7 WordPress plug-ins for eBay Sellers #7 WP ZinText

By Garry HJ | October 16th, 2009 | Category: Web Site Resources | No Comments »

Today’s post is a bit of a misnomer – originally I had planned to only review 7 WordPress plugins and make this into a one-week series. However, as I’ve not had time to more than glance at today’s main subject, I’m filling up the post with an extra plug-in worth mentioning, that eBay sellers could use on their blogs.

eBay essential plug-ins for WordPress #7 – WP ZinText

WP ZinText is another plug-in I plan to play with and test this winter. It works a bit different to all those discussed earlier in the series. It’s purpose is to add text-link adverts automatically to keywords within blog posts.

It then displays those text-links only on the blog post’s single post page (i.e. not on home page summaries, RSS feed excerpts, or on category / tag / author post list pages etc). The required age of the posts before the text-links appear, can be set in admin (e.g. 10 days or older).

There’s a number of uses for this, such as when scheduling eBay listings to start in the future, but wanting to build-up a “buzz” about a product prior to it appearing on eBay. Another could be to give your own website first crack at selling a product that you have listed there and in your eBay store, or when you’re going to run a Markdown Manager sale in your eBay store, but want to discuss the sale early without pointing people to it too soon.

Other more logical uses for affiliate marketers is to pre-load your blog with seasonal subjects, scheduled for publishing using the WordPress scheduled post system, then allowing those posts to draw some regular traffic and back-links (as well as get search engine indexed) before the adverts appear in the post as outgoing links.

WP ZinText works with an ePN affiliate campaign ID to monetise your blog. Because the links are text links, rather than banner ads or widgets, or product panels, the theory is they will draw a higher click-through rate. I’ll be back with more information about it after I’ve had a play over the winter.

eBay essential plug-ins for WordPress #8 – KB Linker

Although this is appearing last as a bonus review, it is one of the earliest plug-ins I began using on my WordPress blogs. For EVERY new WordPress I install, this plug-in is my first addition immediately behind Akismet and WP-Stats. Often it’s added and configured before even the add-in theme is installed. It is just so damn useful, even though it’s showing it’s age now.

What KB-Linker does is to dynamically surround keywords you define with a URL. What this means is that if your blog has a link you add to many posts regularly, you set up the keyword and it’s URL in a simple text list in KB Linker’s admin panel, and the plug-in will auto-insert the URL around the keyword when you publish the post.

Here’s the best bit – because it’s dynamic, and actually does the URL insertion when the post or page is viewed, rather than hard coding it into the saved text, it means you can add, remove, or modify those links in your list at any time, and they will automatically roll out throughout your WordPress article and page history,

This is an absolute MUST HAVE for eBay sellers with deep inventory if they discuss their products in their blog posts. It is also a must have for affiliate marketers who regularly incorporate advertiser’s names, or product names, or web sites in their text.

As an eBay seller with a shop, let’s say you have 100 product-X in stock and expect a three-month sell-out period, then you can use KB Linker to point to your shop listing via a keyword or name for that product. The admin-side text file will accept limitless links, though your blog will start to slow down with more than a few hundred in it (this is where the plug-in is showing its age and needs redeveloped to be database driven).

Another really good feature about KB Linker (and I’ve extensively tested this) is that the URL you put in the text file, can be a straight link to your listing (with or without the Shop Referral Credit system end-tag) or via eBay Partner Network’s link generator, or via ANY of the affiliate programs and agencies out there – it works with, for example, all the agencies on BuildaSkill’s Affiliate Agencies directory page.

The downside, and for some this is a biggie, is that it does NOT mask the links (Amazon affiliate links are longer than Tolstoy’s War and Peace) – this can make your links look nasty and spammy, as well as decidedly phishy. In this respect, use it with some care. Another (age-related) downer is that it also discovers your keywords inside image tags, such as in the image filename, the caption text, or the Alt text. It also finds them within WordPress post and page titles. When these occur, that’s where it tries to place the link, and as it only places each link on the first occasion of the keyword on a page, this often loses you the click opportunity.

KB Linker is older than my kids, but it still does it’s job efficiently and reliably. If you can live with its quirks and limitations, it is a MUST HAVE plug-in … not least because the flat text file in admin is so fast and easy to update as your eBay listings change their numbers on relist, or when you sell out of something and have to add a new listing to replace the old one …. or when you become a DSR Dolphin and eBay shut you and all your listings down for 30 days, and you then have to completely relist tens of thousands of listings from scratch.

Remember it’s not useful only for eBay sellers, KB Linker works with any URL on the internet, so it’s valuable for all your online marketplaces and outlets.

Gaz

Not registered with eBay?
Click to sign up

Learn How To Sell Selling Stuff On eBay Make Money