I was just reading over at Dan Gray’s blog, geekbooks.com, that eBay made a big announcement about their affiliate terms that bodes well for the affiliates.
According to Dan’s post, eBay Changes Affiliate Terms for the Better…
Affiliates can now link to their own eBay auctions and profit from commissions on completed auctions and new customer acquisition. This holds great potential and was previously verboten, if I am not mistaken.
This ought to provide a handsome spike in activity for the already successful eBay affiliate program.
Read my interview with Lily Chen, Manager of eBay’s U.S. Affiliate Program.
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Guess it’s time to go re-read the ol’ eBay affiliate agreement again.
I haven’t used it for a long time, because I stopped auctioning a couple of years ago. However, if they have streamlined things since then, it might be worth checking them out.
Ciao!
Mark
I love the EBay affiliate program. It has grown A LOT over the last couple of years.
Biddy –
I can’t put my finger on the date, but eBay stopped paying commissions on non-winning bids a while back, not with this change. Perhaps Lily Chen could provide the exact date.
With regard to the transparency issues on commission calculation (which is by no means exclusive to the eBay program), a wee bit of testing would shine some light on the how much and on what.
Cheers,
Dan
I think these changes are probably for the better, but there are two things eBay affiliates really need to be aware of.
Firstly, they will no longer be paid commission on non-winning bids.
Secondly (and to my way of thinking, this is the more serious problem), eBay are being extremely coy about how they calculate the “revenue” upon which affiliate commissions are now based. eBay reps in both the UK and US have simply pointed to seller fees and said “that’s the revenue…” without actually giving any concrete examples of how commission is calculated. They have really not made clear if sellers’ listing upgrades (Gallery, Home Page Featured and so on…) will affect affiliates – which could make a huge difference to commissions payable.
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