May 31st, 2007 by Skip McGrath

eBay Announced new commission rates and a new policy that forbids the use of PPC advertising to drive traffic to affiliate listings.

The eBay Affiliate Program pays Internet publishers, Web masters, online partners, and eBay sellers to drive new users and sales to eBay. Affiliates promote eBay with banners, text links, and other innovative tools, such as the Editor’s Kit and the Flexible Destination Tool. In return, they receive commissions for driving new, active users as well as winning bids and “Buy It Now” purchases. Currently, the top 25 affiliates in the program average above $100,000 in monthly commissions.

This is a Good News/Bad News Announcement.  The good news is that eBay has raised their payouts.  The bad news is that they have killed affiliates ability to use PPC advertising to drive traffic to affiliate linked listings.

eBay announced the following changes to the program today:

• $25.00-$35.00 per Active Registration
  A registration is active when the user places a bid on eBay within 30 days of their initial registration. This is an increase from the old rate of between $12 – $22.
• Between 50% and 75% of eBay’s revenue on all Winning Bids. The eBay program pays on ALL Winning Bids or Buy It Nows (BINs) within 7 days of an affiliate action. This is an increase from the old rate of between 40% – 55%
• New Paid Search Terms and Conditions. Beginning June 1, 2007, the eBay US Affiliate Program will no longer allow paid search traffic from Google.com, Yahoo.com, MSN.com, nor from any of their content networks, such as Google AdSense, Yahoo! Publisher Network, and MSN ContentAds to be linked directly to the eBay.com, eBay Express, or eBay Store domains.

What is not clear is if eBay will allow affiliates to drive traffic to squeeze pages or web pages and/or blog posts where you can then drive traffic to eBay affiliate listings.  I will be spending some time at the eBay affiliate booth as eBay Live in a couple of weeks and will attempt to get clarification on this important issue.  In the meantime if you would like to learn more about the eBay Affiliate Program you can read the details at: http://affiliates.ebay.com/

One of the easiest ways to earn commissions from the eBay Affiliate Program is to build a Niche Store.  Click here to see a great, low-cost way to do this.

See Also

• Build An eBay Niche Store
  Earn affiliate commissions with a easy and quick to build eBay Niche Store