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November 25, 2007
Is The eBay Affiliate Program Valuable - Or Not? {Part 2}
Create RSS feeds of your eBay search results, and add your affiliate link to it before sharing with your visitors and users. These feeds provide users with live eBay listing information, such as a gallery image, price and end date and allow them to add items to their eBay watch list. You can display up to 200 eBay listings that are dynamically updated in real time. Customize your Editor Kit to match the content and look of your site
5. Keyword Linking Tool
http://affiliates.ebay.com/ns/Keyword.htm
The is the easiest tool for multiple keywords tracking and will track up to 5,000 keywords at a time. Links can be generated by keyword searches or unique identifiers such as ISBNs or UPCs. The link go to the corresponding search-results pages.
In addition, if you submit a list of ISBNs, UPCs or MPNs (Manufacturers Part Number), you can build links to search results or links pointing to the Product Details Page for each of the products.
6. Product Kit
http://affiliates.ebay.com/ns/ProductKit.htm
You can customize each Product Kit to match the content and look of your site. Some of the customizable features include:
* Search term
* Product Category
* Tools size (in pixels)
* Number of items displayed
* Product Kit design, color & look
There are two kinds of product kits:
Basic: which uses standardized templates
Advanced: are much more "customizable" but also require more skill & knowledge to create
What We Like
The eBay affiliate program is available to non-US residents which has a big appeal for many international affiliates. A common gripe about US-based affiliate programs is that they're only available to US & Canadian sellers.
eBay sells such a huge range of products that it's possible - even easy - to find appropriate merchandise for almost any website. For web owners and affiliates who are desperate to monetize their sites, the eBay affiliate program can be a very welcome addition, indeed.
What We Dislike
The eBay program is much more cumbersome to work with than, say, AdSense. With AdSense you simply add the same piece of code to every page and Google handles the ads for you. eBay requires much more personalization and individual attention.
Granted, the ads displayed on an AdSense page are sometimes disappointing, but we have no more control over eBay content than Google content.
An example: I have a collection of articles on "eBay Motors" ... cars, motorcycles, boats and other high-cost products. But when attempting to use the eBay ads, almost all of them were very low dollar amount car parts ($10 and under) or even small toys for children. The amount of money I would have made was too pitiful to even consider.
The biggest drawback of the eBay program is profit. There are rumors of affiliates making $100,000 per month with the eBay affiliate program. That might have been true in the early days of eBay when growth was explosive. However, that is no longer the case. Yes, eBay is still growing but signups are infrequent compared to the "good ole days".
In addition, the percentage of eBay fees brings only miniscule revenue unless you can drive major traffic.
SUMMARY: there are affiliate programs that are considerably more profitable and easy to administer than the eBay one.
Posted by SydneyJohnston at November 25, 2007 2:17 PM
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