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July 22, 2007
Auction Ads Review: Is Auction Ads A Winner Or Not?
I'm experimenting with Auction Ads, too, and I don't have any revenue report yet, but I do have some observations.
The Downsides ...
Ease Of Use:
It's more labor-intensive than AdSense, although not more so than the regular eBay affiliate program. With AdSense you just use a piece of generic code and the ads are chosen for you. But with Auction Ads and the regular eBay affiliate program YOU have to choose the keywords, which I find annoying because I have to have different ads for different sections/topics/pages. To me, it's simply a shortcoming of eBay's pathetic technology. For all the money it makes, eBay does a really terrible job of managing its affiliate program, as well as other technology aspects of its site. It would be easy for eBay to choose ads based on the keywords on my page, rather than the current primitive way of doing things. This is not a reflection on Auction Ads, but on eBay.
Low Return Ads:
Some subjects simply don't lend themselves to eBay ads. For instance, I have a section on one of my sites about eBay Motors {http://auctionknowhow.com/ebayautoauction}. AdSense offers some very high-paying keywords related to anything involved with this industry. The eBay ads, on the contrary, only displayed such items as low-value toys (as low as $.99). With Auction Ads I would receive 50%-75% of eBay's revenues but the eBay fees on a $.99 aitem re only twenty six cents (actually, 25 & 1/4 cent). At the maximum revenue, then, I would earn the grand total of $.19. That's not OK with me.
The Upsides ...
Auction Ads Pays More Than The "Regular" eBay Affiliate Program
If your site lends itself to eBay, then Auction Ads is a much better deal than eBay is. Very few marketers will ever get beyond the $100 - $4,999.99 range, which pays 55.00%. With Auction Ads we are probably going to be in the 75% range now, if not already. In other words, we are increasing our revenues by 20%. That is definitely worth doing.
Most Important: Potential For Large, LARGE Payout
eBay has recently made pointed comments about how the growth of their site has slowed down drastically in the US. That's hardly surprising since there are already 225+ million accounts and so the market is fairly saturated. This means that eBay has increased their bounty for recruiting new members. The top payment for a new member is a lovely $35. This is the primary reason, to me, for using the clunky eBay affiliate program. Using Auction Ads increases the potential payout from $25-$35.
International Possibilities
Clearly, the growth potential for eBay is international, rather than US-based. Auction Ads has "some" provision for this: "at this time no ads are displayed from other countries' eBay sites. When a non-US visitor clicks an ad, they are taken to a search page of items from the same keywords. As ad impression volume builds from specific countries, we will consider adding local ad display. Our statistics and testing shows that this converts extremely well for international users."
You Can Run Auction Ads With AdSense
According to Auction Ads, Google has no objection to running AdSense on the same site and page with your eBay ads. So, we are not forced to choose.
Posted by SydneyJohnston at July 22, 2007 11:40 AM
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