eBay Affiliates

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.

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).

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.

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.

eBay's affiliate Web Services API allows affiliate developers to directly and tightly integrate eBay data into a site, or application.If you're a small to medium size Affiliate simply looking to integrate eBay listings into your site, the Editor Kit will likely meet your needs.

eBay Affiliate Resources:

Main affiliates page

Payment structure

Affiliate tools

eBay affiliates best practices

eBay hot items report (PDF)

eBay developer blog for affiliates

Keys to eBay Affiliate Success

• Use Commission Junction to determine and select creative units with high earnings per click.
• Use the Editor Kit to show eBay listings
• Put units on pages where they'll be contextually relevant
• Read eBay's hot market report to choose categories with higher conversions
• Use Shopper ID (SID) to enable proper tracking

to Your success