There are many listings and providers for traffic or visitors to your site here on Ebay as well as online in general. Here on Ebay specifically there are a lot of these sellers who are actually resellers of someone else who may be a reseller who...... You get the point. Regardless of the fact; each has its place in the hierarchy of the business and is no different than any retail setup.  But is a fact that you still need to know.

  The next point I discuss is the reason I mention this.  You will generally find 2 types of auctions here which may be a good indication as to where your provider falls in that food chain. The first auction is short and vague and clearly does not answer most if any of the questions beyond the title of what is for sale. The 2nd is generally close to the source or a first or second level reseller/broker responsible for 100's of thousands of visitors being delivered monthly and their auction is clear, and full of information as to delivery format,type,timeline,as well as what should be anticipated and beyond. Either way; there are a series of things yu should know or ask before you decide -- at least if spending your money wiseley is important.

I have created a DVD combined of text, and vocal explaining questions to ask as well as definitions and am going to briefly cover the former here:

1) Format -- Pretty important to the advertisement is the format used to get visitors to your site as well as the size of the format. Typically you have popups, popunders, redirects, expired domains, and then the array of clickthru as search engine or banner or.....  But if any of the first few --what is the size of the window and how long will a visitor be allowed on my ad before being sent to another ad??  Is there a minimum or maximum??

2)Targeting -- Targeting can be by IP address as to provide location targeting, or by browser language as to provide only people of a certain tongue, or by uniqueness as to how often the same person can see your site.  Limited providers will/can customize even further to browser or operating system or similar

3)How do you deliver the visitors??  Most providers who are running some serious traffic use an adserver or adrotator which is a script that is set up on a server and allows a n admin panel where the owner can set all the client campaigns and direct incoming traffic to these sites allowing for targeting. It also allows for client login for tracking campaign info and some even minor control. It is important to know if they provide stats as well as whether or not they will deliver the traffic directly to your ad page direct from visitor to site or if they cache your page(take a snapshot) and place on their server and then send all to that 1 page.  Many issues involved with both but the 2 biggest are going to be that if the visitors are sent direct to your site -- you had best be prepared for the consumption of some added resources as far as hosting.  Secondly, the cached delivery will generally provide a reasoning for single IP deliver but at same time the info beyond the cache delivery IP should be that of a server configuration.Ask if you can see an example of where your site might show up.

4)Specific information such as what is allowed and what is not.  While it is not too common anymore --it used to be a very common practice to terminate a campaign for violation of terms after the 1st violation.  More profit that way.  Just know the terms as to what you can and cannot do as well as what you should expect. Know the refund policy as well.

5)Check out the reputation.  Most here on Ebay have a link or logo to a website where you can go and view it.  This can be beyond any feedback reputation.  Look for responses from the search engines and see if any information --good or bad.  As well; do an Alexa search and see what the sites rank is.

Those are 5 short points but enough to get you started down the right path before you just go with a cheap deal and wish you had been a little more informed