Changes in eBay's Business May Effect Some Affiliates

I've been trying to get my mind around the changes that are going on at eBay. I've posted about it over on my blog Online Seller Tips. As an affiliate of both eBay and Amazon.com I look at their business models and try to understand how they compare and how their actions effect my affiliate marketing efforts. And I recommend that other affiliates do the same.

The changes that eBay is proposing will definitely effect sellers and buyers. But it is still unclear just how. And because we can not really tell how affiliates will be effected. But I plan on keeping my eyes open as the changes happen in late October.

One question I have is how the holidays will be effected. Most eBay sellers and affiliates have their best months during this time of year.

eBay Partner Network To Go Widgets

I've been experimenting with eBay's new Partner Network To Go Widget. I like it, and can imagine quite a few cool uses for it. I did not realize what the size of the widgets would be and thought I would have a problem with them. But they seem to work fine.

The above example is the search widget.

Click these other examples for ideas on how to use them;

Multiple item widget Although I only have one item in it.

Single item widget

eBay Announces Changes to Affiliate Program

According to an email that I received yesterday eBay plans to change its Affiliate Program.

From the email;

We are excited to announce eBay’s new global affiliate platform: the eBay Partner Network.

The new platform will go live on April 1st, 2008 PST, at which point eBay will no longer be running its affiliate program through Commission Junction. Beginning April 1st, affiliates should register with eBay Partner Network and migrate their links from CJ to the new platform.

While CJ and ValueClick have been valuable partners to eBay throughout the years, we’ve decided to give our affiliate community a customized experience for eBay affiliates.

All the great tools and benefits of working with the eBay program will remain the same – access to the Editor Kit and affiliate API, the flexible destination tool, the great payout structure. In addition, the eBay partner network will provide several new features:

• Easy global registration to multiple countries simultaneously
• New, targeted banners and rich media creatives
• New landing page optimization and geo-targeting capabilities
• More detailed reporting capabilities for eBay’s programs

The eBay Partner Network and Commission Junction will run in parallel for one month through this process, so please plan to complete your migration by May 1st, 2008.

ITworld.com has the following article; EBay to take over affiliate program's management

"ValueClick's Commission Junction does a fairly good job, but the product over the years has grown a bit stagnant and hasn't been keeping up with the demands affiliates have had," said Ron Stewart, GetItNext's CEO.

For example, GetItNext routinely has to manually "dig out" data it feels is essential about its referrals, sales and commissions from the ValueClick reports, Stewart said.