Say ‘Affiliate Marketing’ to the average online marketer and they’ll immediately think of Clickbank and Commission
Junction. It’s not surprising. Both companies have been around since 1999. Both companies boast publishers numbering in the thousands and affiliates in… the hundreds of thousands. Those who jump into affiliate marketing start out with Clickbank first. Then they stick with clickbank.
But there’s life outside Clickbank. And there’s more money to be made with an alternate affiliate network that can eclipse Clickbank earnings in no time. I refer to the Ebay Partner Network.
As we all know, ebay is that monster auction house about a decade old. They hold the monopoly in advertiser listing and visitor traffic. At any given day, you can expect about a million or so running auctions. Money changes hands in realtime as auctions close and winning bidders pay. Ebay is not content with the current growth and seeks to expand. To do this, Ebay mirrored the affiliate marketing networks and ported a powerful system into their business model. Now, affiliate marketers like you and I can promote ebay products- and take huge cuts out of closing auctions.
The ebaypartnernetwork, in a nutshell allows you to sign up and input code into your site. The code displays relevant auctions- listings that mirror the content of your web. Your visitors now enjoy not only your content, but also your relevant adsense ads, related clickbank products and now your ebay listings. Talk about multiple streams of possible revenue. A click on anything leads to cha-ching in the bank!
To earn from the Ebay Partner Network, you simply do the following:
- Sign up
- List Your Sites (if you have no sites, you won’t be approved)
- Choose whether to be paid via paypal or cheque
- Wait for approval
- Get approved
- Inject the code and wait for commissions
The ebay partner network has spawned dozens of creative monetization ideas. One which I recently stumbled across is the wordpress system first marketed at DigitalPoint called PhpBay. Originally released for free, the phpBay script allows WordPress owners to transform their blogs into fully functioning niche sites promoting ebay listings. Simply activate the code, insert into content pages, and voila, you have bag auctions on your fashion site or truck auctions on your trucking site. Visitors who love your content see the listings and itch to bid… after all, who can resist ebay prices? It costs $79 and I tell you- well worth it. I’ve begun to integrate this into some of the blogs I run.
A competing method to leverage the ebay niche marketing system is that which Everton mentioned earlier on called the Number 1 Way to Make Money online. Everton’s related post on making money online via ebay reveals to us just how powerful the new business model is and how we can profit from it building niche sites focusing on ebay listings. When you create niche sites using the Build a Niche Site method or the PhpBay method, you offer visitors tightly niched content that irresistibly goad your readers to the ebay listings. You also rank highly in search engines without Adwords advertising because your theme is tightly built around related keywords! If you ask me, I agree that niche sites focusing on a narrow set of ebay products can eliminate costly advertising but drive heavy buying traffic in less than a google update.
The benefit of adding ebay listings to yout site is that:
- You don’t maintain inventory.
- You simply integrate it into your content
- People associate your quality content with the listings.
- They buy!
Currently, I’ve actively began promoting fledgling sites with the ebay listings using Facebook and Twitter. In particular, I’m using the Twitter Friend Adder tool (it’s free! don’t buy Adders that cost $$$)to expand my twitter network so more people can enjoy the gospel of ebay marketing. It’s working. Quite a few people have purchased from my ebay listings. 
I expect ebay to cut me a paypal cheque sometime next month and I’m hoping it’d be at least $500. If things work out, I’ll weed out the anemic networks on my blogs such as Kontera.
Ebay has over 10,000,000 products. Are you ready to profit?
