New price structure for US eBay affiliates

August 4, 2008

eBay are changing the way that payments are made to US affiliates who introduce new buyers. Currently, ACRUs are compensated at a fixed fee, which increases the more new members you introduce: it’s currently $25 per member if you bring in fewer than 49 people a month, up to $35 if you bring in 30,000 or more.

For new affiliates from 1st August and for everyone from 1st November, this will change:

Each publisher will be placed in a quality tier at the end of each month based on that month’s and historical traffic. The tiers will range from $0 to $50, and the higher the expected lifetime value of the customers a publisher sends, the higher the tier the publisher will receive.

(Emphasis mine.) New affiliates will be placed in the lowest, $0 tier to start with, “while the system calculates an appropriate tier”. What a great way to pull people into the program.

Existing affiliates will, in September, get access to a new report that tells them the quality of the traffic they have been sending eBay, so that they can see if they’re getting a pay cut or not. Forgive me for being cynical, but I don’t see anyone coming out of this any better off, except eBay.

But I am extremely impressed that eBay think they are able to predict a customer’s lifetime worth to them so early on in the relationship. Perhaps they would like to pick my lottery numbers this week?

Written by Sue Bailey · Filed Under Affiliates, Ecommerce | 4 Comments 

eBay Partner Network partners with Pepperjam

May 30, 2008

The eBay Partner Network, eBay’s in-house affliate scheme, is to partner with affiliate network Pepperjam to bring EPN to more affiliate marketers. The move comes just months after eBay left Commission Junction, which won’t do the acrimonious relationship between the two networks any good.

Via Affiliate Tip.

Written by Sue Bailey · Filed Under Affiliates | Comments Off 

eBay affiliates’ deadline extended

April 26, 2008

The eBay Partner Network has given affiliates an extra month to move their links from Commission Junction to the new network. CJ links will now cease to be valid on 31st May. This applies to Half.com and all eBay countries except Belgium, Netherlands, Hong Kong, and Singapore, which will still switch on 30th April.

eBay say that more than two-thirds of traffic has already moved to the new system. However, switching earlier rather than later should benefit affiliates, because clicks on the CJ system during May which convert into purchases or registrations in June will *not* be paid out. Dull though it is, don’t put off changing your links til the end of next month!

Written by Sue Bailey · Filed Under Affiliates, Featured | 2 Comments 

Can I link to my own auctions with the eBay Partner Network?

April 16, 2008

This question seems to come up quite a lot, and the short answer is yes, unless your auctions are French.

Historically, the affiliate user agreement under Commission Junction used to say that affiliates could not promote their own listings. No one’s ever satisfactorily explained the thinking behind this rule to me, but we’ll let that go because the eBay.com affiliate program decided to allow self-linking. That is the same under the new EPN, and the introductory video even suggests that affiliates do so.

However, that goes only for the .com program. Two other programs, the UK and French ones, currently have clauses in their user agreements that forbid self-linking. The good news for UK affiliates is that this is changing. From an email just received from EPN Support:

Very recently, the UK team has recently decided to allow this behavior going forward, however, we haven’t updated the terms of service to reflect this change yet.

Anyone currently linking their own listings is probably not receiving any affiliate payments for doing so, but this will change shortly. There’s no word on similar changes to the French network.

Affiliates in all programs should remember that clicking their own links and registering, buying or bidding is not permitted.

Written by Sue Bailey · Filed Under Featured | Comments Off 



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