eBay PartnerNetwork Blog

We’re looking forward to late summer in New York! We’ll be heading out soon for Affiliate Summit East Aug. 15-17, which looks like it’s going to be a great show. We look forward to spending some time with our affiliates and partners. The Performance Marketing Association has a booth at the show – they’ll be arming people with knowledge about the Affiliate Tax.

If you haven’t gotten your pass for Affiliate Summit yet, the show has sold out. However, there are some passes on eBay! Check here for available passes and information on how to register.

We’ll be checking out a few sessions that have caught our eye, including the success story panel featuring Sears, American Express and Travelocity, and Joe Stepniewski’s (of Skimlinks) session on exciting new applications in affiliate marketing. The sessions about mobile affiliate marketing and the one about how bloggers can connect with audiences also look interesting.

There’s also a lot on the agenda this year about social media – we’re looking forward to hearing about how affiliates are using it to grow their businesses. This month’s FeedFront issue has some good articles on the topic, including this article from Brian Solis, author of Engage! Brian offers some great advice to use as a blueprint for your social media efforts.

Speaking of social media, are any of you already using it for affiliate marketing? If so, how’s it going? Any lessons learned you’d like to share? We’d love to hear from you in the comments.

If you’d like to meet up with us at ASE, send us a Tweet at @eBay_Affiliates. We’d love to talk with you about your business, answer any questions you have or just use the opportunity to meet face to face.

Hope to see you in New York!
The eBay Partner Network Team

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

Many of you are interested in attending educational conferences to learn techniques to grow your online businesses. With that in mind, we have put together a list of some upcoming events that you might consider attending.

July

PubCon Masters Group Search and Social Media Training is a one day event in Austin, TX on July 21. This day long workshop is a great opportunity to learn more about search engine optimization tactics, such as long-tail search targeting, link-building campaigns and more. Or, if you’re more interested in their social media track, you can attend sessions on reputation management, social media landing page conversion and other social media topics. Whichever track you choose, you are sure to find useful information at this jam-packed seminar.

Registration Information for PubCon Masters Group Search and Social Media Training:

Where: Downtown Radisson Hotel and Suites
When: July 21
Pricing: $1,199

August

Affiliate Summit East is taking place in New York City August 15-17. For those of you that have not attended an Affiliate Summit in the past, this is the largest conference dedicated solely to affiliate marketing in the United States. Whether you are an internet marketing novice, or are an affiliate marketing master, Affiliate Summit offers several tracks from beginner to advanced, so that every attendee can learn and grow from the sessions offered. For more information about Affiliate Summit, including a breakdown of the type of attendees and more, take a look at their site.

Registration Information for Affiliate Summit:

Where: Hilton New York
When: August 15-17, 2010
Pricing: Diamond Pass ($2,249), Platinum Pass ($1,249), Gold Pass ($549), Silver Pass ($249)

*Some of our team members will be attending Affiliate Summit East, we look forward to connecting with new and current partners there!

SES San Francisco will be taking place August 16-20. Search Engine Strategies is now in its 12th year and is the foremost conference to learn more about search engine marketing, including both SEO and PPC. SES is full of sessions covering topics such as keyword research, link building, PPC management and so much more.

Registration Information for SES San Francisco:

Where: The Moscone Center
When: August 16-20, 2010
Early Bird Pricing (through July 30th): Platinum Passport ($1,695), Two-Day Pass ($1,195), One-Day Pass ($845), Expo Only Pass (FREE In Advance)

September

Performance Marketing Expo is a new conference where Affiliate Marketing and Performance Marketing meet. This show takes place in Miami Beach, FL September 27-29. The Performance Marketing Expo differentiates itself from other industry conferences by facilitating numerous networking events to allow attendees to foster new relationships and to cultivate business partnerships.

Registration Information for Performance Marketing Expo:

Where: Miami Beach, FL
When: September 27-29
Pricing (through August 20th): All-Access ($1,695), Elite ($1,195), Executive ($695), Associate ($129)

As always, we hope that this information is helpful to you. If there are other conferences going on this summer that we didn’t highlight here and are worth checking out, please feel free to share them with us through the comments!

To your continued success,
The eBay Partner Network Team

Hi All,

We’re proud to announce that eBay has won the Innovative Merchant Award at the A4U Affiliate Marketing Awards, held in London last night. http://www.a4uawards.com/

The award was judged by a panel of UK industry experts and here’s what they had to say about Quality Click Pricing: “Judges were impressed by eBay’s smart implementation and commended their bravery in offering a sophisticated and clever algorithm which encouraged affiliates to work in a way that better served the advertiser’s business objectives.”

The event itself was very glamorous, starting with a champagne reception, followed by dinner and a comedy set from Kevin Bridges, the up and coming Scottish comedian. It was also fantastic to see so many of our affiliates at the event and we were happy to see some of them win awards themselves.

Thanks to the judges and especially to all our publishers for making Quality Click Pricing a success! Finally congratulations to all the other winners – all thoroughly deserved!

The European Affiliate team

Hi all,

The European eBay Partner Network team will soon be attending A4U Europe in Munich, Germany, on 18th and 19th of May. Though we won’t be stationed at a booth this year, the whole team are  eager to meet you and you’ll be able to catch up with us either around the conference hall, after speaking sessions or during the evening events.

Bright and early on the morning of 19th May, Chris Howard and JJ Mccarthy, who head up our European and US affiliate teams respectively, will be talking about how we’ve improved the quality of our programme’s traffic both through the introduction of Quality Click Pricing  and the efforts of our Account Management and Network Quality teams.

Finally, we’ll be writing a few posts from the expo, so those of you that aren’t there can still get an idea of what is going on.

Hope to see you in Munich!

Chris, Julia, Paolo, Peter and Mieke, the European eBay Partner Network team.

eBay: On Location has concluded the first stop in Atlanta, Georgia March 19th and 20th. With a sell-out crowd of 500 sellers, eBay sellers had the opportunity to network amongst themselves, as well as meet with eBay experts to discuss strategies to improve their businesses.

With three more events planned, eBay is taking these opportunities to connect and network with sellers, both small and large.

If you are one of our partners that is also a seller, you may want to consider attending one of these events and take advantage of all that eBay: On Location has to offer!

Upcoming Events
The following events are scheduled for 2010:

Dallas, Texas: May 7th-8th

Chicago, Illinois: July 9th-10th

San Jose, California: September 1st-2nd

For more information and event details, visit our eBay: On Location website.

We hope to see you there!
The eBay Partner Network Team

The dates for eBay’s 9th annual Developers Conference have just been announced, and if you register before April 9th you can attend this educational and inspirational event for only $99! Set to take place in sunny San Jose, CA, this year’s summit will take place June 8th-10th at the Fairmont Hotel in the heart of Silicon Valley.

This year’s DevCon includes three days of:

• 40+ hands on workshops, one-on-one sessions and best practices
• Sneak peak of eBay’s plans for the future
• Pre-conference workshops where you can learn directly from the Pros
• Fun network events, like our annual Beer Bash

For more information, including student discounts, schedule and further details about the location, take a look at the DevCon website.

Don’t forget to connect with us on Twitter and Facebook, and you can always find great information on our blog.

We look forward to meeting you in June!

The eBay Partner Network Team

Last February, PPCBlog published an interesting article called “The Ultimate Guide to PPC Affiliate Marketing”. Written for publishers who are new to using Search Engine Marketing to drive traffic to their affiliate sites, it gives a number of great insights into how to get started and be successful in this competitive area. There are no magic tricks or ready-made “easy money” formulas here – just sound advice on how to make sure you are relevant, you understand the market and you add value to your advertisers.

You can read the article here.

Although eBay Partner Network doesn’t allow you to redirect users straight from search engines to eBay, Giovanna’s tips may still come in handy in driving search engine traffic to your own websites.

Happy Reading!
The eBay Partner Network Team

If you haven’t seen it yet, the newly released “Internet Marketing From the Real Experts,” is great reading for affiliates. Edited by Shawn Collins and Missy Ward, the book includes more than 100 brief articles on all things Internet marketing from a group of 88 (the Gang of 88) experts in their fields, including Tim Carter, Brian Clark, Joel Comm, Jim Kukral, Ted Murphy, Jeremy Schoemaker, Mari Smith and our own Will Martin-Gill.

Easy to read between meetings, calls, and the myriad daily chores, the book is broken up into “three minute chapters,” highlighting ideas, advice, and insight most relevant to affiliate and Internet marketers. Those of you who went to Affiliate Summit West probably got a free copy. If you didn’t make it, you can buy one here or you can Tweet us your favorite affiliate marketing tip by midnight Tuesday night, March 2nd (PST) for a chance to win a free copy. Be sure to follow us on Twitter and use the hashtag #ePNTips. We’ll pick our five favorite tips and send the winners a free copy of the book.

Also, if you have some time this week for a good podcast on affiliate marketing, check out Susan Bratton’s latest DishyMix episode, where she interviews Shawn Collins about his thoughts on the hottest trends in affiliate marketing. He talks about where he sees opportunities for affiliates now – local, offline and video – highlights from Affiliate Summit West, finding the right affiliate marketing partner and a little about himself. Susan is a top-notch interviewer and it’s a great listen if you can make the time. It’s about 40 minutes long – perfect for your morning run or when you just need a break from the computer. Listen on iTunes or from the DishyMix website.

Happy Affiliate Marketing!

eBay Partner Network