eBay PartnerNetwork Blog

We wanted to give you an update on the third party review of the eBay Partner Network tracking systems since we’ve mentioned it a few times on the blog and boards.

We commissioned the audit when some of our affiliates last summer highlighted discrepancies between their monthly earnings when our program was in Commission Junction and the earnings they saw as they transitioned onto eBay Partner Network.  We took these reports seriously and did a significant amount of analysis ourselves.  In addition to our own analysis, we had an audit performed by ImServices Group Ltd., a leading provider of independent consulting and verification services, including process reviews, activity, and privacy audits for Web sites and other interactive media companies.  You can find out more information about ImServices here.

The ImServices audit was very comprehensive and included a number of different methodologies, including: creating and checking hundreds of individual tracking events (including clicks, Bids, BINs, and ACRUs), analyzing the eBay Partner Network databases to validate that the sample transactions are representative, reconciling data feeds and database contents from different parts of the tracking systems, and validating our system access controls and software QA procedures.  In addition to the physical data analysis and transaction checking, there were numerous interviews with engineers and team members as well as many documentation reviews to ensure that ImServices had a full understanding of the systems, data, and behavior.

ImServices concluded their audit this month and presented their findings.  They concluded with the following line, contained in their letter summarizing their findings:  “ImServices validated that conversion events are properly attributed to Publishers that generated leads as outlined in eBay’s Advertiser Terms and Conditions.”  They confirmed our systems were working properly and able to track and properly attribute commissions to our publishers.

We’re pleased with the findings of the audit, but just to be clear this is not a guarantee that from time to time new issues won’t pop up.  There have been several issues that we’ve addressed and issued makegoods for this year such as the ACRU tracking issue in May as well as the most recent issue from Nov 13th - Nov 17th.  The first happened and was addressed before this audit.  The second happened due to an upgrade to the system after this study was completed and has also been fixed.  We are going to continue to work hard to make sure these don’t happen, and that when they do we communicate with you our affiliates as quickly and transparently as possible.

There has been a lot of change in the eBay Affiliates Program with the launch of eBay Partner Network, the many changes on the eBay website itself this year, and most recently the challenging economic times.  We know from speaking to some of our largest affiliates and reading the boards that all of these factors have introduced some fluctuations in affiliate earnings so we felt that it was important to share the findings of the audit with you.

Thanks,

The eBay Partner Network Team

Hello All,

The eBay Partner Network team would like to let you know that the January payment is expected to be sent out a few days later than usual.  We’re now planning to issue payments on or around January 22nd. This exceptional delay is caused by the heavy holiday schedule.    Thank you for your hard work promoting this holiday season.

Sincerely,

The eBay Partner Network

In our December 15th release, we have two updates to tell you about.

The first update is to the reporting functionality and will dramatically increase the amount of data available to you.  We have enhanced the Campaign Report and the Tool/Creative Report to allow publishers to view daily numbers by line, as previously you could only view high level summary data. You will now be able to see how tools, creatives and campaigns perform on a daily basis.

Secondly, based on publisher feedback, we are now requesting payment information within the registration flow. By collecting payment information upfront, new publishers will be able to receive earnings upon completing registration.  This will solve the problem of forgetting to enter payment information before the end of the month, and thus causing delays.

We are continuing to bring innovation and enhancements to the platform and always welcome your feedback. 

 
The eBay Partner Network Team

It’s almost upon us — the most wonderful time of year. As we’re unpacking holiday decorations, unraveling lights, rolling out the cookie dough or planning vacations, it’s hard to forget – only 22 shopping days left! The good news for eBay affiliates?  Savings and promotions rank highest among consumers’ priorities this year, according to the National Retail Federation. Also, a recent survey sponsored by ATG and conducted by the e-tailing group claims that in 2008 49 percent of holiday gift spending among US Internet users will occur online, compared with 44 percent in stores.
What better place than eBay to find bargains on the perfect gifts for wives, husbands, friends, parents, kids and more? So grab a hot cocoa and your coziest slippers and start directing your online traffic over to eBay to shop.  Following are a few things savvy shoppers will be scouting for this holiday season.
He’s making his list, he’s checking it twice … for the little ones on the “nice” list, consider posting the top 10 below:

1. Playskool Kota the Triceratops
2. High School Musical Dance Mat
3. Bratz Girls Really Rock set
4. Bakugan Battle Arena
5. Wild Planet Animal Scramble
6. Ultimate Wall-E
7. U-dance Game, Hasbro
8. Wonder Pets – This is Serious Ming Ming
9. Crayola Glow Station
10. Fur Real Friends Biscuit My Lovin Pup

Read the rest of this entry »

Updated - 28th November:

December is nearly upon us, but remember that the eBay.co.uk Christmas promotion is still running, so even if you didn’t quite hit your November targets, you’ve got another chance to earn a 20% Rev Share bonus in December.   

Original post:

Christmas is coming and it’s the busiest time of year for eBay.co.uk, as everyone rushes to buy their presents and stock up on festive goodies.  The eBay UK Affiliate team want to encourage you to send even more quality traffic to eBay.co.uk across this period, so we’re giving you the chance to earn a 20% bonus and you could even win a Nintendo Wii!

How to earn your 20% bonus

We have set targets based on the Winning Bid and BIN Revenue you generated for eBay.co.uk in September and if you beat these targets, you will earn a 20% Rev Share bonus, which will be paid to you in January. 

• Beat September Revenue £ amount by 35% in November = 20% RevShare bonus
• Beat September Revenue £ amount by 15% in December = 20% RevShare bonus

Of course, these targets take into account that traffic to eBay.co.uk naturally increases in the run up to Christmas and don’t forget you’ll also receive commission on all the ACRUs you drive too!

Win a Nintendo Wii

Everyone who hits their targets and earns more than £100 in commissions in both November and December will be entered into a draw to win a Nintendo Wii.  We’ll even throw in a Wii Fit to help you work off the Christmas pudding!  The lucky winner will be notified in January.  Read the rest of this entry »

Hello,

We wanted to notify US Publishers of some important tax information.  You will receive a 1099 tax form from eBay Partner Network if:

• you are a United States citizen or legal resident and
• you had $600 reportable tax activity for the year 2008.

eBay Partner Network Forms 1099-MISC will be postmarked via US Postal Service no later than January 31, 2009.  To ensure the accuracy of the 1099 –MISC Forms, please log-in to your eBay Partner Network account and make sure that you have entered the latest information for your account:
- name
- Tax ID
- most recent address

You can find additional information about the 1099-MISC Form from the IRS website, www.irs.gov.
Please note that eBay Partner Network is not authorized to give you any tax advice. Please reach out to a tax advisor to get qualified advice about your taxes.

Warm wishes,
The eBay Partner Network Team

A few of us at eBay Partner Network attended the 2008 PubCon Conference Nov 11-14 in Las Vegas.

If you haven’t attended one of their past conferences, PubCon sessions are designed to give tips to publishers on how to improve and drive traffic to their websites.  We found this year’s PubCon to be especially interesting, with multiple sessions on content generation and management, driving traffic to your websites, and effective affiliate strategies.

We’re going to do a series of blog posts in the next couple of weeks with some of our biggest learnings that we thought might be helpful to you our affiliates.

In several sessions with titles like “SEO on a Shoestring Budget” and “Link Strategies”, we walked away with some interesting tips on interesting ways drive traffic to your sites that went beyond your typical formatting your website to get picked up by search engines.  Check these out:

• Find out who’s linking to your competitors.  Use a tool like like Yahoo’s Site Explorer to see where other sites are getting their traffic.  See if you can also get links from those sites.
• Take advantage of broken links to related sites.  Ask the original website to re-direct the link to you, or contact the destination site and ask them if they’ll re-direct to your pages. Read the rest of this entry »

Hello, 

We wanted to let you know that we experienced an issue with ACRU tracking this month.  An error was introduced recently during an upgrade in the way ACRUs are tabulated.  The issue affected stats from Nov 13 (when the upgrade rolled that caused the issue) to Nov 16 (when we put the fix in place).  Note that you wouldn’t have seen Nov 16 data until the following day (Nov 17). This issue also affected all eBay programs (countries). It did not affect Half.com.

We were able to recover the data, and will be able to calculate the right number of ACRUs and the correct quality tiers for each account and therefore attribute the right earnings to each of you at the end of the month. The magnitude of the issue was in the order of 30-40% of your ACRUs for those days, but this may vary by publisher. Read the rest of this entry »

New this year, eBay.com will be offering special deals and promotions for all types of great Holiday gift items.  We’ve worked closely with some of our top most trusted sellers to offer some of the biggest sales ever on the site.  That’s why we are encouraging you to promote these great limited time Holiday deals now, with our new creative that’s sure to increase your click through rate and generate even higher commissions!  As of November 3rd we are offering holiday shoppers’ access to eBay’s Holiday Promotions which include Daily Deals and Bid from $1 Hot Items with Free Shipping.  These will all be aggregated on the www.eBay.com/deals page, where the new holiday banners we’ve created point too. 

Daily Deals

The Daily Deals will feature one popular item, each day, such as an Apple Ipod 80GB at a very low price until the quantities are sold out.  Our list of items we plan to offer for the Daily Deal is sure to get shoppers coming back to check what’s coming next!  Here are the key points on this promotion: Read the rest of this entry »

Hello,

For all publishers who joined prior to August 1st, we want to remind you that the new Value Based Pricing structure for ACRUs begins November 1st (all publishers that joined after August 1st have already been on this system since August 1st).  This means that all ACRUs that are generated during the months to come will be placed on a payout tier according to the value of the new active eBay users you send. 

The purpose of this new pricing is to pay publishers based on the expected lifetime value of the new users they send to eBay.  We base this on the new user’s purchases and the level of activity on the site.  It’s simple really, the more a new user is worth to eBay, the more we can and will compensate the publisher who brought us that user.  This is a fundamental change we are making to help focus more on quality and performance rather than just quantity for new user referrals. Read the rest of this entry »