eBay Changes Affiliate Terms for the Better

eBay released a game-changing letter to affiliates today. It's good stuff.

Affiliates can now link to their own eBay auctions and profit from commissions on completed auctions and new customer acquisition. This holds great potential and was previously verboten, if I am not mistaken.

Why does this matter?

Lets say an eBay seller want to run an AdWords or other contextual advertising campaign to push potential customers to their Bay listings. Now the seller can double-dip and earn affiliate commissions as well as revenue from the sale of auction items.

• eBay's affiliate program (administered through Commission Junction) is very generous. Active Registered User (ACRU) commission range from $12 through $22 per user, while eBay Revenue commission compensation ranges from 40% through 65%.
• Most folks don't have their own store sites. eBay is too eAsy when compared to the issues involved with running a standalone store.
• There's the implied trust factor with eBay. Buyers can be more comfortable making a transaction on eBay rather than on a standalone store that they've never heard of before.
• The seller/affiliate can push their own listings first then say, "hey, can't find what you need in our inventory? here are a bunch of other eBay listings that you might be of interest."

I'd reckon that eBay is finally allowing this because they really need to find more new members. Affiliates are pretty effective at this - it's pay for performance, through and through. Perhaps eBay finally gave into the fact that they need all the help they can get if they expect to continue to grow at a reasonable pace.

Here's the letter:

On March 8, 2007, ebay.com is updating the Special Terms & Conditions. The new Special Terms & Conditions will only contain one change and that is in regards to item 5, Affiliate Links. The wording will read as follows:

5) Affiliate Links. You may use affiliate links to promote your own eBay listings or eBay Store, those of your Agents or those of anyone else with whom you are affiliated. eBay may terminate this provision at any time with 7 days notice.

(a) You may not include affiliate links on any ebay.com page or eBay-owned page, such as an eBay listing or eBay Store.

Please note that: 1) Program terms with the new Special Terms & Conditions will automatically take effect on March 8th. If you reach any Performance Incentives in March, these will be manually calculated at month’s end thus acceptance of these new terms will not affect Performance Incentive payouts. 2) Publishers do not need to take any steps to move to the new program terms containing the updated Special Terms & Conditions, and 3) If the Special Terms & Conditions are not agreeable to you, then you are required to proactively end your affiliate relationship with eBay via the CJ Account Manager interface.

eBay and Commission Junction are very excited with this change and feel that this will provide an additional avenue of success for publishers.

Sincerely,
The eBay.com Affiliate Team