It doesn’t work like that.

ePN wants top quality sites to represent them. And, who can blame them? They’re certainly important and big enough to call their own shots. YOU are the one who needs them – they have an abundance of applicants to choose from. So, to be sure your site meets their needs it’s best to follow their guidelines. Here’s what I’ve discovered:

1. The website must be a functioning, established website. We don’t really know how old the site should be; some have gotten new sites approved; others have had new and aged sites rejected. It is safe to say that older is better, but an older site that is poorly built will not work. It will be a good idea to make sure the registration is for 2 years or longer for the site you are submitting.

2. The site should have some backlinks.

3. The site should have original, informative, unique content – especially the homepage. The site should not be just a ‘placeholder’ waiting to add the Mage tools. Build the site as if you’d never heard of WPMage and are very much in love with ebay — meaning, you can see ebay products on the site but of course you don’t mention ebay anywhere in the content. If YOU can see ebay on the site, then they will see the potential as well.

4. You should have content on the site related to items sold on Ebay. For example, financial sites and Internet marketing sites are not really ebay-friendly sites and should not be submitted. However, sites about collectibles, art, antiques, etc., will be great. As for how much content – I believe more is better. Write 10 original content articles and backdate all of these. Then, schedule several articles so that it will look like you are actively updating your site. If you do not have a source for articles I can give you a name.

5. No off-site commercial links – i.e., no monetization, not even Google. A link to an authority site may be helpful – but don’t overdo the off-site links.

6. Deep link into your site – meaning, place a keyword link within an article that leads to another article, then link from that article to another article … until you have linked to all of the articles in your site.

7. Have a ‘Contact Us’ page on your site with accurate contact information, not just a form.

8. Have an “About” page that talks about a real person behind a real site.

9. Have a Privacy and TOS page.

10. Make sure you do not have “privacy” enabled on your domain name registration.

11. When you complete the application, tell them (in comments) any positive info about why you think your site will be a good fit for eBay.

12. Read Greg’s PDF here: http://www.wpmage.com/EPNApproval.pdf

For more tips – see What to Do if eBay Says No

Linda

If you have read my review on WPMage or anything I’ve written on the WPMage forum you know I am very pleased with the WPMage tools. However, I’ve been creating websites and collecting tools for a lot of years. Some were duds and I won’t even tell you about those. But the ones I’ve listed here are tools that I DO use and have found them to be very beneficial. Note: the links below have my affiliate code in them … so if you purchase by clicking the links I will be paid a commission. Thank you so much!

1. The auto blog poster. What’s neat about this is that I can use my own articles and plr articles to post automatically to my blogs. This might seem like a big deal, but once you use the software you’ll see why I’m sold on it. The WPMage is great for pulling content from article directories but these articles have off-site links that do not provide any benefit to me. I would much rather use my own articles and put in my own links. This software allows me to do this — and the BIG plus is that I’ve found a way to integrate it with my WPMage. That’s my own little secret – but, if you will purchase this using my affiliate link I’ll share the secret with you. That’s fair, isn’t it? Just send me an email with your receipt (use the contact form) after you purchase and I’ll share with you what I do to incorporate it with WPMage.

Traffic Kahuna (for traffic) – The doors are closed on this site right now, but it is absolutely worth getting on their waiting list.

Watch this space … I have to quit right now but I do have a few more tools in my tool chest to tell you about.

The best way to drive traffic to a website is through lots of good quality backlinks.  You can do this in a number of ways: purchase the backlinks, spend 100’s of hours seeking out good places that will accept your link, purchase automated systems or even hire someone else to get your backlinks.

Or, you can do what we do at the WPMage.

Nothing.

Okay, I can see you rubbing your eyes and reading that again. Did she just say “nothing?”

You read it right. We don’t use any of those techniques because we purchase domains that already have backlinks. That’s the beauty of purchasing expired domains with authority and backlinks. You save a lot of time and a lot of money that you can spend on building more WPMage sites!

Here’s how it works:

When you build your WPMage site you will create thousands of posts – most of them backdated and some scheduled for future because you want to continue populating your sites with content and product.

After the site is built and populated, we then head over to the Index Mage and, with a few clicks, get the search engines to crawl our sites again, indexing our pages. If you are already in WPMage you know what I’m talking about. If you don’t … it’s one of our secret weapon!

It takes a little while but eventually those posts you’ve created almost instantly with the WPMage tools will be indexed by the Search Engines. When someone searches for a product’s keyword in your niche your keyword phrase will usually put you somewhere on the first SE page and you get natural, organic traffic.

It is that simple.

And, it works.

Curious? The mage system is closed right now but you can still get Greg’s Free Blueprint and get on the list to be notified when he starts selling again.

What do I mean by “static”?

Simply that it doesn’t change. Without a static front page your site’s home page will change each time you add a blog post. This might be what you want, and if so, don’t bother with this step.

BUT, if you want to get the most SEO bang for your money, you really should consider using a static front page, optimized for your site’s niche. You can control how your site is listed in the Search Engines and you can control how your site looks by creating a unique front page.

So, how do you do that?

1. Login to your wp-admin Dashboard.
2. Click on Pages / Add New
3. Paste or type your content in the box provided and give it a keyword-rich title (based on your site’s niche).
4. Scroll Down and, on the right you will see a block with “Include this page in user menus. Un-tic that box.
5. Publish.
6. Now Scroll down and in the right sidebar you will see Settings.
7. Click on Settings / Reading.  At the top of this page you will see “Reading Settings” and right below that you will see the option to choose a front page display.
8. Tic the box that says “A Static Page”.
9. In the drop-down box, choose the page you just created. go to bottom and click “Save Changes.”

Congratulate yourself! You have just created a static front page.

To put it simply, you install it just as you would if you are manually installing a normal wordpress blog. But, just in case you don’t know how to do that, follow these directions:

1. Download and unzip the current version of WPMage.zip
2. Create a database for WPMage on your web server, as well as a MySQL user who has all privileges for accessing and modifying it. Make sure you keep a record of the db name and password as you will need it during the install.
3. Upload the WPmage files to the desired location on your web server:

• If you want to integrate WPMage into the root of your domain (e.g. http://example.com/), move or upload all contents of the unzipped WPMage directory (but excluding the directory itself) into the root directory of your web server.

• If you want to have your WPMage installation in its own subdirectory on your web site (e.g. http://example.com/blog/), rename the directory (wpMage) to the name you’d like the blog’s directory to have and move or upload it to your web server. For example if you want the WPMAge installation in a directory called “blog”, you should rename the directory called “wpmage” to “blog” and upload it to the root directory of your web server.

4. Run the WordPress installation script by accessing wp-admin/install.php in your favorite web browser.*

• If you installed WPMage in the root directory, you should visit: http://example.com/wp-admin/install.php

• If you installed WPMage in its own subdirectory called blog, for example, you should visit: http://example.com/blog/wp-admin/install.php

* You will need the database username and password here.

5. The WPMage and an auto-installer and you can actually completely create your blog at this time. You will need to know your WPMage license number and license email address. And, you will need a list of Keywords, so have those handy before starting to create your site. You will also need to know your Affiliate ID information at this point. Complete the information and generate your blog!

6. Login to your sites.com/wp-admin and make sure everything installed correctly.

Feel free to post your questions comments below .

Hosts compatible with CPMage

Shared Hosting:

Pronet Hosting – Inexpensive Shared Hosting
HostGator – Inexpensive Shared Hosting that ALWAYS works
Please note that as of right now CPMAGE is incompatible with Bluehost, Hostmonster and GVO/Kiosk

Reseller Hosting:

HostGator Reseller Hosting – Their reseller accounts seem to work great with the Mage. Please make sure you understand your way around a cPanel and are one step above the newbie level before you get a reseller account or you will get confused

Dedicated Servers:

Liquid Web I use Liquid Web for my dedicated server and I am very pleased with them. Their support is exceptional. In the past I’ve had 3 other dedicated servers and had constant problems. I even hired a system administrator for one of the servers, but they didn’t do a good job at all. Since I’ve been with Liquid Web I’ve had almost constant uptime (now 3 years) and anything I’ve asked the tech support people to do they have willingly, pleasantly, politely accomplished for me.

I have a dedicated server and several clients who host their sites on the server. So,  not willing to put my server at risk with an unknown application, I signed up with HostMonster when I first started with the mage. In the beginning it worked just fine. I installed CPMage and created 10 sites with no problem at all.

Then, suddenly CPMage could no longer install sites on my Host Monster account. The sites already installed were working just fine … I just couldn’t add any others.

What happened? HostMonster changed their cPanel interface. CPmage works on most standard cPanel accounts, but when a host uses a non-standard cPanel it will not work.

Bummer.

But stuff happens, so I bought another account on another server.

The bottom line, I think, is simply, “don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” Hosting is cheap. Purchase several hosting accounts and, if/when a host has problems you won’t lose all of your business.

Thankfully, the WPMage tools DO work on HostMonster; I just have to manually upgrade the sites I still have there.

Oh well. That’s what I did before I obtained CPMage power. Manually updating 10 sites will just keep me in practice!

Since I’ve gotten to know the CPMage program and it is no longer in the “unknown script” category, I have created several accounts on my dedicated server without mishap. I still purchase hosting from other companies, though. It is just good business.

And what a bummer that turned out to be.

I didn’t earn any money … not one red cent. Yes, the stores are quite lovely; and it is so easy that anyone can do it. But, all I had was a pretty store. No income at all.

I also used a free program … wp-o-matic. I did earn money with that … about $50 – $100 per month from ePN sales. But it was difficult to manage. The posts were always there until you deleted them. I used another plugin to auto delete posts over a certain age, but there were always redundant posts on the site because the ebay auction had ended.

Not good.

I have also used auto blog posting software … but none compare to what WPMage will do. It has auto-blogging and affiliate marketing in one neat package that produces results.

I’m a happy camper. I made darned good affiliate $$ even when I was beta testing.

There’s really no comparison that I can see. WPMage is like combining all of the others and putting it on steroids.

But, I’ve discovered lately that so are the Adsense earnings.

Like eBay, Adsense has some pretty strict rules so you must be very careful about running Adsense on your maged sites. Don’t put Adsense on sites that you translate (something I never do, anyway).  If you’re like me and take the time to build good sites with good content then it will work just fine. If, however, you just want to get sites up super fast and not move on to the next site I’d stay away from Adsense altogether.

I added Adsense to a couple of sites in October and earned $80 in Adsense clicks that month (on those sites) so I’m slowly adding more Adsense sites to my portfolio. November was a little more than that. Can’t wait to see December’s earnings. It is looking good, so far.

Greg created a video on adding Adsense to cpmage sites. You can watch it here, but I don’t do it that way. I create a site using my own content on the frontend … with about 30 good articles and then use the articles from article directories on the backend. There’s a theme in the Mage download area that is created just for Adsense and you might want to use that.  I have used it on one site. But, I find that any theme will work so long as you don’t clutter it up with a lot of links for the visitor to click on.

I don’t put any products on my Adsense sites … just focus on content. The only monetization is Adsense. As stated, you don’t want your visitor to have too many choices.

First off, I don’t like cookie cutter sites so I do lots of different things to make mine different. Initially, I just did it to get sites up in a hurry. But it’s not “me” so I’m being more deliberate now. I am still using the mage methodology – just adding a few tweaks here and there on the front end. Greg says each person must find his own mage path and this is the way I operate my business: slowly, deliberately and (I hope) profitably.

For example, when I am creating a new site I will hand pick the current articles as well as the forward dated articles I want to appear — most of the time using PLR – and then manually insert the mage codes. Recently, I started placing the mage code for yahoo answers, or some other excerpted “hint”, right in the middle of an article as a quote to make the PLR article different without re-writing it altogether. I am a writer but I spend too much time writing for others to write all of my own stuff (you know … the plumber with the leaky faucet syndrome). So, I use lots of little tricks that are quickly implemented to make the articles different.

I also add my own paragraph at the front of the article.

After I do that, I turn on the “allow search engine” traffic and use the mage site promotion feature. I keep a watch on my stats to see when the SE bots start crawling. When I know they are crawling (usually takes a week or two) I start maging on the backend. I am not picky about the backend articles … I use posting mage and let ‘er rip.

Oh … almost forgot: another thing I’ve started doing is to edit the WP templates and remove the date. That way when someone comes to the site they will not know when the post was made. The SE’s know, of course, but the human visitor will not know. IMO this makes a big difference as the visitor doesn’t get the impression he is visiting a site that is never updated. If you don’t know how to do this search the Wordpress codex. You’ll learn all sorts of things about tweaking WP.

The bottom line – it might take me 3 days to get a site ready but I would rather do it that way than to just throw one up. Putting up the sites without tweaking may make the most money quickly, but I also am interested in the long term profits from the site so I don’t mind spending the time to do it on the front end.

Well, that’s my current strategy. Hopefully, it is a long-term profitable one. Feel free to duplicate if you’d like!

Linda