Content, Themes and Headers…Oh My!
I received another email from Bob this week. You remember Bob, don’t you? He’s the gentleman who emailed me a couple of weeks ago wanting to know if it is really possible to make money as an eBay affiliate.
It seems that Bob has finally decided to take action and give The eBay® Affiliate Blog System a try.
Woo Hoo! Way to go, Bob!!
Now that he’s on his way towards building an eBay affiliate blog empire, he has a few questions about content, themes and headers for his WordPress blog sites.
In case you don’t recall reading about Bob before, you can check out my previous post here: http://www.instantaffiliateblogs.com/?p=8
Here’s my response to Bob (he thanked me for answering his earlier questions)…
You’re Welcome, Bob!
Congratulations and kudos to you for taking action!
I’m also glad to hear you were cool with me using your questions to, hopefully, help others on my list.
And, thanks for contacting me again with your questions. I’ll do my best to answer them.
“Do you write all of the articles [for your eBay blogs] yourself?”
No, I have a ton of PLR articles which I’ve collected from various places over the years, so I usually just lightly rewrite some of those, or even post them “as is.” As you discovered when you did your search on the sentence from one of my blog posts, most people never use the PLR articles they receive, otherwise you would have found more than one other site using that article. And, no, the other site you found is not mine.
You’re right, I didn’t write much in the guide about where to find content for your blogs. There are a couple of paragraphs at the top page 68 of the guide [from The eBay Affiliate Blog System Package] where I give tips for writing posts for your blogs and where to get ideas and info for those posts. The articles for your blog don’t have to be very long, 200-300 words is sufficient, because the eBay RSS feed also provides some keyword rich content and add a bit of uniqueness as well.
Another thing I do on some of my blogs is add the free Unique Article Wizard plug-in to have content automatically sent to my blog. I have it set up to send the articles as drafts so I can approve them, add the BayRSS code to them and schedule a time for them to be published.
You can find the Unique Article Wizard plug-in here: http://www.uniquearticlewizard.com/contact.html#downloads
The plug-in FAQs are here:
http://www.uniquearticlewizard.com/plugin_help.html
“Second question: I hope that this does not upset you.
I noticed in video 3 while you were logged into the ebay partner network page that you had a few other sites.
I typed in their url’s and noticed how nice they look. Would you mind disclosing which theme(s) you used on those?”
Thanks for the compliment, and, no, it doesn’t upset me! The theme I used for those particular eBay affiliate blogs was the Unlimited theme, which is free to use as long as you keep the link in the footer to the developers site intact.
Here’s a tip, if you see a WordPress theme you like, scroll down to the bottom of the page to see if there’s a link in the footer to the developers site. If it’s a free theme, there should be a link there and sometimes the name of the theme is there also as the anchor text for the link.
“Also, your header graphics are terrific. Would you mind disclosing how you created those? … or if you had someone create them for you?”
Some of the header graphics were professionally done and came with the PLR article packages I used as content for the sites and some I created myself using royalty-free images and the image editing software that came with my scanner.
I’m working on a post for the Instant Affiliate Blogs membership forum which explains how to create your own header graphics using royalty-free images and cheap or free image editing software.
As a current owner of The eBay Affiliate Blog System package, you probably received several emails from me in late November about my new membership site, Instant Affiliate Blogs, with a link to sign up for a two week free trial. You should check it out.
You’ll find video tutorials and posts to help you in your online business as well as various techniques for driving traffic your to eBay affiliate blog sites, among other things.
I’m also working on two case studies which I just started this week and I’ll be posting about my progress in the forum.
One case study is about using Google’s Hot Trends for niche research to build some new eBay blog sites and then setting up mini nets using social networking sites to drive traffic to them once I get the eBay affiliate blogs built.
The other is about using a specific social bookmarking site called ClipFire to drive traffic to a set of existing eBay affiliate blog sites to see if I can give them a boost. I’ll be posting my progress and results in the forum.
And, if you don’t know what “mini nets using social networking sites” means or how to use social bookmarking sites like ClipFire, there are posts and videos about it in the members forum.
And, if there’s something you don’t understand or if you want to know more about a specific topic, you can post your questions there in the forum or send me a message using the forum’s instant message system and I’ll answer.
As a member of the Instant Affiliate Blogs site, you’ll also receive weekly update emails each Sunday with highlights of what’s new in the forum, as well as a monthly download email containing reports, guides and tools to help you in your online efforts.
Each monthly download is specifically themed, not just some random stuff, for example, the first monthly download email you’ll receive contains tools and info about researching niches for your eBay affiliate blogs, month two contains info and tools about using and configuring WordPress themes.
I’ve tried to make it so that each monthly download builds on the previous one and all of it is designed to expand on the original eBay affiliate blog system.
Sorry, didn’t mean to turn this into a sales pitch, but I’m very passionate about this membership site and am working hard to provide members with the tools and information they need to succeed.
I just started it about a month ago and, while there’s quite a bit of information in the forum already, I have a ton of information and tutorials I’ll be adding there in the coming months (and years).
HTH,
Tamara
September 03 2010 | Affiliate Marketing | No Comments »
