When I first started to generate some commissions from the eBay affiliate program, I couldn’t figure out for the life of me how to find out what somebody purchased in order to make me the commission. This data would be important as I could use it to better understand what I should promote. I went through the CJ help, then through eBay affiliate help…nothing. You’d think this would be a common question. FINALLY I found a way. I knew there was a way! I figured I’d document it here to hopefully help you others out so you didn’t have to go through what I did.

1. First step is to login to your account manager on CJ.
2. Click the run reports tabs
3. You should automatically be in the “Transaction Report” page. Click the blue link that says “Report Options”
4. Change the report type to commission detail, and the advertiser to eBay
5. Select the date(s) you want to run the report, and then run the report
6. You’ll see a page with all of your commissions. None of this data shows you what items were purchased…this area was the main reason I couldn’t figure out what was going on. At the bottom of the data, you’ll see something to download the report. Download the CSV, and save it to your desktop.
7. Open the txt file in Excel and choose the options for a comma delimited file..this will break up the data into separate columns.
8. In column P (order_id), you’ll see something like this:

15090839;350009584948;75545;20080101;20080103;1;29.72;000US;10504852553

Here’s what these numbers mean between each semi-colon:

eBay User ID; eBay Item ID; Leaf Category ID; Click Date; Bid Date; Quantity Sold; Total GMV; 000US (or 000EX); Record ID

Aha! The second group of numbers is the eBay Item ID! Simply paste that number into the search box on eBay and there is your winning item.

Alternatively, Brandon Hopkins informed me about a neat little tool that automates this for you. The CJ report analyzer for eBay sales allows you to simply upload your CSV file, and they will output everything you need. Note that the way they make money is by revamping the links in the report they output with their own affiliate ID. That’s the cost of providing a free tool