Breaking out EPN discussion from another thread:

4Eyes
I am adding my spun content to the final output (via the template)

I use DHTML tabs to hide the majority of it from immediate view.

Basically I spin the generic info that might appear on the page anyway, just normally as a fixed part of the template .. eg. Buying Safely Online, Why Buy From Us etc
Call the spun content by php with the product/keyword stuffed into it a few times.

I include it after the feed content, and then cache from the the spun content to the end of the page - cache set to auto refresh at random periods.

I am not sure how much of it is overkill as I carried this technique over from some of my low grade adsense sites - ie have been doing it on the ebay sites from day one, so have no control to compare it with.

I am earning from it Ok - just might have been able to earn the same from a lot less effort, I guess.

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Drastic
>I am earning from it Ok - just might have been able to earn the same from a lot less effort, I guess.

I've got some ebay stuff, not nearly as much as you, and it's pretty dismal, so I dunno. It sounds like what you've done is what is paying off. Since they switched their terms about this time last year, my earnings haven't been nearly as good.

I use off the shelf scripts for the ebay feeds though, and some of them have a footprint. I've hacked them to remove footprint and they still get nuked sometimes. (sometimes not, who knows why)

I've been thinking about using unique and spun and then using JS ad feeds, as I've a feeling G doesn't like a bunch of ebay ads on a page. Just a hunch though over a few sites, as I haven't properly tested it.

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4Eyes
@Drastic
Probably using similar scripts - I have phpbay, auction2post, and a hacked thing I did from some open source code.

I am doing the thinnest of thin sites, and it is paying for me only because I have systemised so that my outworker elf can do them quickly - at one stage (before I overcomplicated things for her) she was churning out 5 a day - including keyword research - it meant they only had to earn minimal revenue to put me in profit.

I have had a few completely banned (around 8 - all hit at the same time) but more often they just drop to trickle revenue - they still pay their hosting and a few groats extra to pay for for beer though

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Drastic new post
I've been using BANS and phpbay, played with a couple others. I bought bans right about the time G started nuking them, about a month before (2 years ago?) they did it. I was just testing, and figured out the footprints they were looking for by saving various copies of the template with different things ripped out (stuff I would have considered a footprint.) After multiple tests over a couple weeks I found 3 things in the specific BANS template. Tricky they were too, since they would show the url as indexed, but it would have the meta desc instead of a snippet. The content wasn't actually in.

I yanked them and built a few more sites. It seemed to work fine for a while. I think the bans footprint was a stopgap until they figured a way to just nuke epn heavy stuff, and some of my ads/content ratio was pretty bad. I do still have some hangers on though, and phpbay has been more successful. Some nuked out of ebay are sitting behind wp installs which get the traffic. Actually my first structure was wp frontend, bans backend. Those still work since wp gets the traffic and I drive it to the store. I think I only have one straight BANS on the front with nothing else and it's banned from G but has done well enough in Y/Bing to leave it alone.

Even with link "cloaking" (htaccess rewriting urls on your domain to the ebay listing) I think they are punishing pages heavy on EPN. Once I get back on this project I'm going to go all JS links/displays on a site or three to see if it makes a difference.

It's funny we are doing a lot of similar stuff. I hired 3 VAs in the Philippines last year and they built almost all my ebay stuff. I wasn't looking to make a killing, but to build hundreds with $1-5/day return each. EPN's new terms caused me to focus elsewhere, but I'll get back to it soon enough.

I may send you a PM to compare notes a little more closely if you care to.

Sure - PM away, or take it to Skype - we can always come back and post the summary of what we found after what might be a long and boring exchange for others.

One of the guys in the phpbay forum says he does quite well just using the ebay feed as content by stripping the links completely and then using Adsense or Amazon for the revenue.


A theory...

EPN requires all redirects to be 301s
phpbay rediect (auction.php) blocks 'most' spiders - but only by referrer (as I understand it)

I guess it is possible that G is seeing the 301 and acting on that (eventually) - or seeing the links that go nowhere (the block in auction.php) and acting on that.

[edited to remove non-essential information that may prove dangerous ]

Yeah I forgot about the fix that blanks the page with no referrer. I think I had come to my conclusions before that and haven't built much, if anything, new since then. Interesting idea about adsense, might have to try that. Some days I get a bit angered at ebay epc.

I'll try hit you up first of the week or so, about to close up shop for the weekend. Thanks!

Ok - np - chat later then.


hmm... another idea, we could try leaving the main site as is, and just give the spiders some 'interesting' food on the 'blank' - with noindex for safety, or without for fun and games

I have got a basic cloaking system set up and working (very much beta though)

It simply removes all the links if the visitor is a spider - leave the title and images exactly the same, just de-links them.

Will be testing it on a couple of sites to see if I get them to perform at their optimum for a longer period.


The same technique can be used for any kind of Mosaic cloaking I guess - may also have some fun with it elsewhere

Sounds great, keep us posted.