eBay Quality Click Pricing - Best Blogs Asia
Seems eBay are changing how their affiliate program works, which will effect publishers one way or another.
Just to give some background, eBay launched their own affiliate program recently, taking over from Commission Junction. The new Quality Click Pricing scheme will be launched, but is complex so I look into what it’s all about.
About Affiliate Program
Seems eBay have rubbed people up the wrong way with the launch of the own Partner Network. CJ was more easy to apply to, make commission from a % of sales and wait for the cheques. With their eBay’s own site, things are more strict with the inclusion of campaign ids, confirmation of urls and restricted countries. Also combined with a lot of publishers getting dismissed for no reason at all (although could be related to poor number of sales, mis-use of code or long delays in logging in).
Effects of Quality Click Pricing
I heard about it in an email, I still didn’t understand it. Seems that the current system of making a % of sale is long gone. It’s quoted that:
“Starting September 1st 2009 for all new publishers and October 1st 2009 for all existing publishers, eBay Partner Network will start paying for clicks sent to eBay sites. The price paid will depend on the traffic’s quality — the more incremental revenue the traffic generates for eBay, the higher the amount paid per click”.
So it’s all about quality? How is quality determined? What does quality mean – I’m not sure! Perhaps it means if you have a relevant site, with lots relevant traffic then it’s of a high quality. At the end of the day, it’s all about making sales. If someone came to your site looking for a particular item, instead bought something else it still counts as a sale and shouldn’t effect the amount the publisher should get.
They explain that “High quality publishers will earn more” and “Lower quality publishers will earn less”, which basically means if make a couple of dollars a week/month from eBay, you’ll be earning even less. As for the real amount of “high quality” (whatever) that means, then earnings could be higher.
Making Money using eBay Network
A lot of affiliates use the Partner Network on BANS or Build a Niche Stores. You can make a lot of money if you dominate a keyword or keyword phrase. For example I recently setup Cars Under 1000 Dollars, the point being that I’d make revenue from each car sale and it’s benefit is that it’s targeted to buyers with less money to spend but still has a high payout for me as a publisher. I’ll keep you updated as to what happens with this site.
Seems like the days of adding your eBay affiliate link to say a blog post is over as you’ll now be earning less money to do so. Google Adsense isn’t the answer either as their payouts are terrible too.
Conclusion
They’ve changed from CPA Pricing where it can take upto 30 days to know the amount to EPA pricing where the revenue is known by the next day, this is one benefit. I know affiliates are getting fed up with these changes and the worry that one day they will be removed from the program with no notice. I love eBay and makes me money but need some stability from their side also.
Also seems about driving “relevant optimised traffic” to your site. This sounds like something you’d read on Adwords which gives me the idea that top publishers will be driving as much traffic as possible to their sites using paid searches, so the little guy like me and you won’t benefit at all from these changes. Prove me wrong guys!
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5 Replies:
Thank you for being one of the few people I’ve seen on the Internet that’s honest about affiliate marketing. Everyone else seems obligated to kiss their azz, eBay, Google and Amazon — no matter how much crap they feed their affiliates to explain why they’re going to pay them less money to promote their business.
No problem. I actually used the eBay Pricing Predictor tool yesterday and found that the leads I potentially can give them (expensive eBay items) have more “value” than it’s current structure…I could get paid upto 300% more! However, this is in theory and we’re all waiting to put it into practice.
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. Why is it ok for ebay to now claim that traffic is worth only 32.00?
The 92.00 was based on performance. Quality Click Pricing is based on voodoo.
I will be removing every ebay auction link I have and replacing them with something else. Probably aff links from a source who sells something from my site’s niche but anything is better then dealing with a company who just wants me to be happy being screwed.
ebay, you suck!
In many ways I agree, although for me is early days to judge whether I’ll earn more from QCP. It’s judged on the “quality” of signup/product bought, although it’s so complex how they can judge this and is upto their discretion. Also I’m finding I’m getting weekly emails from them with added on changes to the program…
I’m going to review Amazon sometime and see how effective they are nowadays. I used them back in 2003 with not much luck, so perhaps it’s time to give them another go…
Yet again, Ebay has managed to unethically screw people out of more money. They are the most dishonest company on the internet in my experience. Last year they shut down digital download sellers with no warning, raised fees but lied and said they were lowering fees, and now this with their affiliate program. It’s a rip off. I was making much more for each transaction before this crap started. Now they just determine how much my traffic is worth with no transparency? It’s clearly a scam on ebay’s part and they really think people are stupid. I’m through with them.