eBay PartnerNetwork Blog

Trainz.com is an e-commerce website specifically built for the model train enthusiast. Started in the late nineties by Scott Griggs, a lifelong model train hobbyist and salesman, Trainz.com sells collectible and new model trains, as well as scenery and materials for model train tracks. 

Trainz.com sells inventory on its own website as well as on eBay, conducting about 4,000 total transactions per month. Since much of its inventory is sold on eBay, Trainz.com has incorporated links to its eBay inventory all over its website, encouraging visitors to check eBay as well as Trainz.com for the particular product they’re looking for.

In early 2007, Trainz.com became a member of the eBay Partner Network so that it could be paid for the visitors it was driving to eBay, whether a visitor bought a Trainz.com product or not. Since then, the company has seen an increase in revenues as a result. (more…)

Every now and then, we like to share an affiliate success story to help inspire and offer ideas to other affiliates. We are planning on creating a series on this topic featuring new publishers each month.  This week we spoke to Squidoo, to learn more about how they’re using the eBay Partner Network. 
 
Squidoo is a hand-built collection of about 600,000 web pages created by people with passions. Each page is called a lens and can be about anything a person is interested in. The idea behind Squidoo is to provide a place where people can research and meet other people online that have similar passions. Anyone can create a lens, and they can use the lens to earn money for themselves and for charity through ads and affiliate links. 

Squidoo has quickly become one of the top 300 most popular websites in the U.S. and has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for charities and for its users, or “lensmasters,” as they are called. Creating a page is free, and lensmasters can decide how much of their income they would like to donate to charity. Squidoo automatically sends 5% of all proceeds to charity, keeps 45% to run the company and lets the lensmaster decide what to do with the other 50% - keep it or donate a portion to a favorite cause. (more…)