I run a few eBay affiliate sites that pull auction listings from the USA, Australia, and the UK. In the last few months I’ve noticed a huge spike in Australian traffic, but not much extra cash ends up in my pocket. Why? Because eBay USA pay 50% of the total fee per auction - and eBay Australia pay a pathetic 20% …

I’d like to create more local Australian sites, but with the commissions the way they are now, I’d have to make more than twice the amount of sales to equal my US based stores. Pffft…

I’ve just added Chitika’s new RPU (related product unit) ads to a few sites, and I’m quietly confident that they’re going to have a much higher CTR than the regular eMiniMalls. When eMiniMalls first came out the CTR was really good, but I think most people have got ad blindness when it comes to eMiniMalls these days. I guess only time will tell, but I think the new RPU ads look much more ‘clickable’ than the old eMiniMalls.

To be eligible for the RPU beta, you need to have a site or blog that receives at least 50,000 page views a month, or be an existing Chitika Publisher and have made at least $100.

» More info here.

Here’s how to display a date in the future (say 2 weeks from today):

<?php
$future = mktime(0,0,0,date("m"),date("d")+14,date("Y"));
$mydate = date("F j, Y", $future);
echo $mydate;
?>

If you’ve recently installed a new version of Firefox (a fresh install - not an update), then you might find that the “check spelling as I type” feature no longer works. This is because some of the newer releases of Firefox don’t come with a dictionary. If your Firefox download didn’t come with a dictionary file, you can simply download one here.

Do you use xml sitemaps on your website? Google, Yahoo, and MSN now all support sitemap autodiscovery via robots.txt. All you need to do is add one line to your robots.txt file:

Sitemap: http://www.domain.com/sitemap.xml


I’ve started a small forum to discuss affiliate programs (CJ, ClickBank etc). If you’re capable of using real words and decent grammar, then we’d love to have you on board. It’s here.

Build A Niche Store, or BANS for short, is a script that enables you to setup your own eBay affiliate website, and fill it will products from eBay depending on your niche. Everytime somebody goes to eBay from your website and buys something - you get a percentage. Setting up a BANS website is really easy, you just select your template and layout options, then start adding categories and related content. BANS currently supports eBay affiliate sales for the US, UK, Canada and Australia, and costs $97 - a small investment considering how easy it is to make money using eBay!

Recommended!

» More info at the Build A Niche Store website

I recently tried to park a domain name on a cPanel addon domain - which seemed like a good idea until I found out that not only was it impossible, but it also left a rogue ‘hidden’ DNS entry somewhere in my reseller account. I eventually worked out how to do it using htaccess.

This method will 301 your empty “parked” domain, to another addon domain - so parked.com/whatever will 301 to www.domain.com/whatever.

• Create a normal addon domain using cPanel e.g domain.com, and upload your content
• Add the domain you want to park as an additional addon domain e.g parked.com
• Drop the following htaccess file in the ‘parked’ domain directory

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^parked.com$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.parked.com$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

InFormEnter is a great little plugin for Firefox that adds a drop down list of ‘pre-filled’ fields to help you fill in forms more quickly. It saves heaps of time when manually adding your site to directories, and it’s so intuitive to use that you can zone out completely and work zombie style.

Apple have just released a new beta of Safari for Windows - which means yet another browser we’ll all have to test our sites with. Safari for Windows blurs the text just a bit too much for me, but I guess somebody at Apple thinks rounded blurry text is better than crisp clear text.