eBay PartnerNetwork Blog

Hi All,

This is the second of two episodes where Chad speaks with Will Martin-Gill, former head of the eBay Partner Network. In this episode, Will and Chad dive deeper into the reasons behind Quality Click Pricing.

Chatting with EPN: Episode 3 from eBay Partner Network TV on Vimeo.

The eBay Partner Network Team

The extended daylight hours should make summer seem longer, but the season always seems to pass by too quickly, especially for students who are more interested in the beach than books. But before we know it, the yellow busses will again be scooping up the neighborhood children to bring them together for reading, writing, arithmetic and recess. Parents and teachers are already counting down the days until the morning bell rings, and you can capitalize on this by tying in to some of the most sought after back-to-school items for sale on eBay and Half.com.

Of course, there are the basics that every student needs to succeed, such as pencils, pens, notebooks and markers. But the older students can’t survive without a laptop and a printer to help them write all those pesky term papers. And because all students need a way to safely transport their homework assignments from home to class, boys’ and girls’ bags and backpacks are hot sellers right now.

Choosing an outfit for the first day back to school is almost as important as figuring out where to sit in the lunchroom. Parents are searching eBay for clothing by popular retailers and designers like Gap, Ralph Lauren, Gymboree, Abercrombie & Fitch and Justice to make sure their little learners are dressed for success.

Parents aren’t the only ones turning to eBay for great deals; teachers are searching the site to simplify their supply shopping while stretching their paycheck further. Teaching supplies and resources are a hot category, with elementary educators looking for math, reading and phonics items and wholesale and bulk lots of books.

Textbook sales are beginning to pick up with the college crowd. Savvy students know the bookstore isn’t the only place to find the items on the professor’s required reading list. And it’s not just economics students who are scouring half.com and eBay for textbooks – biology, chemistry, physics and anatomy students are searching the site for their educational tomes.

As the temperatures begin to cool, searches and sales on these items will begin to heat up. Don’t forget that you can use the Link Generator Tool to promote these popular search terms and lead your readers directly to the search results. By linking to some of these categories on your site, we hope you’ll not only earn an A+ for effort, but hopefully some additional revenue!

And to help with your promotions half.com has two great coupon codes available:

Coupon code: HALF2010BTS10PERC

• Provides 10% off purchases between $100 and $200
• Max discount of $20
• Valid from 7/20/2010 to 9/30/2010
• Valid only for Books
• Valid for only New Users
• Can be used only once

Coupon code: TAKE5OFFBOOKS10

• Provides $5 off $50 and above
• Max discount of $5
• Valid till 1/3/2011
• Valid only for Books
• Valid for only New Users
• Can be used only once

Good luck with your Back to School Promotions!

eBay Partner Network Team

We’ve heard your feedback about our tools and our reporting and we are pleased to announce that on Monday, July 26th, we will be rolling out a a major Custom Banner upgrade, a new EPC Download Report, and an enhancement to the Transaction Download report:

Custom Banner Enhancements


We have expanded Custom Banner capabilities to better meet your needs. Here are the new features that will be available soon:

• Custom Banner will continue to offer Flash integration but will now provide new HTML templates with the following options:




• Show the badges for Top-Rated Seller, Free Shipping, PayPal, Buy It Now
• The image-and-text format you are used to will be available but we will also introduce a text-only version
• Contextual targeting available for eBay DE, eBay AT, and eBay CH programs.
• Ability to filter for Free Shipping and Top-Rated Seller.
• Multiple keyword and category search: you can now search across several keywords and eBay categories, or select the “Use Popular Search” option.
• Store custom themes: once you’ve chosen the ideal color and font for your Custom Banner you’ll be able to save them and reuse in future banners.
• Improved performance for a quicker display of the Flash version of Custom Banner.

Enhancements to your reports

• A new EPC Download Report: The EPC Download Report allows all publishers who are on Quality Click Pricing to download their daily EPC at a campaign level for each program. This report will only include information for campaigns that had click activity for the date(s) selected.
• Transaction Download Report: The format of the transaction download report will not change, but we will modify how we populate two columns. For eBay programs, the “eBay Quantity Sold”, and “eBay Total Sale Amount” columns will be blank when an adjustment is being reported to a transaction. These columns will not be impacted when the transaction is included in the transaction download report for the first time.

We continue to listen to your suggestions and enhance eBay Partner Network, the tools at your disposal, and the reports so as to give you the best possible conditions to promote eBay. Please continue to give us your opinion.

The eBay Partner Network Team

Hi All,

In this videocast Chad talks with his predecessor, Will Martin-Gill, about topics such as what it’s like to work within eBay Partner Network, his advice for our partners and also parting advice for Chad in his new role.

Thank you for your commitment to eBay Partner Network and best wishes in your new position, Will!

The eBay Partner Network Team

Hi All,

We’ve decided to try a new form of communication with you, our affiliate partners – video. This is the first in a series of videocasts we’ll be releasing over the next few weeks, to give you a chance to get to know the team here at eBay Partner Network. We’ll be discussing what’s happening here at eBay, what it’s like to work for ePN, industry trends and other things that pop up along the way. We’ll also be giving you a chance to help us shape future content. We’d love to hear your thoughts along the way (constructive, please!) so that we can improve on this as we go. And, of course, we hope you enjoy them as much as we’ve been enjoying working on them.

By the way, the case study I reference in this video can be downloaded here: http://bit.ly/cgVami

Thanks and enjoy!
Chad

We found the article The Four Pillars of Building Instant Trust Online by Tim Ash to be very helpful when building a plan of action to increase consumer trust in your website. Here are some ways that you can implement Tim’s advice for building trust while promoting eBay:

• Make sure your visitors know about eBay’s Buyer Protection. When buyers know that eBay will covers their purchase price, including original shipping costs, in the event that they do not receive their item, or it is not as described, they will feel more confident in making their purchase.




• Inform your customers about the positive features of using PayPal as a payment option for eBay products. In addition to the buyer protection plan, PayPal offers a safe environment to pay either by credit card or direct from your bank account, making secure payments convenient to all buyers.




• When promoting items from a particular seller, you can display reviews from previous buyers to build trust in that seller’s store.




• There are many ways in which you can include Tim’s “Objective Numbers” when it comes to eBay. Here are a few examples:
  
  
  
  
  • As of Q1 2010, eBay has 90 million active users worldwide.
  • In 2009, the total worth of goods sold on eBay was $60 billion — $2,000 every second.
  • You can find other statistics on trends and hot items on eBay Pulse or through Terapeak (subscription required).

Applying these tactics, along with eBay’s everyday low prices, will help you to achieve success and grow your revenue!

To your continued success,
The eBay Partner Network Team

Do you know where your website visitors are coming from, what they are looking at while on your site and where they are leaving your site? Accessing and analyzing this crucial information will give you some insights into your audience. Once you have this knowledge, you can use it to implement changes to your website not only to improve the user experience for your viewers, but also to increase your conversion rate and overall revenue. With a variety of user-friendly and free analytical tools available, you can easily examine your site traffic and use that information to grow your business.

How would this information help me to optimize my site?

Tapping in to your visitor stats can have a tremendous impact on your conversion rates and your revenue. Here are a few examples:

• You may learn that you are getting the majority of your traffic from a particular search engine and that this traffic is very engaged. You may want to consider testing out PPC campaigns on that search engine, if you aren’t already doing so. You may also find that consumers viewing certain types of niche sites are clicking through to your site, which might alert you to further advertising opportunities on similar sites.




• The ability to follow your visitors on your site to see which pages they are viewing may allow you to pinpoint patterns. You could learn that some pages on your site are not as relevant to your viewers, and you might build additional pages with content related to the pages that they are lingering on and develop subjects that your readers are interested in.




• Knowing where your visitors leave your site is crucial. Are they leaving on the home page without looking any further? Are you discovering that the majority of your traffic exits once they reach a certain page? These insights allow you to optimize pages that may be performing poorly.

Diving in a little deeper and looking at demographic stats about your traffic can prove very useful as well. When you put the right message in front of your visitor at the right time, your likelihood of getting a conversion increases dramatically. You may find that your audience is comprised of an entirely different gender and age group than you had assumed, which then allows you to update content and even add advertising that will appeal more to your readers. Additionally, this knowledge allows you to create content and target consumers that you may not have been previously.

A/B Split Testing

Ok, you now have analytics in place and you’re learning more about the traffic that is coming to your site. Maybe you’ve implemented a couple of changes, but you’re not sure what the next step is. This is when you should look at running A/B split tests on your landing pages. This could be as simple as the color of your font in headlines. It may be a small change to the structure of the page. It could be changing one image on the page. It should not be an entirely different page where every single thing has changed. Although you could do that, it is best to make smaller changes and test each one so that you understand which things are truly affecting the outcome and use that knowledge to develop other pages.

The key with A/B testing is to have a tool in place to help you to rotate both of the pages with equal impressions so that you can determine which page outperforms the other. You can find both free and paid tools by performing a search for A/B split testing tools in your web browser.

Once you have completed your test and found a winner you can move on to running tests with other elements of your landing pages. Remember, optimization should be a continuous process! Only when you are running these tests, understanding what your viewers like and optimizing on a constant basis can you be sure that you are getting the best results, conversion rates and earnings that you possibly can be.

Understanding your audience so that you can speak to them in a meaningful way can make or break your business. Once you have an idea of who you are targeting, test, test and test some more so that you can be sure that you are giving your readers what they are looking for. Using the simple tools that are available will help you to maximize your profits today.

To your continued success,
The eBay Partner Network Team