The eBay Partner Network has introduced Quality Click Pricing, a new quality-based Cost Per Click (CPC) payout model designed to better reward top affiliates, simplify the commission structure, and increase the quality of traffic driven to eBay sites through the affiliate program.
In contrast to the current Cost Per Action (CPA) payout structure for eBay affiliates, Quality Click Pricing rewards affiliates based on the value of the traffic they send to eBay… the incremental transactions and incremental high lifetime value users that result from their traffic.
Payouts to affiliates will also factor in revenue streams beyond item purchases, including eBay advertising revenue and PayPal revenue resulting from increased traffic and transactions.
Just as affiliates driving quality traffic to eBay will reap higher rewards, those affiliates driving lower-quality traffic will see a decline in pay.
I like this sort of Animal Farm (but in a good way) approach to compensation where all affiliates are equal, but some are more equal.
Any affiliates joining the eBay Partner Network as of September 1, 2009 will automatically be paid out under the new Quality Click Pricing structure, while existing affiliates will not be transitioned to the new structure until October 1, 2009.
More details at http://www.ebaypartnernetworkblog.com/en/news/announcing-quality-click-pricing/.
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Quality Click Pricing is designed to do one thing only – allow ebay to pay affiliates less and make more for themselves. Why? Because they can and there is nothing you can do about it as an affiliate.
Example, I earned 92.00 for sept. Quality Click Pricing predicts my payment would be 32.00 for the same traffic.
What is wrong with that?
The 92.00 is based on actual earnings for auctions won by people who come to ebay through my links. Quality Click Pricing is based on Voodoo
Why is it ok for ebay to now claim that traffic that last month was worth 92.00 is worth only 32.00?
There can be only one reason since the 92.00 figure was based on actual auctions closed, a verifiable metric. ebay now simply wants to be able to pay affiliates less for the same amount of auctions closed. ebay is trying to claim the traffic is not performing but the fact is the traffic is performing exactly the same but will be paid out at a much lower rate. A rate that is about 2/3 lower then before.
I will be removing every ebay auction link I have and replacing them with affiliate links from a source who sells something from my site’s niche or adsense. Anything is better then dealing with a company who just wants me to be happy being screwed.
ebay, you suck!
Your Message@tricia:
I couldn’t agree more with this comment. They can totally change what they define as Quality. They are shady on the details of what quality is.
I am hoping they still break it down by campaign so I can see where the clicks are coming from in each category or niche. It would be helpful if they would just plug in a sales number by campaign so we can still see exactly which campaigns are generating income for ebay. Nothing surprises me these days, but I sure hope other networks don’t also go with this kind of system.
I see exactly where you are coming from, and I feel that I am going to have the same problem. Until everything settles down I am going to have to put my energy in other avenues.
With the existing model I can figure out what is selling, with the new model I am not sure.
The thing that bothers me is that it makes it much harder to get information. Before, I could run, say, an electronics site, then look at eBay and see what items were actually purchased. I might notice that I get more *clicks* from computers, but I get more *sales* from MIDI keyboards. If I weight my site more toward MIDI keyboards, revenue goes up.
Now I just see that my clicks are worth $0.18. It’s a pretty decent rate to be paid for clicks, yes, but now it looks like I should weight my site toward computers, since they get more clicks. But if I actually *do* that, eBay’s mysterious “quality” goes down and I start getting paid less overall! As an affiliate, how do I know what’s valuable? The opacity of the quality system really hurts me.
Now, if you run one niche site that promotes one sort of thing to eBay, this won’t really affect you at all. But for people running many sites, it kind of sucks.
@Tricia:
It would be nice to get some insight on that sort of thing – if it means some sites with real, honest traffic are degraded by the system, it could have a chilling effect.
I wonder if this might affect smaller affiliates a lot more than bigger affiliates because statistically you are going to have more variation with fewer transactions. On one of my sites, I might only have 10 ACRUs a month. Because of that, I can go from low to high qualify and back again pretty quickly. But I’m not doing anything differently.
The only good news with regard to that is that smaller affiliates would not be as dependent upon large amounts of income coming from their links.
The whole thing is kind of a moot point for me because I have a loyalty account, which isn’t changing. But I will be interested to hear what others are seeing during the “test” months.
@Brett Favre:
Which moves have been bad? My earnings haven’t taken a hit.
I think this is ultimately a great thing for quality affiliates, you will be rewarded for higher quality traffic. Just as smart pricing kept Adsense better quality for advertisers, eBay needs this so it can keep feeding the partner program coffers.
I did find Adsense Smart Pricing’s black-box frustrating through lack of transparency/predictability but it always seemed to work favour of good traffic.
Recent moves by eBay have been bad for affiliates and this appears to be another move that will be a big negative.
I saw Will Martin-Gill’s presentation on this and I was impressed. I think that this approach will have a positive effect on our industry. Clearly trust is an important part of the equation but that is always true for CPC and CPA (and CPM, really) advertising.
The biggest problem that I see with it is that it really muddies the waters to a point that you can’t hold eBay accountable. With most merchants you can say “I drove X amount in sales at Y rate. You owe me Z money.” Now all of a sudden eBay can change what they consider to be “quality” on any given day and you can see your revenue fluctuate widely. I’ve already seen this happen with the ACRUs. Same links on the same sites, marketed in the same way. But my earnings can be double or half in any given month. For the people who rely on eBay heavily for their earnings, this could really impact their bottom line.
I’m all about finding ways to send better quality traffic. But I don’t like merchants who decide arbitrarily and on a daily basis what “quality” means.
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