Ebay
If you're looking for a way to earn income from eBay without having to actually sell anything yourself, the eBay affiliate program is something to consider. eBay offers a staggering array of options for affiliates to utilize eBay's marketplace and its content for potential referral revenue. Search engine marketing, banners, auction feeds and Web Services are all part of eBay's offer to help affiliates profit from "the world's online marketplace."
Getting Started
Though the affiliates program is specifically not intended to market your own auctions (that's actually against eBay affiliates terms of service), to get started you do need to be an eBay member. The actual affiliate program itself, in terms of registration, tracking, payment and "some" of the linking options is done via Commission Junction, so you'll need to get an ID there as well. This is easily done by going to http://affiliates.ebay.com . Approval for the eBay program is almost instantaneous so you'll be able to get right into the thick of it immediately.
Payouts
It's important to understand eBay's commission structure so that you'll have a reasonable expectation of what to expect in terms of potential revenue. eBay pays out affiliate revenues for two things:
1. Links that convert when a New "active" user registration occurs. The new user must either use Buy It Now or place a bid within 30 days of initial registration to be considered active.
2. Links from which a user bids on an item or uses Buy It Now (BIN)
Both of those items are volume indexed so the payout increases as you get more bids/user signups. As of February 2005, eBay will pay a minimum of $20.00 for every new active user registration (when you have 1-499 monthly active registrations) and a maximum of $45.00 (when you have over 7,500 monthly active registrations). For bid/BIN the minimum payout is 0.10 per bid/BIN (1-999 bids) and a current maximum of $0.25 per bid (over 100,000 bids).
Volume, not final sale value, is the primary and only real mechanism to increase your eBay affiliate revenue. Volume in terms of users that click through and convert via any and/or every possible mechanism that eBay provides is the goal. It's not a necessarily easy task, but then again the most worthwhile things in life hardly ever are.
Affiliate Links
There are three principal methods of building the media links for an eBay Affiliates program:
The Commission Junction interface
Banners, boxes, leaderboards, skyscrapers and search
The eBay Affiliates website
Product Kit media units, Flexible Destination Tool, Editor Kit (integrated eBay listings)
Web Services
Full XML feeds and calls
The Commission Junction eBay interface offers up to 5 pages loaded full of various affiliate banners and links of all sizes and shapes for you to choose from. As with all Commission Junction programs Earnings Per Click (EPC) for the last 7 days and the last 3 months are listed on the same row as the media unit. (On March 29, 2005 for all eBay Affiliates media Commission Junction reported a 7-day EPC of $4.22 and a 3-month EPC of $3.65).
As always, the goal of the media unit is to entice the user to click through and then convert. With the over saturation of eBay in the online media landscape getting a user to click and then convert on a media unit is not an easy thing to do. However it is "easy" with Commission Junction to view the highest performing units (on an EPC basis) for the last 7 days and 3-month reporting period and use that data to help you choose which particular media units may work best for you.
As of March 29th, 2005 a 120x60 unit with a "Free Shipping" shipping message yielded one of the best 7 and 30 day EPC rates with a 7 day EPC of $59.21 and 3 Month at $50.47.
The various Search box units are also a solid option since a user will likely enter something into the dialogue box to search, which involves a greater degree of thought (and thus intention to act and possibly convert) than simply clicking on a banner, box, skyscraper media unit.
Advanced Affiliate Links the Easy Way
Though you can potentially be successful with the Commission Junction buttons, banners and links, there are more effective ways to entice users to click.
An example of an eBay affiliate search box available through Commission Junction.
The eBay Affiliate site offers excellent browser based tools to create advanced links and even site integration with simple and easy to use online interfaces. Users will click (and are more likely to convert) for items that are of interest especially if you've got them on a site where they are contextually relevant. Instead of using a "plain Jane" eBay link from Commission Junction, the Product Kit Media units online application lets you create customized ad units (at custom sizes) with products (from Books, Cameras & Photo, Cell Phones, Computers & Networking, Consumer Electronics, DVD & Movies, Music, Sporting goods, and Video games) and prices pulled directly from the eBay marketplace.
The Editor Kit allows you to pull in eBay auction (or just BIN if you so choose) listings into your site with the use of a script snippet that is placed on your site page. It is customizable by color, number of listing, keyword, category and seller. Personally, I think the "Editor Kit" is the wrong title for this killer affiliate app. I'd call it an integrated eBay auction list kit because that is what it does.
The key with both the product kit and the editor kit is to make them look like they are part of your site by matching colors and by placing the units in a place where they make sense. For the Editor Kit, you can literally use it to create a listing site of your own that will then feed you referral revenue when a user clicks through and bids (or signs up for the first time so that they can bid on an auction they saw on your site's listing). It is not as elegant as the eBay Web Services API, but it is infinitely easier to execute and it's free to start and deploy.
Marketing
Search engine marketing is a great way to help generate traffic for an affiliate site and, as an eBay affiliate, it's also a direct mechanism for revenue generation.
As opposed to Google AdSense or Amazon Associates, eBay promotes the use of its affiliate program for more than just traditional content (sites and newsletters) but search (both natural and paid) as well. So with eBay you could potentially be an affiliate without even having a website. For example you
