AD:TECH - eBay Affiliates? They Have Those?

[Garrett]

So I was eating lunch today and waiting for Sunny from shntech.com. (We've been sharing notes between sessions so we can double our coverage.) As I was waiting, two similarly dressed youngish folks sat down and asked about WebProNews. Webmasters and marketers, I told them, interested in online marketing with an emphasis on organic search.

That had them both scrambling for their business cards - they were eBay reps out recruiting new affiliates.

I had only just heard of eBay affiliates yesterday, and so asked Jason and Amy a bit about the program.

To my chagrin I learned it's been around for about five years. Why haven't I heard about it? I'm no affiliate expert, but I've heard of the biggies. Well, I've heard of AdSense at least.

So the eBay affiliates are making money in two ways. The first is by creating content pages and placing contextually relevant eBay ads there. You can specify how many listings appear though - anywhere from a few to 200 ads. (And you can put both AdSense and eBay ads on your site.)

The second way people are making 140k a month (that's what they told me...) is through buying search ads for specific eBay listings. If you bid on cheap keywords that provide high conversion you can really make some money.

EBay also gives a payout when new people become members... though it seems this could lead to some serious eBay fraud if you could somehow optimize the sign up process and click through on your own ads. We didn't get into that though.

I was interested to learn that Commission Junction (who gave me the train whistle)runs eBay's program.

EBay's just launched a new site for their affiliates, and they have a recently launched forum. I asked them twice if they ever posted in other forums and both times they told me they had their own forums already. But they only get 6 posts a day right now. I guess that's part of why I've never heard of them.

Here's the new affiliate site: http://affiliates.ebay.com. You can also email them here: affiliates@ebay.com if you have any questions.

Who's using this right now? Why haven't I heard of this already? Any thoughts on the service?

[vprp]

it's funny because i always see ebay with adwords ads for some really specific search terms. i always figured they had people researching these keywords themselves but i guess they're from affiliates. their affiliate program must be really good if people are making 140k a month.

[WebMetro]

Sometimes things are not what they seem...
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum20/2490.htm

An interesting read about how people are making the money and what eBay really has to say about it.

[airguy]

........

[AndrewX]

WebMetro, can you summarize the content of that WebMasterWorld link, since not all of us have paid to read the private forums there? Thanks.

[WebMetro]

Sorry about that, didn't realize it was in the private forum.

Basically, people are saying a lot has changed since people were making $1.3Million in commission. For example:

1) No longer allowing 'forced clicks'. Most of the very top guys were buying run of network pop up campaigns that would click through automatically. 'Cookie Stealing' some call it.

2) Ebay is not counting clicks when the user has visited their Google listings or other ads. This is pretty dirty, they are erasing a lot commissions - affected my by about 20%!

It seems eBay has a bunch of chargebacks through commission junction as well. People have been running test campaigns to see the chargebacks, and so far not too many happy affiliates.

[Linda Buquet]

Yes, the eBay affiliate program has been around for years. At the other affiliate forum that I moderate many affiliates lately seem to be unhappy about Ebay due to recent program changes and reversals.

"eBay FRAUD! Affiliates beware - eBay reversing valid bids/registrations."
http://abw.infopop.cc/eve/ubb.x?a=tp...89&m=498109704

"do any of you guys see an affiliate partnership with ebay profitable? why?"
http://abw.infopop.cc/eve/ubb.x?a=tp...89&m=246109715

Not trying to put a bad light on eBay and I have never personally worked with them. Just sharing what I have read recently which I would have posted whether it was positive or negative - just happened to be the latter.

[kokopoko]

I was around before Ebay made their recent changes to the affiliate program. The new changes stink. When I get $5 for a new registration it is always charged back the next day. And the same goes for a 5 cent bid. A 5 cent bid is charged back!

I would like to know how they define what needs to be reversed. Ebay affiliate marketing is worthless from my point of view.

[airguy]

They learned this when they bought PayPal. PayPal paid out a lot of referral bonuses when they were new, once they had a huge name they made is increasing difficult to claim a referral bonus.

As saturated, and common place, as the ebay name has now become I doubt that they really need affiliates to send anything at all to them. You have to wonder how many sales were generated by the people that were making the 1.3 mil. and how many of those buyers would have ended up at ebay without them. I'm sure that ebay is looking at the fact that if they were to just buy the SE and PPC advertising that these "smart" entrepreneurs did it would have cost them far less and with the same, if not better, results.