Several months ago, we created a Geo-Targeting tool for eBay affiliates to use. It was promoted through the eBay Partner Network blog, and picked up by a wide cross section of publishers.

It essentially allowed them to geo-target the existing content units they were using, so that their widgets would automatically display products from the correct local eBay site of the visitor.

As a bit of a research project, in a Mark Zuckerberg kind of way, we’ve analysed the data, and can see some positives results.

Obviously, to protect publisher privacy, to present this info on the blog, we’ve taken a random sample and then averaged out the data below:

So what are the points of interest?

Well, as you’d expect, clicks for the publisher’s “home” country remain fairly consistent, as do publisher commissions. The slight drop in home country clicks can be attributed to visitors from other countries, who before the implementation, would have still clicked through the widget despite it showing results for a different country.

The quite staggering number however, is the increase in clicks from other countries once the geo-targeting tool was installed by the publishers, actually out performing the publisher’s home countries!

So should we all run out and buy geo-ip databases to start coining in the benefits?

Well yes and no…

I feel that part of the increase is from publisher effort. Publishers may have already be making a conscious effort to increase their global traffic, and would have implemented this geo-tool as part of that. This would perhaps account for the fact that there was already low level activity reporting for other territories, in the before stats. Also, publishers may pick up the tool, and be spurred into improving and creating international content and traffic sources.

In addition, eBay’s global reach shouldn’t be ignored. You can promote eBay in 13 countries, all from one interface. Geo-targeting in this case is a no brainer. It’s obviously slightly more difficult if you’re promoting UK only merchants.

However…

I still don’t think you can totally ignore these figures. Sure it may not be applicable to every affiliate, but you never know where your site will crop up around the globe. An affiliate friend of mine, who runs a niche UK based camping site, whose primary traffic source was PPC, told me that it was not uncommon for him to get emails from the USA, inquiring if he delivered there.

I’m sure some of you have your own opinions on this, and may have even dabbled in other markets, but for those that haven’t, it may be an option worth exploring.

eBay · eBay Partner Network · epc · geo targeting

Custom Banner is a fantastic tool which enables publishers to generate Banners that display a number of eBay items relevant to their site content. If implemented well we have seen a multitude of publishers whose CTR (Click Through Rate) for Custom banner integrations have far outperformed Google Adsense and Amazon, providing a profitable and sustainable stream of site revenue.

The key to Custom Banner’s success is in part down to the relevance of the product listings that can be achieved, but there is equal importance in ensuring the placement and styling are optimised for your site. I am often surprised by the number of affiliate sites I come across where little or no thought has gone into the setup and placement of affiliate ads on a site. In many cases no formatting has been applied and placements are either tucked away at the bottom of the page or placed in an obtrusive area of the page which can often discourage visitors from clicking through to eBay. In this Blog post I have highlighted three areas which I think publishers should consider carefully when setting up their eBay Custom Banner integrations. By following these steps we have found that publishers CTR’s and conversion rates have improved and have ultimately resulted in increased commissions.

Three Steps to Success

The Placement

There are three areas of a site where we have found that Custom Banner Integrations perform particularly well. The first placement is within the editorial content of a page. If you have a page about iPhone handsets then using a Custom Banner with relevant listings will attract that visitor to click though to eBay. The integration helps to break up the content but it is important not get carried away with multiple placements as this will detract from the user experience.

The next best placement we have seen is the left hand margin of the site. This is often a preferable location for affiliates as Custom Banner can be applied to the site template and applied to multiple pages of a site. The reason that this area performs well is down to the fact that most navigation menus are located on the left hand side of a site so the visitor’s eyes are automatically drawn into the line of site.

The third area that performs well is the right hand margin, which can be as equally effective as utilising the right hand navigation bar. This is especially true if the left hand navigation is quite busy and the Custom Banner can be integrated above the fold on the opposite side of the page.

Maybe surprisingly, some of the worst performing placements for Custom Banners are the Header positions. You would think that using such a prominent placement would produce the best results, but instead we have found it to be a poor performer, even compared to below the fold footer placements.

There are many studies that have been carried out into the optimal placements for banner advertising. While Custom Banner should be treated and implemented in a contextual format I would certainly recommend that you read the research carried out by Eyetrack. While the research is now quite dated it still provides some good insights and observations into placement effectiveness.

Appearance

Custom Banner is fully customisable to fit in with the look and feel of your site, and from experience we have seen that placements that are edited to blend in with the rest of the site actually perform better than placements that have purposely different colour schemes to stand out from the page. By default Custom banner uses an eBay theme, but by selecting the “Theme” dropdown you can edit the colours within a couple of minutes. The process can be made even easier, and produce more accurate results if you update the theme using the Hex colour Keys. Looking up a table of Hex keys isn’t a simple task, so one of the tools I recommend is a Firefox plug-in called Colorzilla. Installing the extension allows you to click the pipette icon, which in turn gives you the Hex key (FFFFFF for white) for the pixel currently selected by your cursor. This makes it really simple to match the Custom Banner colour scheme for a more professional looking integration.

Size

This might be a bit of an obvious one, but the more space you can allocate to the placement the more likely it is that the visitor will see the placement and the items within it. While you shouldn’t go over the top with the placement dimensions (filling half the page with Custom Banner will deter visitors) we have found that the most successful placement dimensions have been 120×600 and square 250×250 units utilised in editorial content and side bars. While Custom Banner does offer the flexibility to generate custom sizes, anything less than 120×400 is unlikely to perform well as you will be limiting the display results to 1 item which fails to showcase the purchasing choices available on eBay.

Chris Worthy – R.O.EYE

advertising · click through rate · colorzilla · custom banner · eBay · eyetrack · tools

As an affiliate management agency we work with many different affiliates genres day in day out: PPC, Cashback, Vouchercodes, etc… But with a large majority of merchants, email is a handsome proportion of the programme makeup in regards to affiliate genre; some are even more dependant when Cashback / Vouchercodes are not permitted on the affiliate programme, adhering to its Terms and Conditions.

If, by some form of data capture you are adding to your broadcast lists, then email may well be worth your while. Essentially, you can quickly benefit from circulating your client’s email creative, thus contributing to your own bottom line through a different revenue stream.

Below, I have highlighted a few points to consider when executing an email campaign:

A / B testing – Refine

If you should be lucky enough to be promoting a merchant with a selection of email creative within the network interface then A / B testing allows you to compare and contrast two forms of campaigns. Obviously the most effective creative for your data set will prevail with the greater number of sales / leads.

Feedback – Communicate

Communication is a two way process; very much a cliché, but it rings true. If you are able to obtain any insightful information as to why the email creative isn’t performing particularly well then let the affiliate manager / merchant contact know. They may be able to help and refine the email creative to best suit your data set.

Subject Line – Attention

Being the first part of the email that your end user will be seeing, it’s integral to get this correct and grab their attention from the outset. Capitals and exclamation marks will ensure the email is deemed as unwanted SPAM; personalisation where possible will improve relevancy. Of course, where possible, the title should relate to its contents, because failure of doing so will only result in a large number of people opting out of your campaigns. Segmentation and targeting is the key.

Of course, this isn’t an exhaustive list, but these are just a few of the many key considerations when undertaking a successful email campaign. As long as you can provide refinement, communicate with the relevant parties and grab the recipients’ attention from the outset, you’re on your way to some effective results.

You can find more on information on email campaigns courtesy of Econsultancy

advice · email campaigns · guide · targeted traffic

Many eBay affiliate sites we work with are built to purely promote the wealth of eBay niches, and do so successfully. One of the primary reasons eBay is so suited to affiliate niches is down to the fact that multiple sellers offer identical or similar items at different price points and with varying features. Because eBay is so suited to niche marketing many publishers sometimes overlook the fact that eBay can work very effectively as part of an integrated affiliate campaign.

eBay affiliate campaigns do not have to be segregated into their own isolated web sites or pages. Affiliates have often asked me the question “is it ok if I show eBay listings alongside other forms of advertising?” almost with the expectation that I will tell them that it is not allowed. In reality there are a synergies that can be gained through integrating eBay to sit alongside other retail programmes, these can include improving the overall user experience and providing a revenue stream for otherwise remnant content.

User Experience

One of the most common misperceptions of integrating eBay is that the items on offer will not match or fit in with the products or brands that the affiliate is promoting. I was discussing listing options with a publisher promoting satellite navigation systems, and while his site did feature eBay, the eBay integration was simply a collection of text links to a broad “GPS” search query. The conversions, revenue and resulting EPC’s were very poor as the site traffic was qualified for customers looking to purchase brand new systems. Visitors were clicking the eBay link, being directed to listings “muddied” by irrelevant or unwanted items and were quickly hitting the browser back button. The though of using eBay listings as direct comparisons against other advertisers was totally overlooked.

While second hand auctions no doubt provide some bargains, eBay also have a number of Power Sellers who offer brand new units at competitive prices which would provide more relevant listings. The publisher went on to add dedicated eBay pages for each model, using the Custom Banner and adding filter options to align the listing with the offerings from other merchants. The results were quite dramatic with Revenues and EPCs nearly doubling within a few days of the changes going live. This goes to show that if you dedicate a little time to refine the eBay results (whether it be Custom Banner, RSS or API) to directly compare rather than provide an alternative sales option, you could potentially see the benefits in the form of higher commissions.

Maximising your revenue streams

I know there may be some affiliate reading this post thinking “Well, in some cases I rather not promote eBay because other advertises offer higher commission and I don’t want to cannibalise them”. This is a fair point, and while in many cases QCP has helped eBay make commissions competitive across a much broader spectrum of verticals, some advertisers will undoubtedly offer some higher CPA’s. There are a few things to bear in mind though; firstly while CPA’s may appear to be more attractive on other advertisers programmes if you factor in metrics like click through rate (CTR%) and conversion rate (CR%) more often than not eBay converts at a higher rate, bringing the overall earnings in line with the higher CPA programmes.

eBay has its place as a viable revenue stream in almost any retail affiliate campaign, it is just a case of finding the balance on where to fit it in. If you are cautious about cannibalisation, start at a low level and use eBay to monetise areas of your site that are devoid of viable revenue streams. For review sites this is a great place to start as they often have a huge archive of content written about discontinued products that are no longer available to buy new. eBay can fill that gap and give a good base EPC for rolling listings out onto newer product pages where the advertiser revenues are more competitive.

I have worked with a number of publishers who have added eBay to some of their price comparison listings, initially sceptical about the negative impact it would have on the revenue from other merchants. In most cases there was no significant decline, or certainly not enough to outweigh the additional commissions generated from eBay. If you have some established campaigns why not add eBay and maximise your revenue.

advice · eBay Partner Network · user experience