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About Us 2007 is when I began creating niche stores. Many kind and giving people shared their knowledge with me, making it easier to improve my sites. I have gathered much of what I've learned and put it here, on this site, as a way of giving back. It is my hope that this site will help you improve your niche stores and sites, too. ~ Rochelle
My First Thoughts on the eBay Partner Network
Posted by
Rochelle in Patience is not my thing and that’s what I need to be right now. I want to get the conversion from Commission Junction (CJ) to eBay as the affiliate tracker over with but I can’t complete this without the Build A Niche Store (BANS) software update.
If you haven’t yet joined up I advice you do so as soon as possible. You probably already know this but eBay is increasing commissions earned for the month of April so the sooner you change over to the new system the sooner you can earn bonus commissions. You can join up at http://affiliates.ebay.com/.
While I’m waiting I’ve decided to post some of my thoughts on the new eBay affiliate program.
Signing up for the program
First, people are getting hung up on the Primary Business Model choices. These choices include:
- Ad network/Sub-affiliates
- Paid Search
- Natural Search/Website
- Paid Placement
The best choice for BANS owners is Natural Search/Website as that’s exactly what we have: Websites. If you choose this option you will be required to enter a website URL in the very last box, titled, ‘Website URL (if applicable).’ Choose one of your BANS sites and enter it here.
As soon as you submit your application you see the following message:
Your application is now being reviewed by the eBay Partner Network team. You’ll receive a response via email as soon as possible.
This also seems to be tripping people up. In most cases eBay will immediately send you an email asking you to click a provided link to confirm your email address. Simply click the link and you should be able to log in.
Watch the instructional video
After you log in the first thing I recommend you do is watch eBay’s instructional video. It has some good information that will help you get started.
Create campaigns
The next thing you want to do is create a campaign for each of your niche stores. The ID generated for each web site will be the ID used for tracking affiliate commissions. This is equivalent to the CJ PID number.
There is an option to create bulk campaigns but I couldn’t figure out how to do this. Instead I added each site one at a time.
Tracking will be more detailed
According to the video, affiliates will now be able to track a lot more information than we could with CJ. This includes the ability to see bids and winning bids. To me this means we will now see how many bids were made and be able to compare these to winning bids. The options available are exciting!
Tracking will also include being able to see what pages within a site is driving traffic, though I don’t know if we can use this feature with BANS sites. Campaign IDs track websites and Custom IDs track whatever page has been assigned to it.
When payments will be made
The video stated payments will be made at the end of the month for earnings from the prior month. This means we will have to wait two full months from the time of joining to receive any funds (assuming you earned commissions within the first month after joining). I’m just letting you know so you don’t freak out when you haven’t gotten any money right away.
Information can be organized how you want
This may not be a big deal to you but I’m totally anal about certain things and this is big to me. What this means is you can sort your campaigns by name alphabetically. It drove me nuts that I couldn’t do this in CJ. See, I said I was anal : )
Changes made to links
Someone in the eBay forum posted the following information about what changes will be made to affiliate links:
API links are easily converted by replacing:
sid= becomes customid=
trackingpartnercode=1 becomes trackingpartnercode=9
trackingid=CJPID becomes trackingid=CAMPID
You get the CAMPID from the link generator (in the link).
That’s all I have for now. The best thing you can do while waiting for the BANS update to be released is to create campaigns for each of your niche stores. If you followed my instructions to create a Safety on eBay page then you will need to update the link in that page (thanks to Denise for bringing this to my attention). I haven’t done it yet but you can probably create a Custom ID for this page since the code is added to the page through the Content section of that page.
Rochelle
17 Responses to “My First Thoughts on the eBay Partner Network”
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UPDATE – It is now early evening. Several hours ago I began updating my BANS sites to the EPN version of BANS. I just checked the EPN site and I’m relieved to say that it is showing clicks.
Perhaps the best thing I can add is that you can see a breakdown of what sites are getting clicks on the same day they happen. If this is possible in CJ I could never figure it out. I LOVE being able to see what sites are performing well on the day clicks happen.
Rochelle
Setting up a bulk Campaign was easy. Simply make a text file in Notepad containing the names of your BANS stores, one name to a line. Use the bulk upload under New Campaigns, and you have all your new campaign IDs within seconds.
Joyce
Joyce – That’s far too easy! (I say while smacking my self on the head)
Thank you for clarifying how to add bulk campaigns.
[...] coming still, to deal with the lost catid’s. Rochelle has also written a great post about her First Thoughts on the eBay Partner Network… it is a great read with good instructions as [...]
Rochelle or Joyce, I have a silly quesiton…. When creating the campaigns to get our new ID numbers, do I enter my website as:
1) mysite.com
2) http://www.mysite.com
3) http://www.mysite.com
When I signed up, I received a “default campaign id”, should I simply use that one for one of my sites, and change the description to my site name, or what?
Thanks for your help…
Oops, number 2) should have been simply wwwdotmysitedotcom. Somehow it converted to a link….
Javanut – I use http://mysite.com (I don’t use www).
Rochelle
Thanks Rochelle for the response. eBay’s tutorial wasn’t very explicit on that topic and the form itself wasn’t very intuitive.
Im a total NOOB I need extreme help in setting this help, rss feeds? all that stuff basically I want to get paid obviously listing ebay categories on my website, someone, anyone, everyone please help!!!!!!!!!
Hi Alen,
Sorry for taking so long to respond. We were on vacation and I’ve been slow getting back to real life.
I’m not sure of the problem you are having. Can you be more specific? Give exact details of the problem you are having or the help you need?
Rochelle
Hi Rochelle,
Thanks for the great info. I have a small question since i am entirely new to this area. Should i go about buying bans before i apply to be
an e-bay affliliate ? or is it the other way round. Just a bit confused since i’m a total noob in this area. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers
Robin
Robin,
Good question!
For the most part it doesn’t matter what order you do things. From what I’ve seen, though, people seem to run into problems when applying to eBay’s EPN when they don’t have a website to list on the application, but since this is optional I don’t know how important that is.
This was a big issue when Commission Junction still ran eBay’s affiliate program because you were required to list a website and those who didn’t have one were denied.
I’d say do it however you want. If you are accepted into EPN you will know right away because you will have immediate access to your account. If you are denied it’s not the end of the world because you can simply apply again later.
Please let us know if you are accepted or denied an application to EPN.
Rochelle
Thanks a lot Rochelle. Will keep you informed as things develop.
Robin
What is criteria of being accepted??? We were denied without a reason stated and I am a bit confused…..
D,
Unfortunately, I do not know what their criteria is. If I remember correctly, however, I seem to recall that you need to have a completed website that you enter at the time of application.
You might try looking on Google to see what might help you get accepted. I just did a quick search and came across this post: http://www.fmqinc.com/how-to-get-accepted-to-epn/
Much luck to you,
Rochelle
Who knows what ebay’s criteria are? They denied me at least once, a legitimate site, incorporated, bank account, positive credit and everything. I’ll watch 14 year old high schoolers be given free and clear reign. Perhaps they are using credit reports to make decisions like banks! Put up a content web site, perhaps that will work, who knows. Whomever is doing the checking will be bound to find out that their slipshod investigating process will be beat. Probably not a bad idea to run several pages of content on your site first.
ebayaffiliate requirements,
I’m not sure what their criteria is. Seems to be there is information about what they are looking for, and I believe content (quality content) is a biggie. It is definitely a good idea to add content before applying.
Good luck,
Rochelle