eBay PartnerNetwork Blog

Many of you will know that Chris Howard leads the European eBay Partner Network team, but what you may not know is that in a previous life he spent five years running eBay UK’s Search Engine Marketing team.  In this article and in subsequent posts, he will be sharing some of his top tips for optimizing SEM traffic to your site.

When speaking to publishers, one of the questions we are asked most frequently is how people can improve the quality of traffic they are sending to eBay.  While there are a number of ways in which you can do this, one of the most important things you can do is to optimize the traffic to your own site.  We know that Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is one of the main sources of traffic to many of our publishers’ websites, therefore we thought this would be a great opportunity to blog about some SEM best practices.  The tips are a mixture of basics and some more advanced techniques, so hopefully there will be some information of value for publishers of all levels of SEM experience. 

I have divided the tips into six main areas of focus and I will cover off the first of topics here, with the others following over the course of the next few weeks. 

1. Selecting and organizing your keywords
2. Creating appealing ad text
3. Landing Page design and optimization
4. Where to buy your traffic
5. Deciding how much to pay for your traffic
6. Optimizing for success

1.  Selecting and organizing your keywords

Perhaps unsurprisingly, one of the most crucial aspects of running a successful Search Engine Marketing campaign is choosing the correct set of keywords to purchase.  Within this, there are three different elements that you should consider: creating your keyword list; targeting your keyword list; and organizing your keywords to maximize their chances of success.

Creating your keyword list

The most important factor here is to make sure that the keywords you are purchasing are relevant to your site.  Untargeted keywords are likely to get a very low Quality Score from the search engines.  Not only will this mean that you have to pay a high minimum CPC for these keywords, but it can also have a negative impact on the performance of more targeted keywords you are purchasing.  Though all search engines operate slightly differently, in most cases keywords for which you do not have a large amount of history have a Quality Score assigned to them based on the performance of other keywords in the same AdGroup, or, if there is still not enough data, all keywords in the same account.  In other words, large numbers of untargeted keywords can undermine all of your other SEM efforts.

When generating your keyword list, make sure that you do not just use high volume, generic terms.  For example, if you have a site offering CD reviews, don’t just focus on buying keywords such as ‘CD reviews’.  Longer, more specific keywords – for example, ‘Green Day album reviews’ or ‘21st Century Breakdown CD reviews’ – often convert better and normally have fewer other advertisers bidding for them, meaning you can drive traffic from them at a lower CPC.  (more…)

Today the Tool Up eBay store just launched a huge tool sale complete with name brands like Makita, Skil, Dremel & Milwaukee, all up to 74% off retail. These brand new products all come with Free Shipping, including this highly sought after Makita 18v 7 piece combo set for only $589!

This sale runs from now through November 2nd 2009, unless certain items sell out ahead of time. Please take a look at this deal file for all the details surrounding each product in this sale. In order to link to the main landing page or individual products, use the custom link generator tool with either the custom url or item id options. Please note this specific promotion only applies to the US program.

- The eBay Partner Network Team

James Skelland is the Technical Solutions Manager at R.O.EYE, the agency that supports the in-house eBay Partner Network team with account management and recruitment in the UK and Ireland.  James has been working extensively with publishers across Europe to help them optimize the products they showcase using the API or Custom Banner and here are his top tips to help you do the same.  And in case you are wondering why there are s’s in words where there should be z’s (that’s zeds not zees), this is because James is writing in British English, as he is based in Manchester in the north west of England!

One of the biggest benefits of an API or Custom Banner implementation is that it provides an automated pull of live data to your website – so why should you keep fiddling with it once it’s set up?  Well, with the quality of traffic now dictating how much you get paid, it is imperative to ensure that visitors who arrive on your site are given an accurate and relevant choice of live listings.  It can take only a matter of minutes to tweak your search query, and the benefit of displaying a tighter set of results can be a significant increase in your EPC.

The important word here is “relevancy”, so how do you make sure the most relevant listings are displayed to your visitors?  The first clue is in the reports available to you in the eBay Partner Network interface.  The blog article entitled “How to Optimize for Quality Click Pricing” already covers off various ways to optimise, such as splitting campaigns down, and using the different reports to work out where improvements can me made.

As an example, after reviewing the Transaction Download Report or the Category Report on a mobile phone Custom Banner campaign you are running, you ’ve deduced that it is the phones themselves which convert, not the accessories, so where do you go from here?

1 – Improve keyword search with negatives and positives
Level: Easy
Applies to: Custom Banner / API
The easiest thing to look at is the actual keyword query.  eBay provides a handy table here, which explains some clever ways of entering your query.  Try it now by logging into ePN and loading up the Custom Banner widget.  Select a program and a campaign id, and enter the search term “nokia n95” (without quotation marks in all cases).  You’ll find you get a lot of accessories, including chargers, cases and batteries, so the first thing to look at is negative keyword matching.  Any keywords which you enter with a preceding minus sign will remove all of those items from the results.  From the results you have in front of you, pick a couple of words which you don’t want.  In this case, I will choose “charger” and “battery”, so I end up with “nokia n95 -charger –battery” and the widget will now return items without those two words. 

But we need more negatives than that.  Multiple words can be grouped together by using parentheses.  “nokia n95 -(case*, charg*, cover, battery, accessories, screen, cable, etc…)”.  Note that I’ve used the asterisk character a couple of times.  charg* will match against charged, chargers, charging etc.  You can just keep adding more negatives until you are happy with the results.  Negatives should also be used in conjunction with more positives for best results.  In this case, the word “unlocked” is a common word for handset results, so we’ll add that into the query as a positive.  If you try the following keyword query, you can see that there are far more relevant listings now appearing in the banner: “nokia n95 unlocked -(case*, charg*, cover, battery, accessories, screen, cable)”.

2 – Use relevant Category IDs
Level: Easy/Medium
Applies to: Custom Banner / API
The next area to look at is the Category ID.  Using both the API and the Custom Banner, you can stipulate that listings are only pulled from a specific category.  In the above example, the mobile phones Category ID is 3312 and if you insert this into the Custom ID field in the Custom Banner, you will restrict results to only this category.  However, using the term “nokia n95” with this Category ID will still yield a few rogue accessories in the results, so to get the most relevant matches, category mapping should be combined with keyword matching.  In other categories, such as Vehicle Parts & Accessories, you can specify Category IDs right down to the make of the vehicle or the brand of GPS – for example there is a category just for Peugeot Workshop Manuals! 

If you are using Custom Banner, you can use the drop down menu to find a Category IDs.  If you are using the API, the UK Category IDs can be found here and to see IDs for other territories, change the .co.uk in the address to the country’s own eBay site.

3 – Map eBay’s categories to your own site
Level: Medium/Hard
Applies to: Custom Banner / API
Modifying the query string and the Category ID is all well and good on a small number of pages, but on larger sites, which use dynamic keyword insertion to make calls on multiple pages, this just isn’t possible.  One option is to set up a table, which maps your site’s category structure to eBay’s.  You could also include a third column in the table with any negative keywords you want to include in the query.  This table can then be referenced to insert the correct Category ID into your query, based on which page of your site the visitor is on.

4 – Querying multiple categories
Level: Hard
Applies to: API
One final thing to consider: if you’ve filtered by Category ID for better matching, you may want to include multiple categories in your query.  For example, if you have a site about Apple computers and you don’t want to show accessories, then the meta category of Apple Computers and Components is not appropriate.  However, the two leaf categories of Apple Desktops and Apple Laptops & Notebooks are much more relevant, but how do you show them both?  The answer is that you can make a separate API call for each category, and then collate the results yourself.

All of these tips are fairly straightforward, but you’d be surprised at the number of publishers who don’t optimise their live listings.  Hopefully this post will at least give you a nudge in the right direction, and speaking from personal experience with publishers I have helped to optimise, once unwanted listings are replaced with more relevant items in your results, there are considerable gains in your EPC to be made.

James Skelland, Technical Solutions Manager at R.O.EYE

Local Knowledge

Recently I’ve been working quite a bit with publishers promoting eBay.com.au and have noticed some interesting things, especially with the launch of QCP, Quality Click Pricing. One aspect of the program I discovered, and not to my surprise, is that Aussies know Aussies best. While many of the top performing large volume publishers for eBay.com.au are located outside of Australia, some of the strongest EPCs and other metrics are actually coming from publishers local to Australia. With the recent migration to QCP, many of these local publishers are seeing a considerable lift over their previous earnings.

Opportunities for International Publishers

For international publishers thinking of promoting eBay.com.au, are you already geo targeting any of your eBay traffic? eBay.com.au is one of the largest eBay sites, and depending on your business model, there’s a chance your sites are already receiving at least some traffic from Australia. This is especially true for those sites that are in English. Australia also has a similar holiday shopping season as North America and Europe, and many of the top product verticals like video games and women’s fashion are the same on the Australian site. All of these factors combined make marketing eBay.com.au an easy addition for many international publishers.

eBay Australia Insights

eBay.com.au remains a leader in the online shopping space in Australia and according Nielsen Net Ratings, eBay is Australia’s leading online marketplace with 5.35 million unique visitors in June 2009 alone. Since eBay’s launch in Australia 10 years ago, over 173 million items have been bought on eBay.com.au, providing a primary or secondary source of income for over 50,0000 Australians. Combine eBay.com.au with the eBay Partner Network and you’ve got potentially the largest affiliate program in Australia, covering almost every merchandise vertical imaginable and offering a competitive payout.

An additional benefit of marketing eBay Australia is that publishers can offer Australian residents a global marketplace. When an international eBay seller offers shipping to Australia, these items are also listed on eBay.com.au, offering Australian users the opportunity to purchase hard to find electronics, clothing, collectibles and more from around the globe. eBay Australia is also filled with a wide variety of locally related products like NRL, AFL and Rugby Union gear.

So What’s The Big Deal?

eBay Australia recently launched “The Big Deal”, which is the same concept as the “Daily Deal” in the US, the “Daily Deals” in the UK and ”Wow! Angebote” in Germany, where eBay Power Sellers work out exclusive rock bottom pricing and free shipping for certain items. There are five different sizes of dynamically updating Big Deal banners in the ePN interface, as well as an XML feed, like the US program’s XML. The Big Deal banners for Australia are available in sizes 120×600, 468×60, 160×600, 728×90 & 300×250.

If you’ve got any questions regarding the eBay.com.au side of the eBay Partner Network, or would like to learn more, please feel free to contact me here. Affiliates-Program-au@ebay.com

- Mike Kansa / eBay Partner Network

Hi all

We wanted to let you know about planned Royal Mail industrial action in the UK and the potential impact it could have on our sellers and affiliates.  For those of you based outside the UK, the Royal Mail is the national postal service of the United Kingdom. 

The Royal Mail workers’ union (the CWU) have announced plans for two 24-hour postal strikes on Thursday 22nd October and Friday 23rd October. On the first day, mail centre staff and drivers will strike. On the second day, delivery and collection staff will strike.  During a recent meeting with Royal Mail, eBay sought assurances that post will continue to be delivered in the event of a national strike. Royal Mail confirmed it is committed to delivering all of the mail entrusted to them, but have indicated delays are inevitable.

In an announcement to sellers in the UK, Mark Lewis, eBay UK’s Managing Director, announced that to mitigate the negative impact for sellers, eBay is temporarily removing the option for buyers to rate sellers on the Dispatch Time Detailed Seller Rating from the start date of any national strike action.  eBay has also agreed pricing deals with alternative postal carriers. This means eBay sellers will be able to choose a door to door courier service from as low as £3.60 for a guaranteed 3-5 day delivery for packets up to 2kg.  In addition, Mark has written to the UK’s Business Secretary Rt. Hon Lord Mandelson that it is unacceptable many hard-working small businesses selling on eBay are victims of a dispute that is beyond their control. (See full announcement and letter here)

As you can see eBay is working to mitigate any negative impact on sales during this period and in fact, since the CWU announced its intention to strike, there has been no noticeable impact on the amounts bought and sold on the UK site.  However, please be aware that affiliates may see more volatile EPCs for the UK program during the anticipated postal delays.

The European eBay Partner Network team

Last week, the European eBay Partner Network team and the eBay team at R.O.EYE attended the a4uexpo in London.  As usual, it was great to meet lots of our affiliates face to face and get their feedback.  There was a lot of buzz about Quality Click Pricing and we lost count of how many questions we were asked about it, with interest very high from affiliates, merchants and networks alike. Chris and Julia also presented on the topic, and their talk was called “How incremental is Affiliate Marketing and other difficult questions… or, why eBay introduced Quality Click Pricing!”  You can find the presentation on the a4u slide share site and if you want to take a look at it, we recommend you also look at the notes below as it was very visual!

The European eBay Partner Network team

eBay Power Sellers eCost and Beach Camera just kicked off a massive liquidation on TVs and GPS systems and have offered up excellent deals on new and refurbished units from now until October 26th. To see the full list of products, check out this deal file. All of these electronics are offered with Free Shipping and are well below retail, with a Garmin 850 taking the win and coming in at 73% off MSRP. One of the best deals available anywhere on a new HD TV is this Toshiba 26″ HD LCD TV, for only $299!

In order to link to the pages above, or directly to the items in the deal file, use the custom link generator tool and either the item id or custom url feature.

We’re planning on launching many more of these promotions during this holiday season, so keep an eye on the eBay Partner Network blog for updates over the coming weeks. Please note this specific promotion only applies to the US program.

- The eBay Partner Network Team

Hi all,

As we mentioned in a recent post, we highly recommend implementing geo-targeting as soon as possible.  Not only will geo-targeting result in higher revenue for you, it also gives customers a better eBay experience. Thus, geo-targeting is one of the fastest ways to improve the quality of your traffic.

Therefore, we’ll be giving out ten prizes of $2000 each to those publishers who adopt geo-targeting (either through our dedicated tools, or by using your own solution) and have the biggest increase in the percentage of their winning bid revenue coming from programs other than the US program between the month of September and the month of November.  The $2000 bonuses will be paid in the December payment run.

Who is eligible for the competition? 
- Publishers accepted as partners of eBay Partner Network prior to September 1st, 2009.
- Publishers who drove all their traffic (>99%) to the US program, as of September 1st, 2009.
- Publishers with at least 150 USD in total earnings for the month of November (combined earnings from all programs).

To take part, register for this promotion by the end of the week (October 23rd) by sending an email with your publisher details to affiliates-program-us@ebay.com. Please mention “geo-targeting promotion” in the subject line, and send us your website’s URL, and one of your campaign IDs OR your email address that you use for your eBay Partner Network account. Winners will be contacted for potential case studies.

The eBay Partner Network team

With Quality Click Pricing, it’s more important than ever for you to continually optimize your traffic in order to maximize its quality and therefore your earnings.  As mentioned in an earlier post, we’re planning a series of blog posts to highlight best practices and give you tips on how you can improve your traffic quality.  A number of these posts are already live and we plan to post about one a week over the next few months.  The topics we plan to write about are below, and thanks to all those people who added ideas for topics on the discussion boards or as a comment on the blog.  This post will contain the links to all the educative articles as they are added, so it is probably a good idea to bookmark the page, so you can always easily find the whole series.

As we mentioned in an earlier blog post, we are posting a series of articles that highlight best practices and give you tips on how you can improve your traffic quality. This article covers geo-targeting – a sure fire way to increase your EPCs, if you’re not doing it already!

The results are in from an internal eBay Partner Network (ePN) geo-targeting study. Our data has shown that between 5% and 25% of visitors to US-based publishers with .com websites come from outside the United States. However, many of our publishers send all their traffic to eBay.com, rather than to the eBay site specific to the country their visitor lives in. There are two main reasons why you should send your visitors to the corresponding local eBay site rather than always to eBay.com.

1. ePN Tracking is Program Specific

Different eBay programs on ePN use distinct tracking codes. This means that you earn no commission if you use a US ePN link (starting with http://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/711-53200-19255-0/…) to send a British visitor to eBay.co.uk. But it is also not a good idea to send a British visitor to the eBay.com website, even if it is using the US ePN link. This is because although the QCP algorithm will give you credit for purchases, you will not get credit for new users.

Why is that? The reason is that when a British person tries to sign up as a new eBay member on ebay.com, they are redirected from the US registration page to the eBay.co.uk website, and on eBay.co.uk there is no recognition of the eBay.com affiliate tracking.

This means that in order to get credit for the ACRUs and the commission for transactions, you need to send your visitors to their local eBay website (as long as this local website has an ePN program). Therefore for British visitors, choose a UK ePN link (starting with http://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/710-53481-19255-0/…). For other programs’ placement ids, please see the table below this article.

This table summarizes your options:

2. Propensity to Buy Favors Local Site

Perhaps unsurprisingly, people have a higher propensity to buy from their own country’s eBay site, where available. Therefore if you direct a user to their local site, they are more likely to make a purchase than if you send them to eBay.com.
We have found that even for countries like Canada, where a lot of people buy on eBay.com directly and import from the US, geo-targeting the traffic to eBay.ca usually results in higher earnings than sending buyers directly to the US website. We recently conducted A/B tests with two niche website publishers where they sent their Canadian buyer traffic to the eBay.ca site instead of eBay.com. We tested this both under the old pricing model as well as the new Quality Click Pricing model, and in both cases the results showed an uplift in EPCs.

A/B test results with 2 content website publishers with their Canadian traffic in August &
September 09.

For publisher 1, their EPC increased by 2 cents per click when he directed his traffic from Canadian IP addresses to the eBay.ca website instead of the eBay.com website, and publisher 2 saw a huge 6 cent increase. Of course, not all publishers will see the same results, but it does highlight the opportunities of effective geo-targeting.

How to Activate Geo-Targeting

Firstly, make sure that you are signed up to all programs to which you intend to geo-target your traffic.  There are some ePN tools with built-in geo-targeting capabilities available in the publisher interface. Geo-targeting in ePN is available for:

• Selected banners (geo-targeting is a search option in the creatives generator)
• Home page links
• Item ID links
• For search results links, geo-targeting works for English speaking countries (US, UK, CA, AU & IE) only.

The built-in solution requires the use of JavaScript links, as this is necessary for the IP detection of your visitors. For other ePN tools that don’t have built in geo-targeting capabilities, there are external services that allow you to geo-target. Also, you can use an external solution if you do not want to depend on JavaScript. One of these services that publishers have recommended on our affiliate discussion boards is the GeoLite country database from maxmind.com (please note that we have no direct experience with this service and can’t help with implementation). For further information, we recommend visiting the boards and then use ‘geotargeting’ as a search term to find relevant threads. There is also further information in the user manual, in the tools section for creatives and link generator, and in the tracking section.

Finally, please note that currently geo targeting does not work for the Motors category (vehicles and parts and accessories) if you are directing traffic to the US or Canadian site from any country outside of North America, or if you sending traffic from the US or Canada to any other eBay site. 

We will follow this article up soon with a shorter post about where you should direct traffic when the visitor is from a country where there is no eBay site.

The next educative post will be posted next week by James Skelland from our UK agency, R.O.EYE. James has been working extensively with publishers across Europe to help them optimize the products they showcase using the API or Custom Banner. He’s become quite the expert, so make sure you check back next week to read his article!

Happy geo-targeting!

The eBay Partner Network Team

eBay Placement IDs

eBay Program / Placement ID
eBay US / 711-53200-19255-0
eBay AU / 705-53470-19255-0
eBay BE / 1553-53471-19255-0
eBay CA / 706-53473-19255-0
eBay ES / 1185-53479-19255-0
eBay FR / 709-53476-19255-0
eBay IT / 724-53478-19255-0
eBay UK / 710-53481-19255-0
eBay IE / 5282-53468-19255-0
eBay NL / 1346-53482-19255-0
eBay DE / 707-53477-19255-0
eBay AT / 5221-53469-19255-0
eBay CH / 5222-53480-19255-0