eBay BBCode Version 2.0.2

[GazOutEast]

Hi Stefan
The problem is that there is no such thing as a universal rover link for using eBay affiliate links.

EBay has 28 sites in different countries and each site is treated as an individual "client" by eBay Partner Network.  Not all of them are included in the ePN and there is a regular joining and withdrawing of their inclusion - this year for example, Germany and Austria moved off Commission Junction and onto ePN, while the ePN program for India and Singapore was withdrawn.  Any hard coding link replacement / insertion tool needs to be run regularly and because it has to search the entire message base (and user signatures etc) could either hammer the server, or damage the database due to overuse (especially on busy forums).

Another problem here is that there are several situations to think of -

1.  Existing links to eBay (the site) as opposed to eBay listings - these should be static, but eBay likes to move things around in it's own server spaces and web taxonomy - links that worked two years ago might be non-existent today (help and policy pages are very prone to this).  These types of links should be a great source of affiliate link opportunity, but their URLs are just too dammed unstable (always changing).  Therefore any script to insert affiliate links to these types of pages needs an auto-verify feature to report http:404 errors at regular intervals.

2.  Existing and new links to eBay products - these are probably not a good idea to leave as permalinks.  eBay only retains closed auction listing content for 90 days after the auction closes, after that, although eBay nicely provides an "oops not here" page rather than causing another layer of 404 errors, it's not great for your user's experience.
    Existing and new links to eBay store and long-run Buy Now items - not even eBay has any say in how long these listings stay live - it's all up to the buyers and sellers, and how much inventory the seller can get their hands on, whether that inventory is replaceable continuously, or was a once-off supply.  This causes the issue that a store or long-run BIN item could actually only be live for a day or two (e.g. front page featured "Deal of the Day" items) or could be there for years with no change other than the top up of quantity (e.g. the wholesale Thai silk scarves we used to sell on eBay).  Again, any link substitution system needs an automated target verifier to manage the retention of those links.

3.  Returning to the point about the unique country identifiers, any auto link inserter also needs capability of knowing which product category table to use for which site - they are not identical between eBay countries - but in theory, this should be taken care of by the forum user initially submitting the link, as they will probably have copy and pasted from the item they're linking to.  However, if providing a keyword-substitution affiliate-link system, then the category hierarchy differences per site do need to be provided for (and those are massive spreadsheets for each eBay country). 

One alternative is to do it the same way as the WordBay plugin for WordPress has done it - where you as the forum owner inputs the relevant category number per country for the highest level of category you want to display links for - this can be all categories (code -1 on all sites) or a top level cat (e.g. home and garden), or a sub-cat (e.g. Patio and BBQ), or a sub-sub cat (e.g. BBQ equipment) and so on.  The problem to this approach is it works fine on a blog where you have a high degree of control over original content, but is not so ideal on a forum where you have zero control (other than as a moderating editor) over the original content in each post.

Another option from the WordPress camp is to use a similar system to the Pretty Links plugin.  Pretty Links (PL) uses a cli.gs / bit.ly type URL shortener for internally created links, then creates an admin editable and manageable table of those links and their partner (the original full URL).  The good point about this approach is that it would allow a cron-based periodic run of link validations, with an admin-side link visual list and editor for site admins/mods to knock out dead links.  It is also perfect for masking URL targets from "mouse hoverers" as well as obviously for shortening the links for tweeting them and so on.  Right now there are two editions of Pretty Links - the free one uses manual link conversion and management, and the premium one ($99 for unlimited sites) which does have the option for auto-replacement of keywords (as per KB Linker discussed previously) as well as auto-tweeting, and a host of other good stuff - but it is only available for WordPress at this point.


As I said in previous posts, I'm not a programmer, just a copy and paste hatchet thrower but I hope there's enough info in my posts to give a mod author some (GPL) source ideas for beefing up a mod like the eBay BBL button to give us all a truly useful plugin from which we can all make money.  If the plugin author works smart, they'll encode an affiliate ID replacement (ePN campaign ID) system for x% of impressions and clicks, as in the long run it'll yield greater adoption of their plugin, and therefore greater revenue, than a straightforward pay-to-use model.  PLus it'll provide residual income, rather than a one-off receipt - I like residual income - it grows with time

I know it doesn't answer your immediate request Stefan, but I hope you can see that a plugin for ePN is a lot more complex than most other affiliate programs, and why a straight hard-coding link replacer for ePN links is not a good idea?

Regards
Gaz

p.s. - I forgot to add - eBay is also continuously changing the category ID numbers on every site.  They used to (3 years ago) say that this was to bring the category structure for all countries onto the same table and organisation.  Lately that has been obviously not true.  There is a lot of category divergence between the sites seen this last year, and what was once a program to have every site on the same call sheet, now appears to be going the opposite way - that is going to be an increasing problem under the current eBay management team.

[hartiberlin]

Okay, I hope somebody will write a script for it.
I would be willing to pay for it.

Also what about other affiliate programs like
Amazon.com
or
overstock.com

?

Many thanks in advance.

Regards, Stefan.

[hartiberlin]

So no taker on this ?

What about a script that changes all  Amazon links inside the forum to the admin´s  Amazon affiliate link ?

Don´t  all the admins of forums want to make some affiliate money ?

[GazOutEast]

Harti - sorry I didn't get back to you on this

I have some ideas on how this can be achieved, but I'm completely swamped right now with client jobs for website new-builds and script-migrations (including a new job that arrived yesterday for a Joomla to WordPress migration - yuch!  I don't like working with Joomla).

It's possible I'll be able to do something with the ePN and other network link masking/replacement some time in mid summer, but if incoming jobs don't slow down, it might be the autumn before I can.

If you send me a PM through the forums here with your email address, then i can leave it in my inbox to contact you as soon as I get a time slot free to work on it.

Regards
Gaz

[hartiberlin]

Too bad,
nobody else got any time to code something like this now ?

Many thanks.

[Running Wild]

Greetings, I just installed this mod on my forum, my suggestion is, is there a way to give the link a custom name like the name of the auction?

[Eclipse16V]

No at present not.

[hartiberlin]

Any news on this ?
What about a code only for Ebay Germany ?

Can I use this tool to use a generic link to the products
from Ebay Germany with this Mod to get my affiliate link
submitted ?

[Eclipse16V]

Hi,
leider wollen sie mich immer noch nicht bei sich im Partnerprogramm von eBay haben.
Somit weiß ich auch nicht wie das dort so aufgebaut ist.

[hartiberlin]

Ja schade,
mich haben Sie wieder aufgenommen.
Du musst am besten mit einem Ebay Account Dich anmelden,
den Du schon lange hast und der 100% positive Bewertungen
hat und auch am besten gewerblich ist,
dann lassen sie Dich rein, denn dann kennen Sie Dich schon
und wissen, dass Du ein Guter Ebayer bist...

Versuch es mal so.

Viel Erfolg !

Gruss, Stefan.

[Eclipse16V]

:-)
Werde es noch mal anders Versuchen.
Melde jetzt aber kein Gewerbe an nur um da rein zu kommen.
Der Verein da meint eh das er der beste ist. Mittlerweile hasse ich den Laden dort.

Ich gebe Bescheid wenn ich News habe.

[hartiberlin]

Hi,
can somebody please program a plugin like this for SMF ?

http://www.zintext.com/

They offer keyword links to EBay offers,
but the problem I see is, that they might just
use all of THEIR affiliate IDs for the
products and you can not see, if they really
only use 10 % of all the clicked links...

So I would like to have something like this for
SMF 2.0RC3 and the upcoming new versions.

Also it would be great, if the Amazon affiliate programs
would also be integrated.



So who is going to take the challenge to program something like this ?

I might also sponsor the development of such a MOD for all admins to use
this then.

We just finally need to get SMF to be able to do some business for us Admins.

It is a shame, that there are Tons of Wordpress plugins, that can
do great affiliate things, but SMF lacks so many things in this area...

Many thanks in advance.

Regards, Stefan.

[hartiberlin]

Any news about the above questions or any new version of this MOD
for RC4 ?

Does nobody want to make money from Ebay Partner Network with their forums ?

Many thanks.

Regards, Stefan.

[Eclipse16V]

Hi,

sorry derzeit ist keine neue Version in Aussicht.
Habe immer noch das Pech das ich dort nicht angenommen werde und außerdem noch nicht zu RC4 gewechselt bin.
Mal sehen was das nächste Jahr bringt.

[dsantana]

I installed the pay version this morning, works great thanks.
At this point I would say the only need for improvement would be that it showed the price as well.
Starting - Buy It Now

[Eclipse16V]

Thanks. I set your improvement suggestion once on the ToDo list. Times see whether one that gets. Will become however difficult.

[dsantana]

Thanks a bunch!!

[Eclipse16V]

New Version!!!

[chadon]

Any news about the above questions or any new version of this MOD
for RC4 ?

Does nobody want to make money from Ebay Partner Network with their forums ?

Many thanks.

Regards, Stefan.

I have been following this topic hoping someone would offer such feature and finally made it myself. Well, it's not really a mod but it can be done by anyone without any code modification.


SMF offers a feature allowing us to replace any word by anything we want. So you can go in the admin panel of your forum under Forum >  Posts and Topics > Censored Words and you enter in the field on the left, the word to add to the list:

Code Select Expand

[url=http://cgi.ebay.com


On the field on the right you place the "word" to have it replaced with so in our case it's the affiliate link with the original domain from Ebay:

Code Select Expand

[url=http://rover.ebay.com/rover//1?ff3=4&pub=PERSONAL_ID&toolid=10001&campid=YOUR_CAMP_ID&customid=&mpre=http://cgi.ebay.com


Here si the result with a link automatically converted

http://www.mustangv8.com/fr/ebay-craiglist-leboncoin/mach-1-1969-peinture-d'origine-usa/


I think this will be a great complement to this Ebay BBC mod. 

[crustybum]

Can anyone in simple terms explain what this mod does?...have installed it and as far as i can see its just a link to an ebay item..