New way doing business with eBay’s new affiliate program
Clicking with eBay’s New Affiliate Program
By Vangie Beal
Officially launched on April 1, the eBay Partner Network picks up the eBay affiliate program where Commission Junction (CJ) left off. Well, technically, where eBay left off since the company has decided to move its global affiliate program from CJ to its own in-house program.For those moving to the eBay Partner Network from the eBay Affiliate program on Commission Junction, it’s important to note that your affiliate account from CJ is not automatically migrated over to eBay’s new in-house program. Affiliates must first register on the eBay Partner Network and be accepted into the program.
EBay also recommends that affiliate publishers create new banners and widgets rather than try to update links created from within Commission Junction.eBay Partner Network Tools
Once accepted into the program you can log on to the eBay Partner Network, and across the top of your browser you will see six tabs to help you better manage your Partner Network account. For the most part, these tabs are pretty standard fare for affiliate programs. The tabs include your dashboard, account information, tools, reports, programs and campaigns. Here is a quick look at each tab’s functions:
Dashboard is a quick summary of your account. Here you can access your program statistics such as the Programs you are enrolled in and the Impressions, Clicks, EPC and earnings generated. You can also see your inbox status from here which lets you know if you have any unread messages in your Message Center. When you first log in, the Message Center will display a welcome message with tips and video tutorials on how to use the eBay Partner Network. These are definitely worth checking out.
Account provides details about your business such as payment payment history and lets you manage sub-users on your account. Here is also where you can change personal settings such as your password or e-mail address. Once your application has been accepted, be sure to use this tab to enter in your tax information as well choose either PayPal or bank direct deposit for payouts.
Network News: eBay’s new affiliate program includes tool for adding video, logos and banners.
Tools is where you create the links and use “creatives” that you display on your Web page to link back to eBay with your embedded affiliate referral code. Currently there are four tools available in this tab, but before we take a closer look, first we’ll discuss a new eBay affiliate buzzword: geo-target.
Geo-targeting basically identifies the location of the user and redirects them to a particular landing page based on that identified location. For example, if a user from the UK visits your Web page and your affiliate link directs them to a keyword-based search results page, that user would automatically be directed to the eBay.co.uk site for the given keyword. This is definitely an added benefit to affiliate publishers as it can help boost conversion rates when a user lands on their own country pages. It’s also as easy as checking the geo-target box when you design your creatives.
Now that we have geo-targeting cleared up, lets take a look at four tool options in the eBay Partner Network Tools tab.
- Link Generator: The Link Generator is used to create custom text links to any of eBay Partner Network’s program pages or to direct users to specific eBay pages (e.g. listings) to boost your conversion rate. When using the Link generator you choose the advertiser (eBay or Half.com), select a link type (home page, keyword search, Item ID or custom URL), choose your country program, turn geo-targeting on or off, enter in your Campaign ID, the link action and the clickable link text you want to use.
- Creatives Generator: The Creatives Generator tool lets you choose from a variety of graphical or interactive ads in which to embed your affiliate campaign ID. Like the Text generator, you’ll need to enter in advertiser, geo-targeting and program details. You will also choose a type of creative, for instance, a logo, banner, flash or video.
- Widget Tool: The Widget offers an editor kit, RSS feeds and soon will include eBay To Go to drive traffic via your affiliate links. You can customize the look of your widget to match your own pages and also filter results by category, keywords, and other eBay search criteria. The RSS feeds lets you create tracked RSS feeds with live eBay listing information. For most publishers familiar with text and banners, using these options will take some practice.
- eBay API: Lastly, the Tools section offers the eBay API for those affiliates who want to become an eBay developer and create applications to tap into eBay’s marketplace through the affiliate program.
Reports give you access to a variety of data sheets so you can see how your affiliate linking is performing. Here you can view your status reports by day, by campaign, by tool or by program. You can also download your raw transaction data from this tab.
Programs is actually the fifth tab over, but it is one tab you should explore sooner rather than later. Following the registration and acceptance process, you go in to the Programs tab to check your status for specific eBay country programs. For example, since I am in Canada and my own blogs and personal Web spaces are mostly Canadian content-oriented, the first step for me was to make sure I applied for the eBay CA program.
The global eBay programs available are eBay US, eBay AU, eBay BE, eBay IN, eBay CA, eBay SG, eBay HK, eBay FR, eBay IT, eBay ES, eBay UK and eBay NL. For Half.com the available program is Half US. From the Programs tab in your dashboard you can quickly see a chart displaying your enrollment status for each country program (e.g. active, declined, or under review) plus you can view each program description and the affiliate payout rates from here.
Campaigns is where you set your saved links. The campaign ID itself is the nine-digit number that is embedded in your links and associates your generated traffic with your affiliate account. This ID number is shown in the Campaigns List in the Campaign tab. The ID number works across all programs that you have been accepted for, and later, you can use the Campaign ID to track performance. While using the creative tools you can create new Campaign IDs, all of which are tracked in the Campaign tab.
The Payouts
EBay’s in-house program offers affiliates two ways in which to earn revenue, however those familiar with the eBay Affiliate program through Commission Junction will already be familiar with these methods.
For those new to eBay affiliates, the first way to earn a commission is on eBay revenue and this payout occurs when a user bids on an item or uses Buy It Now (BIN) within seven days of clicking your referral links.The second way to earn affiliate revenue using the eBay Partner Network is when your referral link converts to a new active confirmed registered user or ACRU for short. This means as a new user, this person has followed your affiliate link, registered on the site, confirmed their registration and also bid or used BIN within 30 days.
In either case, your affiliate fee is a tiered payment structure based on a percentage of the fees earned by eBay Inc. (or International AG) from a winning bid that is tracked to your campaign ID. While the country programs may differ slightly in terms of payout percentages, here is how the payout structure for the eBay US program is tiered. You can always view the current payout structures for each individual program from the Program tab in your eBay Partner Network dashboard.
|
Monthly winning bid revenue tiers |
|
| Total winning bid revenue generated | Percent of Revenue |
| $0.00 - $99.99 | 50% |
| $100.00 - $4,999.99 | 55% |
| $5,000.00 - $199,999.99 | 60% |
| $200,000.00 - $699,999.99 | 65% |
| $700,000.00 - $2,999,999.99 | 70% |
| $3,000,000.00+ | 75% |
|
Monthly new active users (ACRUs) |
|
| Total ACRUs recruited | Compensation per ACRU |
| 0 - 49 | $25 |
| 50 - 1,999 | $28 |
| 2,000 - 29,999 | $31 |
| 30,000+ | $35 |
While the affiliate program itself isn’t new, the eye-pleasing creatives you have to work with and the simple-yet-fully-featured interface make for a better overall experience. And, linking is easy with the new affiliate program dashboard in place. If you are familiar with using banners or text links to create affiliate referral links you’ll be able to do this easily using the eBay Partner Network interface.
The Widgets tools, at this point in time, seem to be offline more than online and the Editor Kit and RSS Feeds may require a bit of practice before you can implement them on your site as affiliate creatives. When eBay To Go is added into the mix as an available option it too will help you create more appealing affiliate link interfaces.
Being an eBay affiliate publisher through the newly launched eBay Partner Network is still, as the company says, “going to require affiliates to drive traffic in volume to make money, and by this I mean volume in terms of click-throughs and converts,” not volume in terms of the final sale value. This always has been and still is the primary way to increase your eBay affiliate revenue.
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