eBay PartnerNetwork Blog
Customer Testimonial – Harmjan Heeling
September 1st, 2009
Harmjan Heeling likes knowing that every click counts with Quality Click Pricing, eBay Partner Network’s new quality-based payment structure.
Heeling operates several niche content sites promoting collectible items and vintage photography, averaging about 2,000 visitors and 3,000 clicks per day. While he belongs to a number of affiliate programs, Heeling says eBay Partner Network stands alone among them in its quest to reward affiliates for both quality and quantity.
Heeling started testing the Quality Click Pricing model on May 1.
“Immediately I saw an increase in revenue,” he says. The instant boost in earnings motivated Heeling to tweak both his paid search campaigns and his sites to drive the numbers higher. He gave them a nicer look and feel, with an eye to providing a better user experience.
For example, Heeling experimented with using fewer eBay ads on each of his sites. His sites looked cleaner and people had fewer ads to click on, but when they did click on the ads it was more likely that they really wanted to buy something on eBay. As a result, his clicks went down but the quality of his traffic went up. Heeling says that if you are going to do this, though, to make sure to tweak your product feeds because with fewer ads it’s more important to show the most relevant listings.
Another helpful change: Heeling improved his success measures by creating dozens of campaign IDs, providing detailed insight into the keywords that work and those that don’t. He can now accurately link eBay Partner Network revenue to AdWords campaigns.
In one instance, Heeling improved his ROI on a single campaign by more than 50% by refining his AdWords keyword phrases. Obviously he’s not sharing the exact keyword phrases, but he recommends testing 2- and 3-word phrases to see what works best. By linking specific keywords in the paid search campaign to his eBay Partner Network results, he can see what has worked best. Then, if the traffic from a campaign is underperforming, he can make adjustments or just delete the campaign.
Under the previous CPA model, Heeling says big differences in commissions per item made quality measurement tricky, and he wound up sending thousands of visitors without compensation.
The new Quality Click Pricing reporting has helped Heeling stay on top of his sites as well as his paid search traffic, showing which parts are working well, and which might need some work.
“With the Quality Click Pricing system, I get paid for all my traffic, and that’s the way it should be!” he says.
With his focus on optimizing his sites and improving his user experience to send more qualified traffic to eBay, we hope he keeps the quality clicks coming.
To your continued success,
The eBay Partner Network Team
September 2nd, 2009 at 5:34 pm
So let me get this straight– Mr. Heeling is paying Google Adwords clicks to drive traffic to his eBay clicks, he’s adding campaigns and making more money than before.
Sorry, I really can’t see how this is possible.
“…While he belongs to a number of affiliate programs, Heeling says eBay Partner Network stands alone among them in its quest to reward affiliates for both quality and quantity…”
Does the above line mean that EPN is his best earning affiliate program– one of his best??
I’m really trying to work with this change, but…
still skeptical,
jp
September 3rd, 2009 at 2:29 am
I’m skeptical as well. Why wouldn’t ebay hire seo specialists and start effective targetted adwords campains themselves? My take is that they do not want to pay the high adword prices, instead, get the same type of targeted traffic from current affiliates at a greater reduced rate.
September 3rd, 2009 at 7:35 am
Hi JP,
Indeed I added a lot of ePN campaigns. Adding campaigns ID’s in ePN can help measure traffic better, by comparing AdWords campaigns with ePN campaigns.
September 3rd, 2009 at 12:01 pm
Hi JP,
I can confirm that it is not only Harmjan earning on the ePN this way, many of our UK publishers use Google adwords to drive targeted traffic to their niche sites who then go onto eBay to bid on items. The majority of these types of publishers are earning more on the QCP model than before due to the quality of the traffic they are delivering using good landing sites and adwords.
If you have any further questions please feel free to drop me an email, matthewh@ro-eye.co.uk
Matt Holden
Programme Exec
R.O.EYE
September 3rd, 2009 at 9:13 pm
Let me ask this. Since Google absolutely despises affiliates, and every single Adwords campaign that I’ve created to push traffic to an EPN site has been slapped with a 1/10 quality score within weeks of it’s start, how are these guys getting campaigns to last long enough to see any decent results.
I’m sure they don’t just hate my EPN sites.
September 4th, 2009 at 9:22 pm
hmmmmm…….
something does not seem right, if Harmjan Heeling was sending good quality traffic (3,000 clicks a day/WOW) and not making a miniature fortune then the statement is an oxymoron itself.
his traffic is NOT good quality traffic plain and simple.
21,000 clicks per week, 90,000 per month!
working off a commission the earnings should be outrageous.
The reports show I will make more money with new platform myself too but seems like we are not getting rewarded for the sale. If I am responsible for selling a used airplane I should be compensated as if I did. Instead it seems folks like Harmjan Heeling will be the beneficiary of it who send a ton of traffic but are not responsible for the sales.
not to sound like a disbeliever about this post but please tell me Harmjan Heeling – how much money do you earn – not exactly, a rough idea? sending almost 100k people a month to eBay?
September 5th, 2009 at 9:19 am
@Christian
It’s true, Google doesn’t like affiliates (unfortunately I know as well), but if you have more to offer than only links they might accept your website. Contact them and try to find out why they don’t want your site to appear in their ads. Then you can optimize your site for a better ‘user experience’. But always stay in good contact with them and they are willing to help.
September 6th, 2009 at 9:23 am
Re the new QCP – I have noticed a massive increase of clicks on 3 of my ebay niche sites with an unusally low purchase %.
Then I checked my access logs and I suspect a competitor of mine has been spending hours just clicking my ebay ads to lower my click quality !!
Does ebay have any ip monitoring in place to stop this happening ?