Thalasar Ventures

I am going to take a short digression on how to build a how to build a web mashup without programming and give you a quick tip on monetizing your hosted blogspot blog by adding Ebay Auctions to it. One of the new features of Blogger is the “Add a Feed” feature which allow you to add external RSS feeds for display. It’s like having CaRP built-in to your blogspot blog!

This allows you to monetize your blog in yet another fashion. First off I am going to assume that you have already joined Commission Junction and the Ebay affiliate program. That’s sorta a given for monetizing your blogspot domain in this way. If you haven’t then go ahead and do so Commission Junction should auto approve your application to the Ebay affiliate program.

When adding your web site to Commission Junction, be sure to note the PID that is assigned to your web site. If you don’t note this information you can find this information by logging into CJ, then click on Account, then click on Web Site Settings. From this interface you can look up the PID, add another web site, delete or edit settings on an existing website. CJ does allow multiple web sites and I would recommend adding each site you plan on monetizing this way. This will allow for tracking the performance on each individual site.

Image of the Ebay RSS Feed Generator. Please note the location of the affiliate input.

After writing down the PID of the site you want to work with, you can go to the Ebay RSS Feed Generator. The Ebay RSS feed generator is a powerful tool. You can customize the RSS feed a great deal including category selection, negative keywords, price range, select buying, shipping and payment options. Here’s the page that you are given generating an Ebay RSS feed. As you can see the customization options are numerous and quite powerful. Make sure not to skip over the most essential part – adding your CJ PID to the web site in order to make sure sales are tracked. It’s the second to the last option and it’s at the bottom of the screen. Click on “Show” and then select Commission Junction as your provider. Then input the PID into the form. Mark sure you have a search term and then search. This will generate a search result. At the very bottom of the search results will be an RSS feed button. It will be small and you might miss it. It will be below the sponsored ads at the bottom of the page. Right click on it (simply save the link location to a text file).

Generated Search Results from the Ebay Feed Generator, note the location of the RSS feed button.

Next you are going to add this to your blogspot blog. Login in to Blogger. Click on layout of the blog you want to add a feed to. You need to be using the latest layout tools for blogger. You then click on “Add a Page Element”. Scroll down and you will see the “Add a Feed” option. Click on that and in the form paste your Ebay RSS Feed. You can name the feed and that name will be displayed on your Blogspot blog. Click save and you have done it. Your feed will now display on your blogspot blog.

Add a page element for blogspot blogs.

There are some advantages to this approach. The first advantage is that this content is indexable. As opposed to Auction Ads which is Javascript based and thus invisible to the search engines. Quite frankly I am surprised there isn’t an easy PHP option for auction ads. This approach gives you content that is frequently updated and gets indexed. This approach can be used in conjunction with Auction Ads, especially since this will give the best of both worlds, content for the search engines and the higher return of Auction Ads. I did something similar for Bobby Orr signed memorabilia site. I also recently added auctions this way to the Earlymiser development blog

This approach will work with a wide variety of sites, especially ones where your content is a good match for auctions. This can include cars, sports, any sort of collectibles, fashion items and more. Ebay has millions of product listings and I even found content that matched the content programming and development for my development blog. Furthermore since this is an RSS feed this content will also auto update when the feed updates so once you have added it to your site you can simply forget about it, Blogger will update it in the background and you won’t have to worry about it.