Ebay Affiliate Program Versus Amazon Affiliate Program
I've been promoting the eBay affiliate program for the last year with a fair amount of success. I have some sites that I threw up a few eBay affiliate links and average an extra $1,000 a month in income with no direct advertising costs.
A few weeks ago, I decided to create a site that was monetized exclusively with eBay affiliate links. I spent $270 in Google Adwords and made a whopping $18 from the eBay affiliate program. Wow! It doesn't get much worse than that.
In all fairness, the page I setup took every bit of 15 minutes and from a design perspective sucked. There were plenty of things I could have done to improve the ROI, but the hole was already so deep, I decided not to try.
I wrote about the entire experience here.
http://www.brentcrouch.com/2007/09/03/turn-270-into-18-with-the-ebay-affiliate-program/
I've never really done much with Amazon's affiliate program, but was curious how it would compare to eBay's program. For my test, I made sure everything was the same. I used the same page and same ads. Instead of linking to eBay, I linked all the products to Amazon. The results were even worse!
For my $300 spent on adwords, I got $0...ZERO, NADA!!! dollars in commissions from Amazon. How could this be the case? The explanation is pretty simple.
When one of your visitors clicks one of your eBay affiliate links, eBay places a cookie on your visitors computer. If that computer is used to make a purchase from eBay within the next 90 days, you get a commission from the sale. To this day, I am still getting a few dollars a week in commissions from the test I ran a few weeks ago. So the initial $18 I reported in commissions is actually up to $30.
Amazon doesn't work that way. When one of your visitors clicks one of your Amazon affiliate links, you don't have 90 days to make a commission. In order to make a commission, your visitor has to make a purchase right away. As soon as they shut their browser, your commission is gone!
As a buyer, I prefer Amazon every day of the week. As an affiliate marketer, eBay is by far the best alternative.
try this the advertising is low cost and it works browse ebay for a product that you would like to promote and when you find a particulier product search for it locally.
after you pick a product that is up for auction or buy it now copy the the address from the address bar then go to the ebay affiliate page and click tools.
after that create a flexible destination tool link paste it in and generate your link.
lets say you choose a 83 camaro with power stering power brakes cruiuse cloth seats air etc.
your next step would be to buy a domain something that relates to the product it self.
then forward it to your affiliate link and advertise it where you live in news papers on telephone poles or word of mouth and if someone buys it bam you just made a huge commission.
and if they dont buy it you still make a commission if they buy elsewhere on ebay and a possible $25.00 for a new acru if they diden’t already have an account after the auction ends just leave it there and they may click through ebay from there or search the sellers other items or cash park it afterwards.
Hi Saturday Fishin,
That is really a good idea. My guess is the key is finding good and affordable newspapers to advertise in.
I tried newspaper advertising for one of my sites. For a $75 thrifty nickel ad I managed to get about 4 clicks and no sales. But that poor results probably was the result of a bad ad.
Brent Crouch