow that, you can write a description and post a link to the video. In my opinion, tt does the same job. But the benefits of letting your visitors watch videos from your website could be substantial.

You have a captive audience who is exposed to your advertisements for a long time. That’s the key beneft of showing the video directly from your blog. Make sure to include a good description with keywords in it. It is what makes your site different from the others.

I’ve seen niche blogs that shows videos of animations, various wedding clips, cats, dogs, cars, international dramas, commercials and many more.

Here is a small list of video sites you can get the content for your site.
1) veoh
2) MyspaceTV
3) Youtube
4) MegaVideo

I know there are many many more sites where you can get your videos for your niche blogs.

How to Make Money with Niche Video Blogs

For monetization, I recommend 2 affiliate products on the left column and contextual advertisement on the right column. 2 affiliate products have to be relevant to your content and I strongly suggest that you write your own ad (even have these ads rotated every 2 min using iframe and refresh). Make it open a new window when the ad is clicked. Otherwise, your visitor will get annoyed and leave the site.

You can sort of sorround your video with advertisements, but I found it more profitable making them stay longer on my site instead. For example, on the bottom of your video, offer links to smililar videos using a related posts plugin. If your videos are series, off the links to previous episodes.

This model can be a stand alone model or can be added to your current niche website. If you are in a wedding niche, you can do something like a wedding bloopers blog on a subdomain.

UPDATE : Here is a demo site. Funny Wedding Bloopers
Now go make more money with this idea! Thanks for reading.

It happens quite often with my niches. I do nothing, and yet, my sites rank #1 for many keywords. It doesn’t happen overnight, but I’ve seen it happen many times.

So what am I talking about here?

In some niches, you can win over your competitors just by staying in the market long enough. Internet marketers tend to come into a niche market and pack their stuff in a few months. If they don’t see the profit right away, they usually end up leaving their website half-developed. Those domains don’t get renewed and acquired by domain parking services.

When you feel like you have no chance of getting a slice of pie in your chosen niche market, sometimes, you can claim the whole pie just by waiting long enough. So hang in there…

I’m currently updating the niche marketing forum from phpBB2 to phpBB3. It’s almost ready, but I just couldn’t figure out how to integrate TLA (Text Link Ads) code with phpBB3.

By default, phpBB3 templates don’t process PHP code. With phpBB2, I was able to find an easy work-around since many members have already done it. Since phpBB3 is still new and in RC stage, I had to find a way to make it happen myself.

First of all, I have to tell you that I’m not a programmer. So if you know a better way to accomplish this, PLEASE let me know. Let’s begin.

How to integrate TLA ads with phpBB3

1) Create a file called “textad.php” and put your TLA’s PHP code for your account. Save it in the same directory as where your local_xxxxx.xml file is located.

2) Open /includes/functions.php *try to use text editors like notepad, or edit directly from Cpanel. Using Dreamweaver or other editors can cause annoying errors.

3) Find ‘SITENAME’ => $config['sitename'], and right above this line add:

'TEXT_LINK_ADS' => $text_link_ads,


4) About 3 lines above, find :

// The following assigns all _common_ variables that may be used at any point in a template.


5) Add the following code below or above it :

ob_start();
include("textad.php");
$text_link_ads = ob_get_contents();
ob_end_clean();


5) Save

6) Open any of the template files and add the following code where you want to display the ad :

{TEXT_LINK_ADS}


Well, that’s it! you are done. :)

The first episode of Joel Comm’s new reality show, “The Next Internet Millionaire” is not going to be available today. The first episode was supposed to be ready today, but due to their computer issues, it is being delayed.

EDITED 8/17 It’s now live. You can now watch it here.

Meanwhile, have fun watching the teaser.

According to W3Schools.com’s browser statistics page, IE6 is the most widely used browser among all. This means we need to tweak our websites for IE6 as well. Unfortunately, IE6 is full of CSS bugs.

You should check your sites using IE6 if you haven’t yet. Most of my new sites are totally messed up because I made them solely for FireFox and IE7. I will need to go back and change all of my CSS files.

But how do you go about checking your sites with IE6 if you’ve already installed IE7?

There is a great freeware that enables you to install multiple Internet Explorers. You can download it from here.

After downloading it, just follow the installation wizard. Don’t bother with anything under IE5. Just focus on IE6. If you have some energy to burn, try IE5 as well.

So here is my first BANS (Build a Niche Store) v1.3 demo. I just finished my “Coffee Grinder Auctions” site a few minutes ago. I chose coffee grinders as my niche based on my search through eBay using my eBay method. It took me a few days to fully understand how the script works, but it was definitely a fun process.

If I had chosen a pre-defined category (with category numbers) as my niche, it would’ve been much easier to make a BANS store. But I chose a niche that didn’t have a eBay’s category number. Because of that, I had to do extra customizations.

The site still needs a cosmetic touch-ups, especially the home page. But at the moment, it’s functional. After my first experience, I’m pleased to tell you that this script met my expectations. Adam, one of the owners of the site/script was a great help. He’s always visible at the members forum, and he can be easily reached via PM. So far, he answered my questions in less than an hour. Impressive.

I will post more updates on “Build a Niche Store” as I develop more sites with it.