Oh I know, you thought eBay just fiddled around with sellers - well not anymore! eBay announced today they will be changing the way they pay for ACRUs (Active Confirmed Registered User). Up till now, you could up as an eBay affiliate, and send visitors to eBay via ad or link. If that person registers and buys something within 30 days, you'd get $25 flat - easy.
Those days are pretty much gone.
Some people are making a lot of money as eBay affiliates. Most make money by referring users who are already registered. When those people buy something, the affiliate gets a little cut of eBay's commission. ACRUs are not as plentiful as they once were. Lots of people have already registered, and people who aren't registered already - aren't in a hurry to do so.
The new system for ACRUs will be based on the quality of the aggregated traffic sent to eBay. In other words, if you have multiple affiliate sites, sending traffic to eBay, your traffic will be lumped all together to determine your quality level. Quality level will be based on a large part on the revenue generated by the users sent to eBay.
Payouts will now range from $1 to $50 for an ACRU. eBay will decide the quality of referrals, and will place affiliates in "tiers." To move into better payout tiers, an affiliate will need to improve the quality of their traffic. Initially, all new affiliates will automatically be placed in the lowest tier. Their traffic will be reviewed once per month to see if they will move up and get paid more. This new structure only affects ACRU payouts, and will immediately affect new affiliates. If you are already signed up as an active eBay affiliate, the changes will not take place for "a few months."
The bottom line is, eBay is applying the same "carrot on a stick" philosophy here as they do with Powersellers. "Work your tail off to send us traffic, and we MIGHT just throw a few nickels back to you."
Earlier this year, eBay switched the management of their affiliate program from an outside company, Commission Junction, to an in-house program called the eBay Partner Network. The switch was painful for affiliates because they had to migrate existing links from their websites to the new network links. In some cases this meant reworking thousands of links. The eBay Partner Network (EPN) then had problems with reporting, and the dust still hasn't really settled.
Now, in true eBay tradition, they are making changes to the program before the previous changes have had time to set. It's like framing a new building while the concrete foundation is still wet...
You can find the full announcement and all the details here.
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