Youtube-eBay-Amazon Mashup Results and Thoughts

Ever since I started using Mark’s script for a Youtube eBay Amazon Mashup site, I’ve been meaning to do this post. I don’t have much for results, but I do have my share of thoughts. If you were a reader when I started using it, you’ll know that I modified the script to display Adsense’s Youtube video spots instead of just random Youtube spots. (You can Download that version of the YouTube eBay Amazon Mashup script)

The only true stats that I can give you are the stats on those spots. In the roughly 3 months that I’ve been running the script, I’ve managed less than 10 clicks on just over 2000 views. For those of you that are as mathematically challenged as I am, that’s a CTR% of about .42%. Not exactly a stellar performance. While I don’t track the eBay and Amazon hits from these sites, I’m fairly certain that I haven’t made any sales through those sites. Again, not exactly stellar.

In all fairness to the script, I haven’t done any sort of marketing for these sites. I have no intention of leaving them with this script and would like to develop them into sites at some point, but just haven’t had the time. I threw the script up as a “holder” that hopefully will help them get indexed easier and quicker when I do develop them. And it does work pretty well for that. They certainly haven’t attained hundreds of links in the search engines but each has somewhere between 10 and 20. That’s pretty good. Especially for what is essentially a parked domain. And it isn’t nearly as spammy as those ad scraping parking pages that you see elsewhere. I like that.

Overall, I’m happy with the script. It’s accomplished the goals I set for it. Mark did a wonderful job of making it really easy to implement, and the script itself is easy enough to understand that I was able to modify it to add the YouTube Adsense spots. If you’re looking for a “parking” spot for your unused domains, you can do much worse than the YouTube eBay Adsense mashup script.

YouTube Adsense for 45n5’s YEA Mashup Script

After some pondering that resulted from a conversation about landing/holding pages for undeveloped domains and Mark’s sharing of a $99 commission from a site running his YouTube, Ebay, Amazon mashup site script, I decided it was time to give it a try. It really is as easy to use as Mark makes it out to be. And what a great way to get your keywords into a holding page while developing the site!  The hardest part was getting the developer ids if you don’t already have them. I had the eBay one, and had to get the YouTube and Amazon ones.

After setting up the ids, you simply change a few things to set options and upload. That easy. Only one thing stuck out to me. The eBay auctions use your affiliate codes for the auctions, so you get affiliate earnings from them. Same goes for the Amazon listings. The YouTube video, on the other hand earns you nothing except embedded video on the cheap.

Being the tinkerer that I am, I decided to try and integrate the Adsense YouTube units instead of the normal YouTube units. The idea being that the video will then be monetized. And we like monetization! So, after a bit of tinkering last night and some coding this morning, I got it to work. And I’m going to share it with you!

If you’ve used Mark’s script before, you’ll notice a few slight changes. The code that calls the YouTube video has changed slightly, but you shouldn’t have to make any further changes. What you will have to do, is go and get the script code for the Adsense YouTube and put it into the stufftochange.php file. You’ll see where. I’ve taken the liberty of throwing in a true/false flag so that you can turn off the Adsense YouTube units if you choose and go back to the regular units. Simply change the flag from a 1 to a 0. Simple, no?

If you haven’t used the script before, you obviously won’t notice any changes. But there aren’t any instructions included in the download, so you’ll want to go over to 45n5.com and watch the tutorial video for the script that Mark put together.

So, without further adieu, Download the YouTube Ebay Amazon (YEA) script! The licensing still belongs to Mark, so it’s still his link in the footer that you have to leave there.  Small price to pay for a great script.  Thanks Mark!

Oh, if you want to see some examples of this modified script in action, check out the following sites: