Robin Majumdar 2.0

Whew, that was one lengthy title. Well as you may have read here in the past, I really have enjoyed working with phpFoX on a few client sites. It sells itself a bit too much as an easy way to build your own MySpace or FaceBook type of social network site … while that is true, any seasoned veteran of building communities will know that the tool itself is the easy part.

The last time Konsort announced a discount coupon offer was around this time a year ago, and it was 30% off the regular price of about $299 - a pretty nice instant savings. I’ve been keeping my eyes open but haven’t seen any announcements about a discount yet.

That being said, phpFoX is definitely a mature product and has a serious community around the development of 3rd party add-ons. The Konsort group announced the final version of phpFoX 1.6.20 release back in February and there has been only one significant patch since then. That’s a pretty impressive track record given that so many companies rush new versions to RTM and then bury us helpless site managers with a bevy of bug fixes in days and weeks after. Not so with phpFoX consort… nice work guys.

As always, if you have any available licenses, leave a comment below (with your email in the comments form which is never revealed on this site) and I’ll be in touch.

Final note: Konsort offers an excellent affiliate program for phpFox.

Now I wish I would have (carefully) listened to his words a bit more attentively back in ‘94.

Well, after many years of managing the various eBay affiliate programs through Commission Junction, I was one of the first to migrate campaigns over to their new in-house eBay Partner Network at the beginning of the month.

I’ll write an indepth analysis after a couple more weeks of usage, but thus far it’s been working relatively smoothly although eCPM and CTR numbers seem to be somewhat lower than back on the CJ eBay program (which is still running in parallel until the end of the month) … Mind you, the lower performance probably has nothing to do with tracking issues, and more with the cyclical nature of the sites on which some of these campaigns are running. Over at AuctionAds ShoppingAds, which provides the now famous user friendly widget creation system, April was the best month in terms of $ revenue in the last few months.

I just received this notice from the eBay Partner Network:

From: eBay Partner Network Customer Support [mailto:noreply@ebaypartnernetwork.com]
Sent: April 25, 2008 5:10 PM
To: ***************
Subject: Customer Support messaging issues on 4/22 and 4/23

Our Customer Support system experienced issues on Tuesday, 4/22 and Wednesday, 4/23.
If you submitted a question on those days, our system might not have logged it. Please resubmit your inquiry to ensure a prompt follow up.

Our apologies for the inconvenience,

The eBay Partner Network team

OK, so their service desk software is having a few glitches… no worries guys. Migrating such a complex affiliate program over from a third-party provider to your in-house system is one major project!

Hopefully my eCPM numbers will go up soon on the new EPN

eBay Canada is having another promotion offering eBay listings for 5 cents today, April 9th, for items listed on eBay Canada only. Another twist this time around is that in order to get the $0.05 listing rate, you must specify a shipping price for your item. Mind you, you should always list a shipping price; eBay has done studies that show the bid rate is much lower when an item doesn’t have shipping specified.

The offer expires at 02:59:59 ET on Thursday, April 10, 2008 - yes we Canadians get 3 hours extra because eBay time is based on the West Coast Pacific Time zone.

The usual exclusions (motor vehicles, real estate) apply. This is a nice opportunity to save up to $5.60 in listing fees depending on the initial auction price you set!

Well - just a heads up to my black hat umm…. friends and associates that Syndk8 will be down for some scheduled maintenance; it is extremely rare that I’ve seen Syndk8 announce any sort of downtime, so it must be for some serious and significant site upgrades (or fixes).

For those wondering, Syndk8 is a black hat SEO (search engine optimization) forum for those who prefer to do their Internet business in a more… err, ruthless way ? Not that I condone or recommend it. Keep in mind that the best White Hat hackers have to keep in touch with what’s up on the dark side.

—–Original Message—–
From: Syndk8 Black Hat Seo Forum [mailto:noreply@syndk8.net]
Sent: April 2, 2008 5:37 PM
To: **************
Subject: New announcement: Syndk8 Scheduled Downtime Sometime Soon.

Hey Everybody

I need to make some important changes over the next few days to allow for the future growth and development of Syndk8.

You may see a blank page or a timeout for a few hours.

Please be patient and come back a few hours later.

You may need to flush your dns or cache to see the forum when it comes back up.

If you dont know how to flush your dns use google to find out how.

Thanks for your patience and best regards.

Earl Grey rockon

To unsubscribe from these announcements, login to the forum and uncheck “Receive forum announcements and important notifications by email.” in your profile.

You can view the full announcement by following this link:

http://syndk8.net/forum/index.php?topic=16299.0

Regards,
The Syndk8 Black Hat Seo Forum Team.