Here's how to setup Robert Plank's JVPlus for use with ClickBank.

1) First thing you should do is buy it. The second thing is to upload all of the files to your website.

The files include jvplus.css, jvplus-config.php, jvplus-packer.php, jvplus-share.php and jvplus.php.

2) Next, you need to test it out to make sure it works on your PHP enabled web server.

Open a new text file and created a web page that links to some url, for instance, http://www.example.com. At the bottom of the text file, add the following line:


<script type="text/javascript" src="/jvplus/jvplus.php"></script>

Save the file as either index.html. index.htm, or index.php.

3) Upload the newly created index file to a directory on your server, in my case, you can visit my JVPlus subdirectory to see an example.

Here's what it looks like.

Fancy, huh?

If you were to put your mouse of the link, you should see that it goes to "http://www.example.com".

4) Now add on a "?hop=yourname" at the end of the url. Something like this:

Click here for an example, http://www.davewooding.com/jvplus/?hop=dwooding

5) Put your mouse over the link now and notice the difference ...

Everything should be working now - you should see your name show up in the url that you put your mouse over.

6) Time to do this for real.

Edit the jvplus-config.php file.

Add in links to your clickbank products that look like these:

Save and close the jvplus-config.php file

7) Edit your index file.

Add links to your Clickbank product(s) that look like straight links (and not Clickbank hop links).

8) Save the index file and close it. Go back to the subdirectory and reload, here's what my page looks like now.

9) Put your mouse over the newly added links and notice that the link goes through ClickBank's hop link system.

10) Let people link to your subdirectory with you Clickbank products and have ALL your products use THEIR affiliate link, give them a link that looks like this
CLICK HERE

Here's what you need to do to get signed up as an affiliate for Nature Hills.

1) Go to ShareASale and signup as an affiliate. If you are already an affiliate, sign in.

2) Click on the link that says "View those with Datafeeds" under the Find/Join Merchants title.

3) In the keyword search box type "garden" and change the Show me merchants programs that ... to "Both - show me all."

4) Find Nature Hills Nursery.

5) Click on "Join Program"

Typically Nature Hills auto accepts and you are ready to go.

You read that right. Datafeed affiliate sites are ready for you.

Thanks to the beta testers that participated - I was able to check THE SCRIPT out on sites as the homepage, in a subdirectory, and as a subdomain.

Here's a brief tour of what these sites look like.

Home Page

The home page randomly selects an instock image from the database to display on each page load.

What remains consistent is the links to the categories - the gateway to the 1,400 unique pages that make up this site.

Category

Lots of content on this page. Each category page will display a random, instock item with image at the top of the page, followed by a list of other items from the same category. Some little programming *twists* I put in include:

• sorted by highest to lowest price
• Decreasing amount of information per item - the first few items display the most amount of information, farther down the list, the items have less information about them, until you get the the last few items - all there is at that point is links. Why did I do this - to be different. I don't want these sites to be run-of-the-mill datafeed sites that are practically identical to other datafeed sites

Product page

Specific information about each instock item in the datafeed - includes a image, price, title, description.

What's unique about about these pages is:

• Randomly arranged sentences - the sentences are not the exact same structure as what is provided - THE SCRIPT rearranges the results and displays them in a different order each time the page is refreshed ...
• ... which leads to this, THE SCRIPT has a cache feature so the results remain the same for each dynamically generated page. During setup, the cache is either turned on or left off (I recommend having it on). If on, then specify how long pages are cached for before being regenerated. I don't see any reason to set the cache for anything less than 30 days.
• Something you should know, there are actually 4,000+ items in the database. Unfortunately, most of the products are out of stock. That's a lot of perfectly good information going to waste. So what did I do, I include a random item description from an out of stock item from the same category for the same reason I added a few twists to the categories - to be different.
• Also, the side bar - besides containing links to the categories - also includes links to random items in the same category

Search

Included a "smart" search feature - well, maybe not as smart as Google, but smart enough to almost guarantee relevant results showing up.

Here's how it works, say you type in "apple". THE SCRIPT will randomly pull results that have the word "apple" show up in the title. If THE SCRIPT doesn't find any results, then it makes a second pass through the database looks for the word "apple" in the description. Pretty smart, huh?

Ready To Go

A simple, powerful script that displays results from the datafeed in a unique fashion - that's what THE SCRIPT is.

P.S. - If you want a "behind the scenes" view of how the code works for this datafeed site, visit the link, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLeGbqEb9L4.

Thanks to the beta testers - your feedback has been great. And for those that volunteered but I didn't respond to - you'll get a site soon, very soon.

A couple things left to do before I turn this one loose.

- add the ability to include articles

- some more randomization based on modulus

- the all important readme.txt file, video help file - need to explain how to use tags to customize sites so they are COMPLETELY unique

- some little bugs that are still crawling around, like the header image linking to the root instead of a subdirectory if that is were THE SCRIPT is installed.

Here's a snapshot of the latest - now includes a search function and the categories now displays a random listing first, then an alphabetical listing of up to the top 30 entries:

If you have THE SCRIPT setup on your site or have viewed the demo on this site, let me know what you think - what else do you want to see.

The database driven affiliate website is coming along ... if I do say so myself.

I am back from spring break 2008. Before you start thinking fun in the sun and wild parties, guess again. The family went down to southern Utah and visiting a couple of state parks, Kodachrome and Escalante, to get a little warmth in the desert. We camped out in the tent trailer - the first couple of nights were chilly - in the teens, 15-20F. But the days were very pleasant, 60-70F, and sunny.

Like I said, THE SCRIPT is moving along. I banged out some code tonight to have it pull results from the database.

Note, the PHP code above should look familiar. It is a slight modification of the query code I created previously. It takes a word and finds one item in the database that has the same word, and pulls out the information from the MySQL database: title, affiliate link, image link, price and description.

Creative Code

The second chunk of code is where I get a little creative.

I am randomly choosing 5 to 10 additional items out of the database. This is for a sidebar menu that leads to other products.

Keep in mind that this is first pass coding for this affiliate site. I'm just randomly requested information - not taking into account whether the item selected is even in stock.

I'm thinking it would be worthwhile to have some hard coded links in place - specifically to categories like "trees", "shrubs", "flowers" - that kind of thing.

Print Out The Results

Three things in a row.

This PHP code does three things.

1. Opens the template and reads it in to the script
2. Makes replacements - substitutes the tokens (as an example, %%TITLE%%) with database results
3. Prints out the results

There it is - let me know what you think so far.

Now we are making progress.

I have the database loaded up and ready to go. Now it is time to get fancy and pull something out of it.

Started by doing nothing fancy, just built a query that pulled out any item that had the word "Tree" in the title.

Now I have built the query up a little more and am displaying title, price and description. Not just that, but added the ability to query for items within a certain price range.

Is the thinking cap turned on here?

Given that I have promised a unique database driven affiliate website - couldn't we use this type of information to create pages that are unique from anything else out there?

How About This Idea.

Let's say we have a page for a cherry tree. On that same page we could have links to other related pages - pages that are in the "Tree" category.

Also, what about Trees that are priced within plus or minus 10% of the cherry tree price? That wouldn't be difficult to do at all.

With the information given in the datafeed we can come up with some creative ways to display the information.

The next step in creating a database driven website is to display the results.

We have the contents loaded up in the MySQL database ready and waiting.

First thing to do is write a simple query that pulls out a few of the entries.

The way I will do that looks like this:

The important part is line #62, the one that starts with $sql.

The way to read it is "Give me everything that has the word 'Tree' in the title.

Once we have that information, then lets print it out.

The "while" statement on line #65 goes through the results and prints out the title and description. Nothing fancy ... at least not yet.

That's enough to hold me over. Enjoy the "family video" that shows you how to do this.

Everything up to this point regarding a database driven affiliate website has been warm up. Now the gloves come off.

Doing It Right From The Start

If I was only going to build one database driven website and I would never publish another piece of code to the world wide web, then I wouldn't of spent so much time designing the database structure.

It's kind of like putting down a solid foundation before framing the house. Nobody really cares what the foundation looks like until there is a crack in the concrete. Same thing with a database, nobody cares until something breaks.

With that in mind, I designed the database to be the "Swiss Army knife" of databases. Rugged, dependable, and flexible enough to handle any situation.

Pour The Concrete

Once the framework is in place - once the database design is complete - then pouring the concrete is easy.

Type in the variables decided upon and presto, out comes a ready-to-go database. An empty database, but one ready to go.

Frame It Up

Once the database is in place, time to fill it up.

This is when a PHP script that opens the datafeed, breaks it into pieces, and puts the pieces in its place comes in handy.

Once the PHP script is run, you have a database filled with products ready to be sold.

See for yourself.

The condensed version of 2 hours of programming and testing is shown in this affiliate database video.