Blogger Template for eBay Sniplets
UPDATE: Please see my BANS vs. Blogger article for an updated template.
I’ve been playing around with the eBay Sniplets over the past few days just to see what could be done with them. I talked about them some in my previous post, Adding an eBay Sniplets to a WordPress Blog. In this article, I’ll be taking a quick look at placing them in a Blogger blog.
The Minima Template
I selected Griz’s favorite Minima template a modified it as he described in his helpful tutorial, How to Change Width of Blogger Blogs. I did widen it a little more than he said in his article since I wanted extra space for the Sniplet widget. However, once I posted I noticed another problem. By default, the Minima template puts a border and a 4 pixel spacing on all pictures in the post area. This made the eBay Sniplet look quite ugly since it added borders to all the pictures and spaced them out. So, I had to edit the style sheet part of the template to remove the border and spacing. If you want to do this yourself, look for the following code in the template you’re using, “.post img” and change it to “padding:0px; border-width:0;“.
If you want to download the template I’m using so that you don’t have to modify any HTML yourself, here it is: Minima Template for eBay Sniplets.
Example Site
If you want to see how this template looks, here’s an example I put together: Fender Duosonic.
There are probably some additional enhancements to the template that could be made. If you have any suggestions or thoughts on using Blogger with eBay Sniplets, please leave a comment.
Update
Here’s why you don’t link to your real niche sites on your flagship blog and one of the major problems with using Blogger vs. self-hosted WordPress or BANS:
Dear Blogger user,
This is a message from the Blogger team.
Your blog, at http://fenderduosonic.blogspot.com/, has been identified as a potential spam blog. For an explanation of what spam blogs are, please see Blogger Help: http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=42577
You will not be able to publish posts to your blog until we review your site and confirm that it is not a spam blog.
Update 04/15/08
The Blogger staff got around to lifting the block on my Duosonic site today which is good news. It seems that the number of generated links in the actual post text set off the automated alarm bells and got the blog blocked. I’ll be trying a few new Blogger blogs with the Sniplet widget handled in a different way to see if another template method avoids the blocker bot better. I’ll do a new, short, post about that later.
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Thanks for the template info, I’ve messed around with it on a diff template but yours looks much nicer. You can check mine out in my link above. I added rss text feeds from ebay to it also. Google will recognize the text in Rss feed for added keywords. I’ve not made anything from it yet been mostly experiment.
Thanks for stopping by Gotafish,
Your Blogger ‘BANS’ site looks good.
I’ll have to look into the RSS feed angle as well. That seems like a good way to add content.
On the template, I’ve been using Minima or Minima Dark for everything when it comes to Blogger, mainly due to Griz’s influence.
I set that one up before I saw Griz’s post on modifying, The template I used was only one I could get too work right. I keep tweaking it messing with the size settings. Havnt focused on getting any traffic to it mostly and experiment at this point.
I hope your site doesn’t get flagged like mine did or did that happen to your’s already?
I’ve been playing with this for a couple weeks now but been putting the eBay window in the sidebar (much widened). I’ve been scratching my head to get it to display properly but even with your mod, it still sets the display wide.
I might have to move it into the main post area as you have done. Only problem I see there is updating the content. Don’t want to write too much and make the ebay window too low on the page, but still need to keep the blog updated. This is a potential goldmine…
Hi Terry,
Modifying Blogger templates is a little tricky, that’s for sure. Since I’ve gotten into creating niche blogs on that platform I’ve been working with Griz’s examples and a few others I’ve found.
On the content, I’m going for sort of a “tips of the day” or “fun facts” approach like on the Duosonic site. I’m not sure if that’s content/keyword rich enough though so adding the RSS feed might be a good option.
Great post jfc (as allways). This is a very good idea to produce many “ebay” blogs. If this works, it’s like the “holy grail” of blogger.
Ah, i forgot to ask, why was the blog flagged as spam? What did they said about the blog?
Hi Dinheiro,
I figure it’s either malicious, since a number of people who’ve posted about Blogger blogs on Griz’s or Vic’s sites have gotten flagged or because it uses JavaScript in the post itself and got auto-flagged.
Technically it’s an ad within the post so it should be OK since there are 1000’s of Blogger blogs that do this in one way or another.
Anyway, I’ll update the status when I hear back from them.
Cant believe you got flagged for that site. I’ve seen plenty of blogs with less content and more links out.
just got my new ebay site flagged as spam this am.
Sorry to hear that but I’m glad I’m not alone.
If it’s not a ‘Net vigilante then it may be using the JavaScript in the post itself is triggering their spam algorithm.
This is really strange, i’ve a friend which had many posts with javascript in the end (that pulled normal flash ads), and is blog was not flagged! I begin to believe in the “Net vigilante” theory
The problem is the “net vigilante” is flagging blogs that are not spam at all. I wonder if he/she really know what spam is!!!
I personally think that its the number of backlinks to ebay showing up all at once from the same site. Probably the best thing to do is get content for each of the pages in place get site indexed then add ebay.
Dinheiro, that has got to be one of the nicest looking Blogger blogs I have seen. Never thought you could make a Blogger blog look like that.
Frank, I had a Blogger blog flagged for spam back in November. They though it looked like an auto-generated blog. Yah Right! Anyway I still haven’t gotten it back. There wasn’t even anything special about the blog. Dummies!
Frank, have you given up on this idea with Blogger?
Hi Denise,
I’m not sure what tripped their ‘bot, if that’s what it was. I’m sure that it can be modified to some degree to avoid the ‘bot flag. After all, monetization is allowed on Blogger and some people have far more advertising links than the number of eBay links I had on my blog.
There probably is a method to use that will avoid the problem if it is simply a ‘bot flag. It may be not putting the JavaScript in the post but in the sidebar instead or perhaps limiting the number of links.
frank, i think the problem was the javascript in the posts. it doesn’t seem the links, but i’ll make one blog to try, using only 3 ebay links per post, and if it become auto-flagged, then it’s the proof that javascript it’s the problem.
FYI my ebay site came out of spam this am. So it must have been the bot flagging it
Hi gotafish,
I’m still waiting on mine.
I’ve got a couple of other Blogger blogs that are similar that didn’t get flagged and I pulled the eBay feed out of right after this one got disabled. I also have a few others that have been aging for later Adsense deployment and that are product oriented that I might want to switch to this idea as well. I just don’t want to take the time to build the site and to build links only to have it pulled out from under me.
They finally got around to unblocking it today. I’ve got another template method I’m trying out to see if the ‘bot likes it better.
Excellent job on showing what can be done with blogs to increase eBay sales
Stumbled upon!
Hi Digitalscrap,
I hope it works out as a good alternative, particularly for minor or test niches where a full blown BANS with a domain might not be worthwhile. My Duosonic blog got 20 clicks before it got blocked so that does show some possibilities for the idea.
Did those 20 clicks come to anything? I’ve been so busy making wordpress blogs for ebay I never thought to look into making blogspot sites. Hmm…should be able to do it with putting up RSS feeds directly onto the page and going from there. I’m curious now; I’ll have to test it this evening.
Another night of no real work done, thanks Frank!
Hi Desty,
Remember the Blogger Spam ‘Bot is really suspicious of any autogenerated links due to blackhat activity so be careful with the RSS feed.
As for the clicks, I didn’t have any big sales but I did get a few smaller ones, I assume on a couple of parts purchases. After initial concept testing I’m trying to avoid getting bogged down in analyzing stats and just move on to the next site on my list.
Ebay for blogger update. FYI got my first sale on blogger ebay only site today. $4.84 commishion. Site gets less than 10 clicks per day. Set and forget money for sure.
That’s great Gotafish.
I figure following my typical niche blog pattern of getting out about 10 or so articles of average to Griz length followed up by 1 or 2 every 2 weeks or so afterward should work well.
Haven’t tried these myself yet but have heard great things.Yours looks good by the way.
Hi Frank,
I was wondering if you can recommend a wordpress template for eBay Sniplets. I was just messing around and threw this one on my site. However, It doesn’t nest well for posts. I registered for my EPN and template and created it in about an hour( so not much time spent). However, I figured I would check with you before I spend a bunch of time on the site.
Thanks,
Dennis
Hi Dennis,
Most two column WordPress themes can work well and you can also use 1 and 3 column ones. It depends on if you want to integrate the eBay Sniplet into each post or if you want to have it separate, using a sitewide keyword as in the Blogger template shown here. You can see the direct integration method here on OpTempo in my product review posts.
Court has several good, simple, WordPress themes that would work well for the integration method like Civilized, Classic Beauty and Complicated.
Thanks Frank,
I knew Court had some templates. I just thought they were more for adsense. I had this domain parked for about 5 years and wanted to do something with it.
One more question. Where or how do you get the branding for this page (the monkey) do you do that work or do you have someplace that does it for you? I have always wondered how people like you,court and Vic have those created. Thanks again.
Hi Dennis,
I think Court and Vic contract out for them. I do my own using Photoshop and other tools. I also have a large royalty free collection of clipart, photos and vintage graphics that I’ve built up over about 20 years that I can draw from.
Great template. It worked perfectly with my ebay image host.