eBay is no longer paying per sale. But the real reason isn’t so obvious.
For years, online retailer and auction service eBay offered a traditional affiliate program. It paid affiliates for sending new registrations and sales to eBay, similar to how most online retailers pay a commission for sales.
But as many companies try to move from PPC to a pay-for-performance model, eBay is going the opposite direction.
Well, in name only. It’s still pay-for-performance, but now a magic black box will figure out the value of your traffic and pay you accordingly.
eBay can get away with this because it has so many affiliates and many company’s business models rely on the eBay affiliate program. No new company could come to you and say “send me your traffic, and I’ll tell you later how much I’ll pay for it.”
By switching to a so-called PPC model, eBay gets more than the benefit of hiding data from affiliates. Although its stated goal is to reward affiliates for the true quality of their traffic, I think another is the state tax issue.
Facing budget crunches, state governments are trying to cram down sales taxes on internet retailers. eBay’s home state of California almost passed a law that would require internet retailers outside of California to collect sales tax if they had any affiliates in California. Governor Schwarzenegger vetoed the bill. These laws don’t accomplish their goal of raising revenue for states. In fact, it ends up lowering it.
Technically, paying affiliates by the click means they are no longer “sales people” for the company, which could help avoid state sales tax traps. We may see more more companies move to this model over time.
Look for companies like Austin, TX-based Click Forensics, a click fraud monitoring company, to reap the rewards.
jp says
Good work Governator!
They should call this new traffic score at eBay a TQ score.
InternetInvestments.com says
Does this mean that publishers won’t be able to use both google ads and ebay’s affiliate program simultaneously?
Marty says
You can view reports for August that compare what you made and what you would have made with the new QCP system. My earnings would have gone up by 18% in August. You also still see what was won through your links so you still see the same reporting as before.
Johnny says
No transparency = less payout.
Sarah says
EPN has moved away from a transparent form of payment to a ‘magical-unknown-ppc’ method. Some affiliates are seeing an increase (me) in earnings and some are seeing massive reductions in earnings.
Whatever your ‘adjustment’ in earnings, do you really believe that the amount paid to you will not decrease over time?
As soon as the dust has settled and enough time has passed to blur the memory on commission based payments, those epc’s will start to decline…. and affiliates will continue to stay!! After all, what’s the point in spending a lot of time moving all of your work to OverStock / Amazon / Adsense / Chitika / Pepperjam / PopShops / Shareasale simply because your epc has slipped a little? The fact is though that every month it will slip a little more… then a little more… In the meantime, Ebay have managed to get another year out of you sending converting traffic whilst paying you next to squat!
Good luck to the suckers that intend on staying. Genuinely. You’ll need it. There is no way I would work for anyone that can pay you whatever they feel like!
Domain Investor says
Quote –
“Good luck to the suckers that intend on staying. Genuinely. You’ll need it. There is no way I would work for anyone that can pay you whatever they feel like!”
Domainers utilizing ppc have been living with this problem for years. And, it is now catching up to us.
Sarah,
How are you utilizing your domain traffic?