eBay Partner Networkblog

Hello, 

We wanted to let you know that we experienced an issue with ACRU tracking this month.  An error was introduced recently during an upgrade in the way ACRUs are tabulated.  The issue affected stats from Nov 13 (when the upgrade rolled that caused the issue) to Nov 16 (when we put the fix in place).  Note that you wouldn’t have seen Nov 16 data until the following day (Nov 17). This issue also affected all eBay programs (countries). It did not affect Half.com.

We were able to recover the data, and will be able to calculate the right number of ACRUs and the correct quality tiers for each account and therefore attribute the right earnings to each of you at the end of the month. The magnitude of the issue was in the order of 30-40% of your ACRUs for those days, but this may vary by publisher. (more…)

New this year, eBay.com will be offering special deals and promotions for all types of great Holiday gift items.  We’ve worked closely with some of our top most trusted sellers to offer some of the biggest sales ever on the site.  That’s why we are encouraging you to promote these great limited time Holiday deals now, with our new creative that’s sure to increase your click through rate and generate even higher commissions!  As of November 3rd we are offering holiday shoppers’ access to eBay’s Holiday Promotions which include Daily Deals and Bid from $1 Hot Items with Free Shipping.  These will all be aggregated on the www.eBay.com/deals page, where the new holiday banners we’ve created point too. 

Daily Deals

The Daily Deals will feature one popular item, each day, such as an Apple Ipod 80GB at a very low price until the quantities are sold out.  Our list of items we plan to offer for the Daily Deal is sure to get shoppers coming back to check what’s coming next!  Here are the key points on this promotion: (more…)

Christmas is coming and it’s the busiest time of year for eBay.co.uk, as everyone rushes to buy their presents and stock up on festive goodies.  The eBay UK Affiliate team want to encourage you to send even more quality traffic to eBay.co.uk across this period, so we’re giving you the chance to earn a 20% bonus and you could even win a Nintendo Wii!

How to earn your 20% bonus

We have set targets based on the Winning Bid and BIN Revenue you generated for eBay.co.uk in September and if you beat these targets, you will earn a 20% Rev Share bonus, which will be paid to you in January. 

• Beat September Revenue £ amount by 35% in November = 20% RevShare bonus
• Beat September Revenue £ amount by 15% in December = 20% RevShare bonus

Of course, these targets take into account that traffic to eBay.co.uk naturally increases in the run up to Christmas and don’t forget you’ll also receive commission on all the ACRUs you drive too!

Win a Nintendo Wii

Everyone who hits their targets and earns more than £100 in commissions in both November and December will be entered into a draw to win a Nintendo Wii.  We’ll even throw in a Wii Fit to help you work off the Christmas pudding!  The lucky winner will be notified in January.  (more…)

Hello,

For all publishers who joined prior to August 1st, we want to remind you that the new Value Based Pricing structure for ACRUs begins November 1st (all publishers that joined after August 1st have already been on this system since August 1st).  This means that all ACRUs that are generated during the months to come will be placed on a payout tier according to the value of the new active eBay users you send. 

The purpose of this new pricing is to pay publishers based on the expected lifetime value of the new users they send to eBay.  We base this on the new user’s purchases and the level of activity on the site.  It’s simple really, the more a new user is worth to eBay, the more we can and will compensate the publisher who brought us that user.  This is a fundamental change we are making to help focus more on quality and performance rather than just quantity for new user referrals. (more…)

We are excited to announce the launch of Custom Banner, a new tool that gives you a new way to incorporate live eBay listings directly onto your site.  Read on to learn more about what Custom Banner can do!

Custom Banner is a customizable flash banner that displays real-time eBay listings based on your search criteria.  For those of you who are familiar with our existing creatives and widgets, think of Custom Banner as an enhancement to regular flash and static banner ads that don’t show specific, live eBay listings.  It also has several new features that give it an enhanced look and feel and, in some ways, more flexibility than Editor Kit. 

Custom banner allows you to choose from several pre-defined themes or design your own, then filter the search results based on keyword, category, and more.  It’s branded with the “Right Now on eBay” logo and PayPal logos for listings that offer PayPal as a payment method. (more…)

We are excited to release our new Category Summary Report on Wednesday the 22nd, and would like to share some of what you can expect to see.  The new report will be available in the Run Reports section where you’ll be given the product categories the buyers you send to eBay end up converting in.  This information is viewable by program and even down to the campaign level.  You can expect to see total ACRUs, Bid/Bins, Winning Bids, and Winning Bid Revenue displayed in your choice of either pie or bar chart options, to help you better visualize your performance.  Then to see even more granularity you’ll have the ability to drill down from the main categories to see sub categories down to the third level for exceptional insight into the buying patterns of your users.

Screenshot (click to zoom in):

We want to highlight one specific topic, but to learn more about the Category Summary Report, please go the Help section for further details. (more…)

Hello All,

We are in the process of upgrading our reporting systems after the reporting delays this past weekend and wanted to tell you ahead of time that there will be some additional delays the rest of this week in reporting as we perform this maintenance. 

The data from the 14th posted today, but the transactions from the 15th will be delayed until tomorrow, the 17th.  We expect tomorrow’s update will also include data from the 16th, and be back to the normal schedule moving forward.

We apologize for the inconvenience and want to confirm that the underlying tracking system is still in place and working properly, this issue is only affecting the loading of that data into the graphs and tables available for publishers on eBay Partner Network.

Sincerely,

eBay Parnter Network Team

The eBay France affiliate team is very happy to inform you that as of the 1st of November 2008, the payment structure of the French affiliate program will change in order to help you earn more!

Up to now, the eBay.fr affiliate program has mostly rewarded the recruitment of new registered users. As of the 1st of November, we want to compensate you more for the activity of the 12 million registered users we have already!

This is why, on top of the new ACRU compensation, the ebay.fr affiliate program will be tying your earnings per bid and BIN to the revenue we get for the sold item and the share you receive will vary from 40% to 65%. This model has already allowed affiliates to increase their income in the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia. (more…)

Hello and Welcome to the Halloween edition of the ePN blog

Fall colors, longer nights and that telltale chill in the air … Halloween is just around the corner. As brick and mortar stores set up their creepy displays, eBay sellers are not to be outdone. Online shoppers can scare up a good deal on hordes of costumes, decorations, movies and more. By posting banner ads or links to Halloween related listings on eBay, affiliates are bound to drive a frightening amount of quality traffic … while driving revenue for themselves. 

A few tips on hot costumes for 2008: With the releases of Iron Man and The Dark Knight, this is sure to be a big year for superheroes. Here are a few fun examples:

Iron Man

Little Batman

Big Batman

and even … Batdog? (more…)

We have identified an issue that affected reporting of eBay Revenue, Earnings, and EPC in the US, UK, AU, and CA programs.  Some of these metrics were double-counted in our system. The issue affected publishers from Sept 5th-Sept 9th.

We have been able to calculate down to the individual publisher level what the correct revenue should be for those days. Our team is in the process of correcting the associated data and summary reports but may take several more days to complete this task.  You may also see line items in your transaction download report to debit the overstated amounts in the next few days.  In the meantime, please keep this information in mind as you run any reports that span the associated time periods.

We apologize for any inconvenience this reporting error has caused and thank you for your support of eBay Partner Network!

The eBay Partner Network Team