( 
)eBay
sellers can now promote their own listings through the Affiliate
Program. This means you can display your own listings exclusively on
your website, or anywhere else, and earn a minimum 50% commission of
the eBay fees associated with any sales made through your Affiliate
Links.
Better yet, you will earn this
commission even if the buyer ends up buying something from another
seller. In fact, the Affiliate Cookie will remain on your visitors
computer for 7-days, unless they click on another Affiliate Link that
overwrites your cookie. So that means you can earn a commission from
any purchase that visitor makes within 7 whole days after clicking one
of your Affiliate Links.
Chances are
you'll never get rich doing this, but if done properly, you can
certainly take a bite out of your eBay fees each month. It's also an
excellent way to transition from being an eBay only seller to having
your own website. If you're currently promoting eBay for free, then you
should definitely check into the Affiliate
Program!
Getting setup with the
eBay Affiliate Program through Commission
Junction:
Go to http://affiliate.ebay.com/, click the Join Now For Free! button.
If you are already a Commission Junction Publisher, you can skip the form and sign up for the eBay Program directly through the Commission Junction Member's Area. Otherwise, fill out the form to sign-up for Commission Junction. Don't forget, you only have to fill out the fields marked with a *.
- After you are signed-up with Commission Junction, head on over to the Commission Junction Member's Area. Once there, click on Account, then Website Settings. Look for the Select Website drop-down menu and make certain you are viewing the details for the correct website. Make a note of your PID number, this is the number you will use to setup your Affiliate Links.
Now that you're all ready to go with your Commission Junction PID number, you have multiple options on how to setup your Affiliate Links. Go back to http://affiliate.ebay.com/ and click on Tools. Here you will find several tools to help you get everything setup.
Flexible Destination Tool -
If you just want to make a basic text link to any eBay page, then this
is the tool you need. Go to the eBay page you'd like to link to, then
copy the URL in your browsers address bar and paste it into the
Flexible Destination Tool. If you are linking to your eBay store, be
sure to add the ?refid=store code to the
end of your store URL and you will also qualify for the Store Referral Credit on any store sales
made through your link!
Editor Kit - With this tool,
you can build a semi-customized, real-time display of up to 200 eBay
listings. You can customize the following: Search term, category,
seller, number of items displayed and the size and color of the
display. Under Content Selection, be sure
to click on Show more search options to see more
options such as limiting the results to your own seller ID. Also, under Tracking Services, you can enter a Commission Junction SID which will allow you to
track each Editor Kit you create individually through Commission
Junction. This way you can determine which placements are actually
earning you a commission.
RSS Feed Generator - This
tool allows you to create custom RSS feeds of eBay listings that are
updated in real-time. The RSS Feed Generator is embedded into eBay’s
Advanced Search. Here is how you use it:
Go to the Advanced Search page.
Enter the search criteria for your RSS feed. You can search by keyword(s), category, seller, etc. Some search options won't work with the RSS feeds, such as Store Inventory Only.
Look down towards the bottom of the page where it says Affiliate Tracking Information and click Show. Choose Commission Junction and enter your PID number then click Submit.
Once you're at the Search Results page, scroll down below all the listings and ads until you see a small, orange RSS graphic right in the middle of the page. This is your Affiliate RSS Feed URL for that search.
Now that you have your RSS Feed URL,
you can setup links to it so people can subscribe to your feed and be
notified of any new listings. You can also use your RSS Feed URL to
plug into websites such as Squidoo or Yahoo! 360 and they will display
your RSS feed right on your page. There are more advanced uses of the
RSS feeds, such as parsing the feeds into HTML to be displayed on your
website, but that will have to be covered in a separate
article.
Keyword Linking Tool - With
this tool, you can generate up to 5,000 trackable links based on search
keywords, ISBNs, UPCs or MPNs. The links will be delivered to you via
email in either Tab Separated or XML format. I don't see this tool as
being very useful for the average eBay seller. If you sell products
that use ISBN, UPC or MPN numbers, that may be a different story. If
you have used this tool, I would love to see what you've done with it,
just drop me an
email.
Product Kit - The Product Kit is similar to the Editor
Kit, except it has more advanced customization options. While the
Product Kit gives you much more freedom in customizing the look of your
display, you cannot restrict the results to a specific seller and it is
only available for certain categories. If those restrictions don't
bother you, it's definitely worth checking out, but details of it's
usage are beyond the scope of this article.
You can use your
Affiliate Links on your own website or other websites too like MySpace,
Squidoo, Yahoo! 360, etc. However, some websites don't allow you to use
javascript, so you may be limited by which tools you can use. I will be
including articles with more specific details about how to use your
Affiliate Links with various websites, so be sure to check
back.
As you can see, there are many ways
to take advantage of the eBay Affiliate Program. If you aren't using
every angle at your disposal to grow your business and increase your
profits, you should be!
Susie Ward
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