laptopmanpaul.co.uk

Becoming an ebay affiliate using the eBay Partner Network

A fortunate accident

It’s funny how you find stuff online, usually by accident.

I was checking that my brother’s bestisotonic.com website is showing up in Google listings, when I noticed that it had been picked up by an unfamiliar site called Lord Matt on Squirrelmail.

It’s actually this blog that had been picked up rather than my brother’s site, but as I looked around the Lord Matt on Squirrelmail site I noticed it was using what appeared to be an ebay affiliate feed.

A few clicks later, I’d found that ebay runs it’s own affilate scheme - called the eBay Partner Network.

Now, I may have had my head buried in the sand, but I wasn’t really aware that ebay runs an affiliate scheme.

It certainly doesn’t appear to push it very hard and I’m pretty sure this is the first time I’ve ever seen a feed on someone else’s website.

eBay seems an obvious choice to me as an affiliate choice, so I’ve signed up and I’m going to see a) how it works b) how it performs.

The ‘how it works’ bit

First, get signed up to the eBay Partner Network … it doesn’t use your regular eBay login if you already buy and sell using the site.

You have to add a few basic details like:

- Your business name and type

- How you want to be paid (I’m using my Paypal account)

- Which countries you’re doing business in

After that, it’s pretty straightforward.

You get four choices of ways in which you can link to eBay as an affiliate:

- Links in pages

- ‘Off the shelf’ creatives

- Widgets

- APIs (advanced - I won’t deal with APIs in this post)

You can also set up campaigns for each of your websites so that you can track and monitor their progress.

Links

The simplest form of affiliate link is a text link within a page.

Take a look at the linked text below:

Find cheap laptops on eBay courtesy of laptopmanpaul.co.uk

When you click on that link, it has my personal information embedded in it which means that I will take a commission if you go on to buy something on eBay.

eBay Partner Network tools allow you state what you want to look for (laptops in this example, but it might equally be exercise bikes, umbrellas or even top hats!).

eBay takes care of the difficult coding bits, you just enter simple, non-teccie information to get what you want.

Creatives

The example below is a straightforward ‘off the shelf’ creative.

Once again, don’t worry about the coding, ebay does all the work for you.

Click on this logo, go on to make a purchase via eBay, and I’ll take a small commission from this:

Widgets

Finally to the widgets, which are always my preferred choice.

Once again these are fully customisable and you can determine the size of the adverts, what products are displayed, the look of the ad and so on.

Interestingly, to make widgets, you have to link your eBay Partner Network with your regular eBay account … if you don’t have one already, you need to get one.

They’re very simple to create, you’re talked through it all the way.

Here’s how my demo looks:

eBay Partner Network summarised

This is a standard, easy-to-use, affiliate scheme for one of the major players in the online market.

I’m amazed that eBay doesn’t make more of it … you have to know what you’re looking for to be able to find it.

I’m a big eBay user - as a buyer and a seller - so this is a service I’ll be using on my own websites in future weeks.