eBay PartnerNetwork Blog

WorldofGood.com is giving ten lucky winners of their Merch Madness $150! This is a great contest to share with your site visitors: contests and giveaways like this lead to increased conversions for you. Remember, when you promote WorldofGood.com, you earn the same commissions as with regular items for sale on eBay.

Here’s how it works:
World of Good has handpicked 16 products that they have placed in head-to-head matchups. All you have to do is go through the matchups and pick which eight you deem most popular for Spring. You will get a point each time your selection matches the majority vote. Simply fill out your information, and if you are one of the ten highest-scoring participants, you will win $150!

Contest Details
Merch Madness runs from March 18th through midnight PST on April 2nd. Winners will be announced on April 5th. Only one entry per e-mail address allowed.

For more information to share with your visitors, or to play yourself, check out the WorldofGood.com Merch Madness page.

Happy Playing!
The eBay Partner Network Team

Dear eBay Affiliates,

It is with great pleasure and regret that I must let you know that I am leaving my position as global head of the eBay Partner Network team for another position within eBay. I’ve been asked to lead eBay’s global Paid Search team – which manages our paid advertising across all of the major search engines and shopping comparison sites, for eBay.com and all of our internal eBay Inc. properties. While I will continue to be involved with the team in an advisory role, starting in a few weeks my focus will be on my new position.

The opportunity is a bittersweet one for me. eBay makes it a priority to develop its leaders by putting them in new positions over time, and although I’ll miss working with the eBay Partner Network, I’m fortunate enough to have had the opportunity to work with this fantastic team and with so many of you before moving into my new role.

That said, my leaving is made easier by the fact the team will be in very capable hands after my transition. I’m pleased to announce that Chad Wehrmaker, longtime veteran of eBay and the eBay Partner Network team, will be stepping into the role of global lead of the eBay Partner Network.

Chad is fantastic and I can’t think of a better person to take over running the team. He brings a wealth of eBay experience to this role, having worked on Natural Search for several years before coming over to the Affiliate team in early 2007. Since then he has led our Operations team, working to develop our payments, analytical, and customer service capabilities and has pioneered much of the way we think about quality at ePN and the building of all of the infrastructure that underpins what we do. Under his leadership, I firmly believe the team is set up to continue to innovate and be a true partner to you, furthering our progress towards making eBay Partner Network the best affiliate program in the industry.

Please join me in congratulating Chad on his new role! He’ll be following my post in the coming days to introduce himself to those of you who haven’t met him and to outline his vision for the program for 2010 and beyond.

In the meantime, I’ve enjoyed working with so many of you, and have greatly appreciated the opportunity to get to know you. Thank you and best of luck with your businesses going forward!

Sincerely,

Will Martin-Gill

The eBay Fashion Vault has just released a coupon for 20% off the French Connection Sale! Simply use coupon code CFASHIONVAULTMAR when you make a purchase at the Fashion Vault, and enjoy 20% off from items that are already 60% off retail! In addition, all items are eligible for FREE SHIPPING.

About The eBay Fashion Vault
The eBay Fashion Vault is where you will find amazing flash sales on major designer brands. The offers available at The Fashion Vault start at 50% off and always have free shipping! These are limited time sales that run Monday through Wednesday each week. The French Connection Sale marks the first sale of the re-launch of the Fashion Vault since a successful trial that began last Fall featuring such brands as Hugo Boss, DKNY and Max Mara.

About French Connection
The UK based brand with the clever FCUK acronym -offers a fashion-forward clothing range with a quirky spin on design, priding itself on quality and affordable prices. The whole business is born of a desire to be original, distinctive and accessible. Whether fcuk has shocked or amused, it certainly made you think. Bold, witty and intelligent. The collection includes select women’s skirts, dresses, fashion shorts, tops and denim from Fall ’09 and Spring ’09 collections. Prices range from $20 – $110, average price of $65.

How to Promote This Coupon
There are several ways that you can begin promoting Fashion Vault sales today:

• Dynamic Banners in sizes 160×600, 300×250 and 728×90.
• You can access the Fashion Vault XML Feed.
• Use the Link Generator Tool with the Custom URL or Item ID options to link directly to sale items.

Happy Promoting!
The eBay Partner Network Team

Updated with info about domain deletion functionality

Hello Partners,

As part of our continuing investments in the eBay Partner Network platform, we will be rolling out new features to the eBay Partner Network (ePN) interface on March 30th. This release incorporates several improvements requested by a number of you, including updates to the dashboard, the addition of a new landing page report, a new way to handle archived campaigns, and an overhaul to the Creatives Generator to make it easier to use.

There are a lot of new features to tell you about, but if you don’t have time to read the full note, make sure you read at least the “Dashboard Updates” and “Deactivating campaigns” sections as there will be a few updates to the dashboard you see when you log in and the way we handle your archived campaigns.

Our engineers have been hard at work and we hope you like the new functionality!

Dashboard Updates

You’ll notice some updates to the Dashboard as you login to ePN: a new report, easier access to the blog, and additional date range and program filters. The objective of the re-design is to allow you to access more information directly from the dashboard.

We will continue to provide a snapshot of your latest Impressions, Clicks, EPC and Earnings along with a graph that plots your daily trends. With the new release, you will see all of the same metrics defaulted to Month to Date, but you will now have the ability to change the date range to Last Month, Last 3 Months or Year to Date and change the program filter. Once you’ve selected them, these settings will remain for your next visit to the Dashboard.

New Reports on the Dashboard (New functionality)

One of our goals for 2010 is to develop reports and tools to assist you in further optimizing your traffic. Our first is a new Landing Page Report. The Landing Page Report will provide a snapshot of your traffic by landing page type. The report highlights the following types of landing pages:
• Home Page
• Search Results
• Seller/Store Results
• Item Page
• Other

Any landing pages that do not fit into one of the specified types will be placed in the ‘Other’ page type. The report will show data for Last Week (Sunday through Saturday) or Last Month. If you find it useful we will consider expanding and enhancing this report over time. We have posted a blog article with some thoughts and tips on the best landing pages to which you should direct your traffic.

The Category Report will also be available on the Dashboard. The Category Report provides you with a view of the eBay categories where your conversions are taking place. Data will also be displayed for Last Week or Last Month. Similar to the existing Category Report, the Dashboard view will only report your metrics for a single program using the category structure that is specific to that program. To learn more about how to get the most out of this report, please read this blog post.

New Layout (User Interface enhancement)

The Dashboard will continue to provide access to the ePN blog along with links to the most recent posts. These links will now be visible at the top of the page as you login, providing easier access to more detailed information from ePN. Links to the discussion boards, developers program, and your saved/scheduled reports will also remain on the Dashboard. Finally, the ‘Unread Messages’ section in the Dashboard will no longer be available. However, you can still access all of your messages by clicking on the ‘Messages’ link on the upper right side of any ePN page when logged-in to your account.

Deactivating Campaigns (new functionality)

As you know up until now, when you archived a campaign it disappeared from your list of active campaigns, but clicks coming in from those campaigns were still counted in your metrics. A number of you asked for functionality to completely deactivate a campaign, so traffic would not be counted or considered for payout and Quality Click Pricing calculations. With this update you will now have the ability to do so. You should only deactivate a campaign if you no longer want the traffic or earnings from that campaign to be counted towards your account. It is important to know that once you have deactivated a campaign you will no longer accrue earnings for that campaign and the action is not reversible.

To deactivate a campaign, you will need to:
• Log-in to your ePN account
• Click the ‘Campaigns’ tab
• Select the check boxes for the campaigns you want to deactivate
• Click ‘Deactivate’
• Confirm whether or not you want to continue with the action by clicking either ‘OK’ or ‘Cancel’

This feature will replace the ability to archive campaigns. All of your previously archived campaigns will return to an active status on March 30th. At that time, you can either permanently deactivate these campaigns, or choose to keep them active.

Creatives Generator (User interface overhaul and improvement)

A number of you have told us it’s hard to find good creatives and banner ads to use on your sites. To simplify the process of finding specific creatives, we’ve added additional search functionality in the Creatives Generator under the ‘Tools’ tab. In addition to searching for creatives byTool ID, you will now have the ability to search by Title or Description, and by following Categories: Featured Creatives, Seasonal, Popular Products, Daily Deals, Clothing, Shoes & Accessories, Motors and World of Good.

Domain Deletion – updated

Along with deleting campaigns, you can also delete domains. To do this, go to the Accounts tab, select ‘Domains’ and then check the domain you wish to delete. This functionality only exists if you have more than one domain listed – you cannot delete all.

We continue to listen to your suggestions and strive to offer advanced tools to better assist your marketing needs. Thank you for your continued partnership.

The eBay Partner Network Team

BH Express just released a 10% Off Coupon that is good on all of their listings between $1 and $1099. The coupon code is CBHEXPRESSAPR5 and can only be entered after the user takes action to “Buy it Now” or win the auction. This coupon expires on April, 5th 2010 and is also valid only with Pay Pal checkout. In order to create eBay Partner Network links to this offer, please use the Link Generator Tool with the custom url or item id options. BH Express does ship internationally, so linking with the item id to different country sites is possible, and the coupon code will work.

Hi all,

Here at R.O.EYE, we’ve been looking at ways to allow publishers to add automatic geo-targeting capability to Custom Banner. The tool came about as there are a large number of publishers who are receiving traffic from outside of their primary territory, but are unable to monetise this traffic.

This R.O.EYE blog post has more information on the solution, including how to implement it, as well as samples of it in action. Because R.O.EYE has created this tool, eBay are unable to offer support for it, however, there is a support email address provided by R.O.EYE, should you need any assistance.

So make sure that you’re signed up to the relevant eBay Partner Network programmes for the territories you want to promote, otherwise you won’t get paid for the traffic you drive to these sites. Then get the code from R.O.EYE, drop it into your site, and start making extra revenue!

James Skelland, Technical solutions Manager, R.O.EYE

Hi all,

We’re pleased to announce that the eBay Partner Network team has been nominated for two a4u “Community Choice” awards, which are voted for by a4u members, (a4u being the affiliate industry hub for the UK.) We’ll be looking to our publishers for support and more details on how you can do this below!

Chris Worthy has been nominated for Affiliate Manager (In-House or at an Agency) of the year. Chris works for R.O.EYE, the agency that supports us in the UK with account management and recruitment. He was nominated for this award by eBay Partner Network publishers, which demonstrates the fantastic job he’s been doing helping publishers to optimise their sites and increase their earnings. (more…)

Hi all,

Successful affiliate marketing is not only about the numbers. It is mainly about the users – only when you offer them something they care about, will they convert on the merchant’s site and it’s this conversion that generates the commission for you.

In previous posts we have talked about optimization steps you can take that have to do with the publisher’s site, e.g. about choosing a successful niche, acquisition of the right traffic via SEO & SEM or about copywriting.

But once you have a qualified user, where do you send him (or her) on the eBay site? To the eBay home page? Or to a page with an item description? This article presents the main options for eBay landing pages and contains suggestions on how to make an informed decision on where you send your traffic.

Image Source: freefotouk (http://www.flickr.com/photos/freefoto/)

Spoilt for choice

The eBay sites have many different types of pages that you can use as landing pages for your campaigns. Some will be more successful, and others are less likely to lead to a sale. This one here is one of the inferior choices, as it is just links, with no images, nothing that catches the eye and no call to action. Apart from special cases (store and custom pages), Link Generator offers you the choice of the 3 main types of landing pages:

• eBay home page

• Search results pages or ‘SRP’

• View item pages or ‘VIP’ (item-ID link) (more…)

eBay PowerSeller Mobile Karma just launched a coupon good for 10% off a select list of 24 used mobile phones from Blackberry, Nokia and Motorola & Samsung. The coupon code is CMOBILEKARMA29 and all of the valid items have Free Shipping. There are specific terms and conditions* that apply as well and can be seen on the main landing page. This coupon code runs from March 18th to March 29th, 2010 and is only valid when PayPal is used as payment. One of the lowest prices is on this Nokia 6030 GSM Radio Cell Phone (AT&T) for only $13.49 after the 10% off coupon code. Note that the coupon code can only be applied after the customer chooses to “Buy It Now”.

All of the phones, item ids and other information related to this coupon can be found in this deal file. In order to create links that track to your eBay Partner Network account, use the link generator tool with either the item ID or custom url options. Please note this promotion is for the US eBay Partner Network program only and runs through March 29th, 2010, or while supplies last.

Hi all,

We’re very happy to introduce you to the new members of the affilinet eBay team, who are based in Munich, Germany.  They are supporting the in-house eBay team with account management and recruitment for the German speaking programs of Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Here are a few conversation starters if you want to contact them to improve your performance in Germany:

Mareen Richter:

Mareen started in the eBay Team at affilinet in January this year. She originally is from Berlin, but has got used to the mentality of people from Munich over the years! In her spare time Mareen has fun cooking and blogs about those recipes. If you can read German, you should check it out!
 
Maik Pressler:

 
Maik loves the Alps, especially for its amazing motorbike routes. He’s also passionate about everything new on the web and all things social media. However, he’s not too keen on his mouse and tries to find a keyboard shortcut for every single action!
 
Michael Jany:
 

Michael is originally Bavarian, but doesn’t wear his Lederhosen to work!  Not only can he give you advice on how to best promote  eBay in Germany, he can also recommend the most traditional Bavarian restaurants and beer halls in Munich, so have a chat with him! 

Come and meet the entire team at the A4U Europe conference in Munich on the 18th and 19th of May, where you can give them a personal welcome!
 
Chris, Julia, Mieke, Peter and Paolo

The European eBay Partner Network team