Aug 19 2009
eBay Partner Network – Quality Click Pricing
This morning I had a chat to Julia Nisted who is European Affiliate Manager for the eBay Partner Network and she outlined some very interesting changes to the commission structure of the affiliate program planned from 1st September 2009.
Currently eBay pay out a CPA on new users and a percentage of revenue from sellers fees but from 1st September they are going to switch to a new concept which they have called Quality Click Pricing. As the most simple level this is a switch to CPC payouts which may seem like a strange step at first but the CPC payment is going to be based on the quality of the traffic and vary for each publisher on a daily basis.
The quality algorithm is based on both the short term and long term value of the click to eBay with various elements deciding an EPC on a daily basis. For example sales completed closer to the click time would be valued higher as there is more direct evidence that the click contributed to the sale. In some ways this is an attempt to vary the ‘last click wins’ approach that is currently in place with most affiliate programs and to help content affiliates and others who produce quality sites. Since eBay can tell what a click from a specific affiliate is normally worth to them then it’s a creative way to pay appropriately.
Julia said that the motivation for this change was to see their good affiliates rewarded with higher payouts and their bad affiliates to earn less as an incentive to improve. eBay believe that some of their smaller affiliates are providing some of their best quality traffic and so this allows them to invest in growing that side of the network. During the beta test they also found that it encouraged some affiliates to work on improving their traffic either through developing their own sites or looking at their traffic sources.
More info is available on the eBay blog including the official press release.
From my point of view it seems a bold move and I hope it’s one that works out well. It’s nice to see a creative approach to solving a problem and they seem to have avoided the Adsense approach which leaves you without a clue about why some clicks earned so much more than others. I’d be really keen to hear in the comments any other opinions or from people active on the eBay Partner Network about how you think the change will affect you.
As a side note we also discussed that eBay doesn’t seem to be talked about much in the UK affiliate marketing community and I wasn’t totally sure of the reasons behind this. Are many of you active on the eBay network? Given that eBay.co.uk’s unique audience was over 17m in June this year it seems we are all buying and selling there but not talking about the affiliate program!
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Aug 19th, 2009 at 1:42 pm | #
I think that’s a great approach. Here at Shopzilla we use a so called eCPC model as well (effective cost per click). Sending quality traffic to our merchants is essential for us. That’s why we always try to assure to get publishers with decent websites for our affiliate program on board. Not 100% sure though if the new eBay model really works well as an incentive/motivation for small/bad affiliates…
Regards,
J
Aug 19th, 2009 at 3:22 pm | #
Most of our sites in the network get Medium to HIgh ACRU ratings.. hopefully this will translate into higher earnings.. or they may only be rewarding the ‘very high’ ACRU levels.. not sure.
Aug 19th, 2009 at 10:33 pm | #
I’m active but can’t reset my password and get into my account as the reset process doesn’t work. Can anyone at eBay help? Maybe – it’s only been a month so far…
Aug 23rd, 2009 at 10:31 pm | #
This should be really interesting to see how this pans out. As outlined by Ronnie, I really hope this is fair across the board and not just the big shots earning the cash.
Sep 1st, 2009 at 4:16 pm | #
So far it seems better. As I go through my different sites Its obvious what they are doing (at least to my market)
The pages that I send clicks from that are not as tightly optimized with the ebay listings are doing worse but the ones that I have worked harder to send very tight queries for the ebay listings are doing better. Overall getting a 20% increase with new system projections. I guess its one of those scenarios where it pays to do it right.
Sep 19th, 2009 at 5:55 am | #
This is really interesting. I am just new at learning about all these different affiliate programs, so I’m really interested to find out how exactly the eBay program would work. So far I’ve been using some internet-based training, but I haven’t come across eBay yet. How would they differentiate between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ affiliates?
Nov 10th, 2009 at 1:43 pm | #
Interesting article here. Have you gotten a feel for eBay CPA vs CPA networks in terms of more effective form of developing an income stream? I’d like to hear your thoughts on this.
I’ve been pretty successful with lots of different CPA networks. I’m concerned because there are lots of newbies out there going hard at this and end up spending way more than their revenue. It’s frustrating to see that sort of thing.
I’m just asking because it seems like CPA networks have a more simplified approach, thus more likely to attract the beginners. Do you think eBay is simple enough for beginners flex out their campaigns?
Thanks,
The Affletic Afflete.
Jan 2nd, 2010 at 9:18 am | #
I currently don’t push eBay on my sites but am looking into whether or not I should. I have a lot of success on amazon but am sceptical of this new approach offered by ebay, it looks to me just like a way to pay out as small amount as possible by changing the EPC as it suits them. However their logic makes sense so I guess I should just test it out.
May 15th, 2010 at 10:45 am | #
I am thinking of adding live ebay listings to my blog, thanks for the information your site have provided.
Jun 11th, 2010 at 4:15 am | #
Almost 9 months into Quality Click Pricing I can say that I definitely benefited from the change. I seen a huge increase on monthly revenue immediately eBay introduced this concept.
I have only ever ran with the eBay partner network on one website. It was initially just an added extra for possible income, with affiliate offers and adsense being the main earners. Monthly revenue used to equate to little more than a pound per thousand visitors on average. With the start of quality click pricing I actually hit over 4 pounds per 1000 visitor on the first month.
While this did drop a little on the second month, I was starting to realise that there was more potential within the site for increasing the opportunity to gain more clicks. I quickly increased the volume of creatives across the site, dropping a few affiliate banners in the process. While the clicks did increase significantly, I did end up dropping the EPC [Earnings Per Click]. A bit of experimentation over the next 3 months and I did get the balance right, with the site now pulling in over 20 pounds per thousand visitors most months.
Needless to say, the eBay Partner Network program is now the main source of income on that site. I would recommend the program to anyone, willing to put in the effort of targeting their visitors with eBay auctions that will be of interest to them. As well as spending the time experimenting with different creatives and getting the placement right. A bit of trial and error and eBay can provide a lot more revenue than adsense for the same amount of space.