A couple of years ago I programmed a web application in PHP called DownloadNow. The script automates the process of delivering digital products sold on Ebay.

I had just purchased the only similar product I could find at the time and found it to be practically useless because, while it did offer automated downloads of digital products sold on Ebay, a new product listing had to be entered for every new Ebay listing. Obviously this became incredibly inconvenient if you were selling the same product title over and over.

The reason for this was the script used the auction ID as the product identifier. Since there is a new auction ID for every single auction the whole system was just not very well thought out.

Anyway, the solution was apparently simple in my mind. create a system that uses the auction title as the identifier. You could then sell the same product title an unlimited number of times on Ebay without having to change a thing in the web application.

Since then I’ve made several improvements over the original version. The original used flat file data storage while the new, improved version uses mysql. It now also keeps up with who downloaded products when and how many times.

Here’s how DownloadNow works in a nutshell. When an Ebay buyer buys your product and pays with Paypal, the Paypal IPN (Instant Payment Notification) service automatically sends the buyers contact information to DownloadNow. DownloadNow then sends an email to the buyer with a password protected download link with a predetermined expiration date.

That’s it! You can sell the same product title an unlimited number of times in an unlimited number of Ebay auction this way and that will all be delivered to the buyer automatically by the script. Plus the links are password protected and expire so it is all very secure.

So if you need a surefire way to automatically deliver digital products sold on Ebay, check out DownloadNow.

1. Administrate
Administer is a word, as is administration. So we really don’t need the hybrid Administrate. Do we. Let’s all resolve to sound as intelligent as we really are and just stop saying ADMINISTRATE!

2. Orientate
Orient is a word, as is orientation. So must we realy now have this new word, ORIENTATE? So what if it did sneak into some dictionaries. Just to hear it makes my teeth hurt.

3. On the Ground
I don’t think this phrase even existed until around 2006 and, in this short time, has already been used 5.7 times more than “de facto” which outlived all usefullness in 1998.

4. Nucyeler
I know we’ll be done with this one after 2008.

For years companies selling this or that widget have employed SEO experts to make their site about widgets stand out from all others. Stand out to search engines, that is. This has been done using a variety of methods, such as, backlinking, page cloaking, doorway pages, keyword stuffing and good old fashion spam just to name a few.

Software developers and countless mini page wielding flimflam artists have devised every trick and technique you can think of and some you can’t to win the robot wars with infinite arrays of effortless automation.

Meanwhile, the “content” advocates with their typical holier-than-thou attitudes in their white hats have been jumping up and down saying “you’ll get yours some day".

Friends, as we all sit in the same pot of water like frogs with the temperature rising, we must finally tell ourselves that day has arrived.

Organic Google listings are now on reserve for websites that are unique and engaging and all the rest, including millions of widget sellers, please form a line to the right and open your pocketbooks.

Listen up now because by the time this new mantra is being bought and sold at the retail level it will be too late and time to move on to the next level. Face it, in the web business you have to re-invent themselves more than Modonna.

Ultimately the web’s leading commodity is traffic and the question is “are you buying or selling?".

I spent my formative years on the web learning all the crazy, wacky SEO tricks including how to use mountains of duplicate content for fun and profit. And life was good.

Now Google has plenty of content police on the payroll to check up on the suspicious activities of all us nefarious SEO types, making it tougher to make a buck. The rules have changed quickly and without notice.

I was talking with a friend the other day who had started a blog a year ago, made a test post and never did anything else. He directed me to the blog’s home page where I copied the first line of that test post and pasted it into Google. Almost needless to say his long-neglected blog came up first in the results of 290,000.

Heck, I can’t figure out why 99.9% of the other 289,999 results are even mentioned because who is ever going to see them. That’s just Google pointing out that some of the words from that sentence exist all over the place. Isn’t that nice to know.

That reminds me.

MESSAGE TO GOOGLE

“Put a link at the top of the results that inverts the order. Let the user easily check out what’s at the other end of the rainbow, just for grins. Hey, it could be a whole new, much needed profit center for you, not to mention create a market for SEOs who would guarantee they could make client’s sites come up last in the SERPS!”

Where the hell was I? Oh yeah. The point is if you want Google surfers to find what you’ve got you must write about it or hire someone to write about it. Then link to the picture of the water-powered car you just invented from there. Or the mountain of duplicate content. Whatever floats your boat.

The ucwords function is a cool php function I use pretty often. It will capitalize the first letter of every word in a string.

Here’s an example.

PHP:

The output is Hello World.

1. Don’t have the time.
2. Can’t think of anything to write.
3. A blog will take me away from all my important work.
4. It is probably too complicated.
5. No one is interested in what I have to say.
6. No one will ever find it.
7. I’m too tired.
8. I’m too busy.
9. My dog ate my homework.
10. The internet will never really take off.