I’m just going to post the press release for ease of use about this latest announcement…see some of my comments below:

Pepperjam proud to announce that their affiliate network has officially partnered with the eBay Partner Network to bring eBay??s links and graphics to Pepperjam??s affiliates!

Stay tuned for access to eBay??s large selection of advanced links, widgets, and more. If you have any specific requests for the eBay Affiliate Program on Pepperjam Network please contact ebay@pepperjammanagement.com.

HIGHLIGHTS: Make up to 75% of all the transactions and up to an additional $35 for every new active user you send to eBay. Pepperjam has in place a dedicated eBay affiliate management team to work with you in real-time to maximize your eBay revenue. Learn more about our aggressive commission structure by logging-in to your Pepperjam Network account.

About the eBay Partner Network and Pepperjam Partnership:

It will come as no surprise that eBay is The World??s Online Marketplace?, enabling trade on a local, national and international basis. With a diverse and passionate community of individuals and small businesses, eBay offers an online platform where millions of items are traded each day. Founded in 1995, eBay Inc. connects hundreds of millions of people around the world every day, empowering them to explore new opportunities and innovate together. eBay Inc. does this by providing the Internet platforms of choice for global commerce, payments and communications. Since its inception, eBay Inc. has expanded to include some of the strongest brands in the world, including eBay, PayPal, Skype, Shopping.com, and others.

Coupling access to the unparalleled scope of eBay??s global marketplace with industry-leading tools and a dedicated support staff, the eBay Affiliate Program on Pepperjam Network offers success to all types of publishers, from the casual blogger to the experienced Internet entrepreneur. The eBay Partner Network is one of the most profitable affiliate programs in existence today, paying affiliates up to $35 per active new user, and 75% of its revenue on hundreds of categories of products.

I’ll have more information in the future, but I’m very curious about this. For one, I hope it fixes some of the problems I’ve been having with revenue. I don’t really understand the reasoning behind this as I thought eBay moved off of Commission Junction to their in-house network…not just to allow another third party network. There are two major benefit potentials that I see:

1. Pepperjam will have a dedicated ebay contact that affiliates can go to. Since eBay has been extremely uncommunicative to its affiliates, this could have some real potential.
2. Pepperjam was able to increase the minimum revenue by a few % points and $1 on new sign ups from eBay’s own program.

I’m an affiliate through Pepperjam Network, but I haven’t really used it yet. I’ve heard great things about them, so we’ll see how things go. The only problem now is that affiliate links will have to be re-coded again, and we’ll have to wait for BANS to update their code to allow the Pepperjam codes to be integrated.

I’ve recently been doing a lot of stuff to try and make money using the eBay affiliate program through Commission Junction. While I’m glad I’m really just in the beginning of using the program, it’s still going to be a huge pain. Since eBay is moving off of CJ, all of the affiliate links need to be updated. Imagine those with thousands of blog posts…starting May 1st, 2008, those old links won’t make money anymore unless they are updated.

There will be a couple of big benefits from all this though:

• Easy global registration to multiple countries simultaneously
• New, targeted banners and rich media creatives
• New landing page optimization and geo-targeting capabilities
• More detailed reporting capabilities for eBay??s programs
• eBay will be offering a 5% bonus for all traffic (through the new network) in April. For those that can migrate quickly, they will see the benefits

The last three could potentially be really good if eBay does it right. I’m always up for new, targeted banners if it can be tied into content better and can be more effective. I’m interested in seeing what they mean by new landing page optimization. Geo-targeting capabilities may be something really big that I’ll be able to use for an upcoming project I’m working on. One of the biggest things is more detailed reporting. I’ve always said that the reporting was too limited by Commission Junction, and hopefully eBay can make this right. Reporting can do a ton for a publisher to better optimize how they promote the affiliate network, which makes more money for eBay and the publisher.

Overall it seems like it will be a good thing, but a huge pain in the ass. If there is any way they can make old CJ links still work, they should do that. I don’t see how that wouldn’t be possible since the old links use the rover.ebay.com domain…it’s not like it’s a commission junction domain, it’s on their own domain! Just make the new ones a different non-rover.ebay.com and if there are some sort of less reporting or features from the old links, they’ll be able to separate them.

My other concern is auditing. Currently, Commission Junction is the middle-man…the third party to verify reporting and data is correct. I hope there is something in place to ensure everything is accurate.

You’ll be able to start migrating April 1st, 2008, and should be done by May 1st, 2008. Here’s the full e-mail I got:

Dear David Pitlyuk:

We are excited to announce eBay??s new global affiliate platform: the eBay Partner Network.

The new platform will go live on April 1st, 2008 PST, at which point eBay will no longer be running its affiliate program through Commission Junction. Beginning April 1st, affiliates should register with eBay Partner Network and migrate their links from CJ to the new platform.

While CJ and ValueClick have been valuable partners to eBay throughout the years, we??ve decided to give our affiliate community a customized experience for eBay affiliates.

All the great tools and benefits of working with the eBay program will remain the same ?? access to the Editor Kit and affiliate API, the flexible destination tool, the great payout structure. In addition, the eBay partner network will provide several new features:

• Easy global registration to multiple countries simultaneously
• New, targeted banners and rich media creatives
• New landing page optimization and geo-targeting capabilities
• More detailed reporting capabilities for eBay??s programs

The eBay Partner Network and Commission Junction will run in parallel for one month through this process, so please plan to complete your migration by May 1st, 2008.

You can receive an additional 5% bonus for all traffic tracked through eBay Partner Network in April 2008 (bonus applicable to traffic sent to Half.com and US, UK, Australia, Canada, Italy, India and Spain eBay sites). The sooner you migrate, the more you??ll earn! Just:

• Register with eBay Partner Network on April 1, 2008
• Confirm your registration, and obtain your new identifiers
• Update your links with your new identifiers.
• Reminder: Please plan to complete migration by May 1, 2008.

You will receive more information and step by step directions for the transition on April 1st. A special help desk to answer your questions about migration will also be available starting April 1st. You can find more details, including a list of programs that will be affected, at http://affiliates.ebay.com.

Thanks for being a valued partner. We??re excited for a successful transition, and the opportunity to grow your business through even more innovations, information and communication moving forward!

Sincerely,
eBay??s Affiliates Managers

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

Last month I launched my first true affiliate marketing project, Carbon Fiber Gear. Over that past month I’ve generated 26 sales from eBay and 1 sale from Amazon, which has made me about $50.

In the back of my head I was pretty sure that the majority of sales were going to be for carbon fiber wallets (which I have been promoting pretty pro actively) or something else carbon fiber…but I was very wrong. Of the 26 eBay sales, here’s what was purchased:

• 8 carbon fiber wallets
• 8 coins (same user)
• 1 camera flash kit
• 1 dell laptop battery
• 1 electric guitar
• 1 greddy side-mount intercooler
• 1 harry potter action figure
• 1 motorola jesus faceplate
• 1 mustang wheel adapter plate
• 1 planet earth dvd
• 1 motorola portugal flag faceplate
• 1 turbo charger warning sticker

As you can see here the majority of my commissions have actually come from stuff that has nothing to do with carbon fiber…I’m just the gateway for the user to get to eBay. On top of that, it’s interesting to look at the breakdown of the amount of time it took for the user to buy something from the day they clicked the affiliate link:

• 17/26 (65%) purchased the same day
• 2/26 (7%) purchased after 1 day
• 3/26 (11%) purchased after 2 days
• 1/26 (4%) purchased after 4 days
• 1/26 (4%) purchased after 5 days
• 2/26 (7%) purchased after 7 days

This is where we can really see the power of the cookie drop. 35% of the purchases weren’t made on the same day, but because a cookie was dropped I still generated revenue from that user. I’ll definitely be watching similar stats to this over time (hopefully with a lot more data to work with), so we’ll see if the numbers stay about the same.