Nails Escrow.com Review
Recently I sold off one of my websites for a substantial amount of money, at least for me. Now, I’m not a stranger to selling websites, since that’s originally what I started off doing over a year back. However, those sites were not established and generally sold in the neighborhood of $300-$400, something easy enough to receive through PayPal and not require contracts. This site was different, it was in the upper $x,xxx range and I was not willing to give PayPal any of it, AND I was worried about protecting my ownership until the funds were verified.
The process was simple and the transaction painless, mainly in part to the great communication the buyer had and because I’m such a charming bastard. Anyways, we agreed to a set of terms, negotiated final price, and both decided to protect our interests we should make sure it was legally binding. eBay was our first choice for such a transaction, since the auctions were considered binding and everything would be in writing…nothing hidden.(I hate he said, she saids) The auction was setup as a Buy It Now and the buyer was notified immediately after posting, so no one else would jump in and ruin a perfectly good transaction. 
Then, we both setup Escrow.com accounts, which was quite possibly the most painless thing I’ve ever done. Initial setup required only the basics and I opted to wait on revealing my financial details until I was sure the transaction would go through. Escrow was used for the domain ownership and as such Escrow.com had a simple sales template that I filled out using the predetermined details we discussed earlier. Within 15 mins the details were mailed to the buyer, where he was required to accept or decline.
After accepting the rest of the process was almost completely automated. The buyer was required to choose a payment option and in this case Wire Transfer was the only option for the dollar amount. Afterward Escrow.com kept in contact with me, notifying me when payment was selected, payments received, and payments verified.
After verification of monies, I was required to transfer the domain. After doing so I notified Escrow.com and then they checked to see if things had changed with the whois. Essentially it took about 48 hours for the process of money transfer to verifying domain transfer took place. After that it was as simple as me choosing a payment method.
Getting My Money
It’s as easy as entering your banks routing number, account number, and making sure you have your Bank’s address on file. But here is a TIP, ACH transfer and Wire transfer are not the same thing. Banks have a different Wire transfer routing number than the routing number found on the bottom of your checks, which is the correct routing number if you plan on doing an ACH transfer. I goofed, but caught it in time before batch processing had taken place.
Escrow.com Customer Service
Simply fantastic customer service! Not once did I feel like I was being left on hold too long, going through irritating automated messages, or getting the runaround. All I received was polite customer service attention and assurance that my problem was going to be fixed.
Thanks Escrow.com!
This was NOT a paid posting, only my honest to goodness opinion of a quality service. Because it was so painless, I may end up using it on smaller transactions now as well, just to play it safe.
To The Bastard in Denmark…
I hate you and although I’ve never met you, I think you are the ugliest piece of skum sucking parasitic fecal mass that’s ever been born. The thought of you makes me want to jam my finger down my throat to get the taste out of my mouth and my eyes bleed from the anger you’ve placed in my head.
I wish you would get hit by a car and die.
Why do I hate you?
You used MY credit card number to buy shit. I don’t know where you got it, from one of my many internet transactions maybe? Was it a random guess? It does not matter, whatever you bought is shit and was not worth the pain and frustration it caused me. I hope you die.
Signed,
Chris
P.S. I hope you catch some sort of flesh eating bacteria that kills you slowly and you die a horrible, tormenting, violent death. Everything is too good for such a parasitic life form, fucking die.
phpBay Review
Let me start by giving a brief over view of the Wordpress plugin phpBay. It’s a tool used to help integrate you’re eBay affiliate marketing with any Wordpress powered blog. By entering a few variables and filters you can easily add a list of eBay items into your post with each link automatically containing your referral link. It’s not a free plugin and requires a one time fee for unlimited domains for $39.
Who could benefit from such a plugin?
Almost any blog could benefit from this plugin. Chances are even personal blogs go into details about certain products from time to time and this is just another tool in your shed of marketing. However, just because you could benefit from the plugin doesn’t mean it’s for everyone. eBay affiliate commissions can be minimal and require substantial traffic to convert to anything worth getting a check for.
Can it be used with other advertising programs?
Typically when people ask this they mean, ‘Can I use phpbay with Adsense and not get banned?’ Yes, you can use this side by side with Google Adsense, because it is not a form of contextual advertising.
List me the Pros of phpBay.
- plain and simple installation, exactly like every other WP plugin.
- decent selection of options to make sure you display the right eBay items.
- fairly inexpensive for what you get.
- good customer support.
- does not require a mysql database, therefore ideal for light weight hosting.
List me the Cons.
- only one instance of phpBay ads can be displayed at one time, therefore you must place phpBay ads after the <more function. (See below for more of my frustration in this.)
- not enough options. Although decent I’d like to see the ability to integrate it into sidebars, not just in posts and better category selections.
- costs money. Yes I did list that as a Pro, but as many free WP plugins that are available, this should be one too.
Summary
It was a decent purchase and defintely not a waste of money like so many other programs and scripts available out there. I would consider this plugin juvenile in it’s existence and would hope for some more development in the very near future. The inability to display more than one instance of itself on a page is very frustrating and should at least be remedied with a short cut fix.
Adsense Deluxe is a perfect example of a plugin that was designed to work with no more than X instances of itself on a page. This should be easily integrated into phpBay so that if it detects more than one instance of itself on a page it doesn’t load the others. As it stands now, it will screw up your RSS feed without placing the code after the <more tag.
Currently there is nothing else really to compare it to in the marketplace of Wordpress plugins. However, when compared to other eBay affiliate tools like BuildANicheStore, it has a long way to go. Check back soon for my review on BANs.
eBay Affiliate Tracking Boo Boo
eBay announced today another instance when tracking for their affiliate program through Commission Junction failed to record properly. According the email a small percentage of affiliates were effected on Sept 19-20 when their program failed to track ACRU’s and winning bid’s/BINs. As usual eBay will be setting the affiliate revenue earned right and throwing in an unspecified bonus.
Last time this happened I was not lucky enough to receive a bonus, but my earnings did fluctuate. I have a feeling this time, based on my earnings, I was not one of the publishers effected. Although I feel the pain of those that were.
When problems like this arise it makes it difficult to properly track your marketing efforts. I’m familiar with this in regards to my Amazon store and use of Adwords to market the products. As far as you know, when tracking fails, you had no conversions and may have given up almost 2 weeks ago.
Stay strong, affiliate marketing kicks ass!
ScribeFire Humps My Face
Perhaps I’m behind the times or maybe I just hadn’t found a use for the application yet, but let me tell you I absolutely love ScribeFire. This little plugin for FireFox allows me to blog to any of my multiples of blogs (see blogroll for an idea) from one location.
ScribeFire automatically manages all of my blogs from one location, by logging in and retrieving previous posts, tags, pages, and the ability to keep notes. I know right now I’m just scratching the surface but damn, it’s already making my life easier. We’ll see if I have any login issues once I get around to upgrading to the latest WP release. eeek?!
This is an unsolicited post, if your interested in ScribeFire click here.
Powered by ScribeFire.
Where to find eBay PID
Ever since the post on replacing AuctionAds with the Ebay Affiliate Tools, I’ve noticed a number of searches coming in with users trying to find their PID. It’s not very obvious in Commission Junction and very easy to put the wrong figures in, to get credit make sure your using the write numbers.
The easiest way to find your Ebay PID is to log into your Commission Junction account. From your main account page at the very bottom there is a drop down menu for a list of affiliate programs you are subscribed to. From here select eBay, this should bring a popup with details of the program.
Under the Get Link section click on ‘Text Link’. Then click ‘Get HTML’ from any of the links listed, it really does not matter which one. After clicking you will be shown a review of the link you choose to get HTML for, along with the HTML code. Essentially you can ignore everything but the details, which contain your PID, directly under Link Type.
Hope this helps and happy affiliating.
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