So if your in the same boat and you have hundreds (thousands?) of RSS urls hard-coded into files across multiple servers I would recommend you get working, perhaps the following will be of use. I should mention at this point that Auction 2 Post users (and Bans, Wordbay etc.) will not suffer any fallout as they use the shopping api (which is sensible now, but back in 2006 wasn’t an accessible option.)

I have written a quick transformation script (js) which will take an old epn RSS url (http://rss.api.ebay.com/ws/rssapi?…) and transform it into a new one (http://rest.ebay.com/epn/v1/find/item.rss?…), if you only have a few urls to change over then it might be enough for you:

If you have a LOT of these urls in files (like I do) then you might want to use something a little more automated. In my case I wrote a complete FTP spider which flies for each and every file hunting for old ebay RSS urls, transforming them and updating the pages. This was fine in my case because mine were pretty standardly laid out, similar use etc. I wouldn’t recommend it if you use the extremity of the RSS parameters.

Anyhow as the FTP crawler was pretty huge of a code puke, I might release that separately at some point (it has other good uses ;)), here is the csharp for transforming old RSS urls into new ones though (Note: it doesnt deal with all the parameters, only the most common/ones I use regularly, it may need tailoring.)

static string transformEPNRSSUrl(string inputUrl)
{
    string transformed = "http://rest.ebay.com/epn/v1/find/item.rss?";

    //split url by ?
    string[] splitUrl = inputUrl.Split(new char[] { '?' });

    //split second by &
    string[] splitParams = splitUrl[1].Split(new char[] { '&' });

    //new params
    string newParams = "";

    //transform params
    foreach (string s in splitParams)
    {
        string retID = "";
        string retVal = "";
        string[] sV = s.Split(new char[] { '=' });

        //mostly :p
        retVal = sV[1];

        //see if tis required
        if (sV[0] == "sacat") { retID = "categoryId1"; }
        if (sV[0] == "satitle") { retID = "keyword"; }
        if (sV[0] == "afepn") { retID = "campaignid"; }
        if (sV[0] == "customid") { retID = "customid"; }
        if (sV[0] == "saprclo") { retID = "minPrice"; }
        if (sV[0] == "saprchi") { retID = "maxPrice"; }
	
        if (retID != "")
        {
            if (newParams != "") { newParams += "&"; } //for all but first
            newParams += retID + "=" + retVal;
        }

        //last few additions 24/06/2011
        if (sV[0] == "fts" && sV[1] == "2") { newParams += "descriptionSearch=true"; }
        if (sV[0] == "sascs" && sV[1] == "2") { newParams += "listingType1=AuctionWithBIN&listingType2=FixedPrice"; }

    }

    transformed += newParams;
    //following is some defaults for me, check these yourself, use:
    //http://woodylabs.com/scripts/ebay-epn-rss-url-converter.php
    transformed += "&sortOrder=EndTimeSoonest&programid=15&toolid=10039&listingType1=All&lgeo=1&feedType=rss";

    return transformed;
}

Use both the transformer script page and the csharp code at your own peril, it worked for me over hundreds of urls, mostly without a hitch, but thats not saying it will for you. Check your urls, after all each is probably worth £ to you. Visit the RSS urls and use the ebay tool validator to check the RSS feed has worked!

Just a quick mention of the positives of ebay deciding to rip out the old system (its not all a pain in the arse!):

• It reminded me how widespread my old ebay affiliate sites are, it was a good excuse to take stock and write FTPCrawler
• The whole system is much cleaner, parameter wise
• The introduction of multiple selection parameters is useful
• The new RSS generator is nice (as much as anyone uses the thing

The post Ebay Partner Network Changes RSS Urls (again) first appeared on Woody Hayday | Blog.

If you are an EPN (Ebay Partner Network) affiliate you will be familiar with their latest scheme which has been in play since Nov 09 or similar – the idea of a quality based click through deal whereby the higher the quality of traffic you send through to them the higher they pay you per click. The hybrid system encapsulating the benefits of PPC while associating to a finer level with quality seems to be working well on the whole but does change the game slightly.

The set-up before the move to EPC was clear – a campaign and its sub id’s (channels, custom id’s) were there to allow the publisher a clearer view on what was working – a means to allow them to refine their sites and provide a better quality through to ebay which returned more sales and which ultimately benefited both parties. This would mean traditionally a campaign per website and sub-id’s (channels) for each sub category, sub page, sub item or whatever would sufficiently track transactions and allow for later refinement, later. However with the adoption of EPC the campaign gained a new association in the relationship.

As it stands EPC is calculated per campaign (as I understand it) which means if we lazily coast on with the bigger sites all pummelling single campaigns our EPC is far from efficient. Say a site is getting 3000 clicks through to ebay a day, its set up as a single campaign with about 20 sections underneath it all using custom id’s so as you can track transactions later. Overall the campaign gets a measly 0.01 – 0.04 EPC per day depending on the moon or whatever. This 0.01-0.04 EPC is paid out for all 3000 clicks. Great. But if a single sub page is responsible for 1000 of those click through’s and is producing a 0.00 or a 0.01p EPC (performing badly) then potentially it pulls down the epc value of the other 2000 clicks.

In efforts to pull one of my larger sites from the low EPC it currently resides at I have now split it from being a single campaign with custom id’s to being nearly 20 campaigns titled “site – subcampaign x” – effectively making campaigns of the major customid’s. This does make the nice epn reports messier to look at but its all for the sake of refinement. If everything is averaged before calculating epc this should not really affect all that much, however based on the first week or so it seems to offer two clear advantages. Firstly its making me more money. The split up site is averaging a higher EPC overall and higher returns. Spreading it across multiple campaigns seems to distinguish the better from the worse allowing a higher overall average epc value per click. Secondly in terms of finding the poor performers from the group it couldn’t be simpler. No more digging around in transaction logs that really were built to allow refinement under the old system – you can see the epc’ of each area of a big site strait from the management reports – it allows you to identify the 1p-epc area’s of your site and axe them or improve them.

I am sure ebay will dilligently continue to improve their toolset for the epn, especially as I am sure they don’t want millions of campaigns created like this (lol), but in the meantime splitting your larger breadwinning campaigns may be a worthy pursuit – I shall repost in a month or so with some progress.

Probably not worth doing on your Auction 2 post sites this one! haha!

The post Ebay Partner Network Experiments – Splitting Campaigns for EPC? first appeared on Woody Hayday | Blog.

Ebay Partner Network responded with a blog post about this yesterday. You wouldn’t blame them if they coldly denied to pay all affiliates for earnings that they effectively didn’t make during the tempremental service, however they look to be providing us with a token possitive sum gesture. This helps epn stand out amongst networks and shows that they acknowledge the shared benefits affiliate promotion offers, certainly it cements epn in the uk as being a solid entrance to affiliate marketing.

“We have finalized calculations for a makegood that will use the earnings on the days before and the days after the outage, along with a factor to account for Christmas seasonality, to calculate a makegood to make up for the decrease in affiliate earnings caused by this outage.

This makegood will be added to each account and will be paid out along with the December payment”

(Taken from the Ebay Partner Network Blog post re the November 21st Site outage Makegood – posted 07th Dec 09.)

The post Ebay Partner Network Xmas Bonus? – EPN Look after their affiliates first appeared on Woody Hayday | Blog.

But irrelevant of the selling gumpf I had heard good things. In the uk it worked out as £68 or so with currency conversion to buy Auction 2 Post and a pack of 20 themes and it is, worth it. Worth it that is if you intend to use it to satisfy a need. I wouldn’t buy it if you are just looking for some new “get rich quick scheme” to burn your money into, get it if you know wordpress, get it if you already have some ebay sites (php bay, bans, bespoke – please say you have bespoke!) or a good use within an established site network/blog context.

There are lots of ways  you can use Auction 2 post, essentially it just posts ebay auctions as posts’ and offers you a host of ways of doing that, within templates, automatically etc. and you can stay within the ebay partner network rules as long as you invest a bit of time in reading them (you should do this when you sign up, by the way!) A word of caution at this point though, EbayPartnerNetwork is apparently getting hotter on the unscrupulous affiliate and if you were not careful you could probably tear their Terms of Service to shreds with this plugin, not that I would know about doing that! EPN (Ebay Partner Network) is lucrative and worth investing time if your a natural SEO developer, auction 2 post is a nice implementation of a wordpress plugin that helps you into this – but its all about how you use it!

I won’t go into how I am using this WordPress plugin, or how you should – there are a lot of great ways this can work for you. I have set up several experimental sites and am using it in xx other blogs, I will perhaps release some results, experiences and stats in the near future, although we don’t want A2p to get too big do we The forum’s and support for Auction 2 Post are great, zizby/radio is quick to respond to your questions about the plugin – the member area is simple but I have found a few dead links – nothing important and I am sure they’ll fix this. In essence if you know what your doing with the web and wordpress you need this plugin in your affiliate arsenal!

Get Auction 2 Post
(Just skip through the blurb and click order now)

The post Auction 2 Post first appeared on Woody Hayday | Blog.