Affiliated program is a joke?

[Juliebabe25]

Gaz

I don't quite understand how this could work.

You say that ebid pay affiliates a commission if they sign up a Seller+ member.
I can understand that, a seller plus member pays quite a bit to be one so there is some money there to pay out a commission.

If someone pays an item on ebid, ebid get a 2% final value. If say the average sale was $20, 2% of that is 40 cents. That hardly gives ebid much money to pay out in commission to act as an incentive to affiliates. And are you saying it would be on every sale the buyer makes. That would be a lot of admin for such a small amount.

[gazlannathai]

@ Jimbo
From eBid's terms on clixGalore -

Website Name eBid Online Auctions USD Website URL http://www.ebid.tv Program Currency US$ Program Type Per Lead Commission Rate: US$2.00 Per Lead

Website Name eBid Online Auctions GBP Website URL http://www.ebid.tv Program Currency UK£ Program Type Per Lead Commission Rate: UK£1.00 Per Lead

From http://as.ebid.net/help_affiliate.php
1) What's an Affiliate Program?

An Affiliate Program is the system whereby you advertise our site for us on your emails, on your website, to your friends etc. If someone you send to us joins eBid then we will pay you $2.00 / £1.00 for introducing them to us. 2) How much will you pay me?

We will pay $2.00 if you wish to be paid in US Dollars, or we will pay you £1.00 for each new member if you join our British Pound program. You will need to sign up at ClixGalore and then place text links or banners on your emails, websites etc. CA$ and AU$ schemes will also be available very shortly.




Yes, I agree that from those quotes, it "looks" as though you get paid for introducing buyers, however, I know from my own sites' traffic analysis compared to the data supplied by ClixGalore, that payments most certainly only appear to be getting credited for Seller+ member joins.

I also know that from previous affiliate program iterations, it used to be stated that it was only for new users joining as Seller+, there was never any mention of being paid for buyers and non-Seller+ registrations, and as far as I can see, there is still no mention of those, even though the wording has become rather vague and ambiguous.

None of which actually alleviates the issue that affiliates need to be able to promote the sellers' inventory, because that is what people look for online and it is those people (the buyers) that this site now needs more than it needs additional sellers right now. Yeah, it would be great to continue recruiting the casual sellers who are mainly buyers - I'm all for that. Yes, some really top quality sellers with oodles of inventory are good for the site (up to a point), but those will come as soon as they hear the word that eBid has become the next eBay in terms of market traction (as opposed to fleabay's more negative qualities displayed the last several years).

If you want to look at it from a purely webmastering point of view - how many websites, squidoo lenses, facebook pages and so forth, can be uploaded before the search engines start wagging fingers and crying "Whoa there neddy - that's duplicate content, we're not listing that" if only the seller program can be marketed by webmasters. On the other hand, how many thousands or even millions of websites can be built marketing eBid seller's inventory based around niches, trends, hot products, hobbies, activities etc. Just look at the millions of "ecommerce" catalogue sites built using the eBay inventory system by affiliate marketers, and look at the constant traction that gets them (eBay that is). eBid needs a slice of that, and I'd reprogram my sites in an instant if eBid could provide a worthwhile catalogue method for doing that.



Gaz

[gazlannathai]

Hi Julie

It's actually a lot less admin than you might think unless you want to audit every transaction. Software takes care of it all, and you just have to trust the software until an error occurs. The best you can do in any volume situation is to sample audit a few transactions on a regular basis and make sure everything is calculating correctly.

If Jimbo's assertions are correct, then the commission for a buyer joing, or a non-Seller+ seller, comes from the Seller+ fees rather than from the transaction fees - because eBid only pay once per registration. I'm assuming (I don't know) that the thinking is to give a worthwhile chunk for signing up a buyer, and give it up front rather than in dribbles each time they buy.

The problem with that, for the affiliates, is that almost the entire marketing model is based on the affiliates providing a value-added website (e.g. a website all about Arran and FairIsle sweaters, with patterns, wool, ready knitted sweaters, and so on) and fill it with "inventory" at bargain (auction) plus regular (fixed price) priced items for the content readers to buy. Because they readers will return to read more on the original (value-added) site, they might then see something else they want to buy and click through. Using this model, over time the value-add site gets increased traffic and click-throughs, and thus a growing level of commission.

What eBid's program does (allegedly) is offer a method where the affiliate only gets paid once, no matter how many times their same visitor clicks through and buys. What will develop then, is software that monitors which regular visitors have already clicked through to eBid, and they'll then not get shown eBid inventory for either 90-days (cookie duration from eBid affiliate program) or for life if the affiliate believes the visitor signed up and the affiliate has had their once ever signup fee - there's no ongoing incentive to keep sending that same visitor to eBid.

How the fees would work on an inventory based system is rather simple, the site determines what percentage of their sale fee they give to the affiliate - it might be say 10%, so using your example, the affiliate would get 4 cents. There's lots of programs paying less than that, and on higher value items such as household electricals, the price (and thus the dollar value of the 2%) can rise quite sharply - 10% of 2% of a $600 large screen TV becomes $1.20 for the affiliate. I'd be very happy with that. What about 10% of 2% on a $15,000 dollar car sale? $30 for the affiliate - yum yum, yes please.

That works very handsomely for all concerned - eBid, the seller, and the affiliate, and would cause eBid inventory to feature on a lot more websites than it currently does.

Hope that helps?

Gaz

[Brunwulf]

Hi Gaz,

As far as i know it's always been for any eBid member, quote from Gazza " we will pay you for each member that clicks the link you place and follows it to eBid and registers as a member."

It would be great if Gazza could confirm if this is all members or just Seller+ members ?

quote source= http://www.ebid.net/forums/showthrea...am-Re-Launched

I agree with you that it would be nice if the affiliate was also paid a percentage for sales.

The buddy point system is a wee bit like this, buyer joins you get 1 point, some days later they upgrade to seller you get 2 more points, then next week they upgrade to seller+ and you get 5 points so total posable of 8 per member and at the current rate you are looking at approx £1.40 per point.

[Brunwulf]

I also know that from previous affiliate program iterations, it used to be stated that it was only for new users joining as Seller+, there was never any mention of being paid for buyers and non-Seller+ registrations, and as far as I can see, there is still no mention of those, even though the wording has become rather vague and ambiguous.

I might be wrong as it was a while ago but i do remember for the now obsolete eBid Google referral scheme (shame google stopped that) you were paid for seller+ members registrations, so that might be was you are thinking of..

[gazlannathai]

That's possible Jimbo - I did run both side by side for a while (the Google scheme performed far better than the clixGalore one too). Been doing the eBid affiliate system so long now it's hard to remember what is what sometimes.

Would still like da boyz to give a definitive on which member types generate the affiliate commission though. And would still like to see a system for promoting the inventory directly, even if it meant you had to choose one or the other (memberships or inventory) to promote - my earnings off the fleabay program dwarf those of the eBid one, and I've never earned an ACRU for a new member on the dark side's program.

[Brunwulf]

Yes, the Google scheme performed better for me to.

I agree