Confused about Ebay Affiliate Commissions

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turbolapp

turbolapp

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Aug 10, 2007
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I'm looking at my EPN Stats and trying to get a handle on them. The obvious ones are the 25.00 ones. But here's what I'm trying to figure out. Lets say I have an ebay site selling airplanes. These are big items. (real jets, not toy airplanes) Yet when I look at my stats I see Airplane campaign: 3.99. Wtf? The only thing I can figure is they went through my airplane site and decided once they got to ebay is to buy a book or something hence the fee.

Another question is I know my cookie can replace other affiliates cookies. So lets say they are bidding on socks (before landing on my site) or something and the auction takes 5 days and on the fifth day they happen to click on my site for airplanes and just looked around....and then they won the sock auction do I get that commission cause my cookie was the last one? That would also explain the random 3.99 commission from my airplane site.
 


turbolapp said:
Another question is I know my cookie can replace other affiliates cookies. So lets say they are bidding on socks (before landing on my site) or something and the auction takes 5 days and on the fifth day they happen to click on my site for airplanes and just looked around....and then they won the sock auction do I get that commission cause my cookie was the last one? That would also explain the random 3.99 commission from my airplane site.
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No, the data from the user making the bid is recorded on the cookie at the time of the bid, should it be the winning one. On the other hand, if He had someone else's cookie... Bid on something... Hit your page, and then got outbid... Say he ups his bid, but now with your cookie on his machine. You would get the commission.

As far as people purchasing something different than you expect.
People search the web for a lot of shit, same thing with ebay.
Any one of the people you get earnings off of, probably buy more than the specifc item you are promoting.
 
Apparently you are sending traffic to ebay motors. Now, the listings for ebay motors are from 5-40$. Your commission is based on that, you do not get a commission from the 1.2 million sale...

Have you checked exactly how much its costs to list a plane for auction at ebay motors?

Motors is a great way to make money, even better than the normal ebay. Due to the high listing prices, commissions are juicy.
 
glowleaf said:
Apparently you are sending traffic to ebay motors. Now, the listings for ebay motors are from 5-40$. Your commission is based on that, you do not get a commission from the 1.2 million sale...

Have you checked exactly how much its costs to list a plane for auction at ebay motors?

Motors is a great way to make money, even better than the normal ebay. Due to the high listing prices, commissions are juicy.
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I knew that about ebay motors the fees (being different than the other fees) They are up to 90 dollars which you make about 50% of that. Hence wondering what the 3.99 is. They really should tell you what you made a commission off of, IMHO.
 
Hey turbo I don't know about ebay motors but if you run a report for transactions it will give you the item number of what you got the commission for.. You then just place that item number into ebay search and bam you are looking at the item. If run the report in excel it will by default show the item number strangely you have change the properties on that cell.. or just run the report as a text document and not worry about it. Not sure if that rule applies with ebay motors or not just trying to help.
 
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turbolapp said:
I'm looking at my EPN Stats and trying to get a handle on them. The obvious ones are the 25.00 ones. But here's what I'm trying to figure out. Lets say I have an ebay site selling airplanes. These are big items. (real jets, not toy airplanes) Yet when I look at my stats I see Airplane campaign: 3.99. Wtf? The only thing I can figure is they went through my airplane site and decided once they got to ebay is to buy a book or something hence the fee.

Another question is I know my cookie can replace other affiliates cookies. So lets say they are bidding on socks (before landing on my site) or something and the auction takes 5 days and on the fifth day they happen to click on my site for airplanes and just looked around....and then they won the sock auction do I get that commission cause my cookie was the last one? That would also explain the random 3.99 commission from my airplane site.
Click to expand...


I get that shit all the time. My McJiffy test site has a bunch of $500-$5000 triathlon bikes on it and I still get the little $1.20 and $4.40 commissions.

I do like the $25 commissions and I occasionally get a $10 sale, but as of now, my Ebay affiliate days are numbered. Just too expensive to drive PPC for what they pay, and their reports are absolute dogshit.
 
It's crazy to see what people buy and how much they buy. Last week this guy came thru my site and then for the next 5 days bought a different bottle of wine. Each ranging from $50 to $250 so its cool to have that 7 day cookie because people that buy a lot of ebay make you some decent money.
 
doug102938 said:
Hey turbo I don't know about ebay motors but if you run a report for transactions it will give you the item number of what you got the commission for.. You then just place that item number into ebay search and bam you are looking at the item. If run the report in excel it will by default show the item number strangely you have change the properties on that cell.. or just run the report as a text document and not worry about it. Not sure if that rule applies with ebay motors or not just trying to help.
Click to expand...


Awesome, I had no idea you could get transactions.

+rep
 
bb_wolfe said:
I do like the $25 commissions and I occasionally get a $10 sale, but as of now, my Ebay affiliate days are numbered. Just too expensive to drive PPC for what they pay, and their reports are absolute dogshit.
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Dude, SEO all the way here's a tip pick a domain that is the keyword(s) that you want and the things you are trying to sell. It should get indexed pretty fast. It has worked out pretty well with me I get about a $1.50 EPC on a few of my zero promotion only PHP bay sites. It's all about the domain name you pick. With my PPC sites I only get $.17 EPC. Granted my zero promotion sites don't get as much traffic as my PPC sites do. But getting money for doing nothing is awesome.
 
Cut said:
Dude, SEO all the way here's a tip pick a domain that is the keyword(s) that you want and the things you are trying to sell. It should get indexed pretty fast. It has worked out pretty well with me I get about a $1.50 EPC on a few of my zero promotion only PHP bay sites. It's all about the domain name you pick. With my PPC sites I only get $.17 EPC. Granted my zero promotion sites don't get as much traffic as my PPC sites do. But getting money for doing nothing is awesome.
Click to expand...

True, PPC is a waste when it comes to phpbay sites. Thats the beauty of em, once they're setup, it's income with no upkeep. Can't beat that!
 
Cut said:
Dude, SEO all the way here's a tip pick a domain that is the keyword(s) that you want and the things you are trying to sell. It should get indexed pretty fast. It has worked out pretty well with me I get about a $1.50 EPC on a few of my zero promotion only PHP bay sites. It's all about the domain name you pick. With my PPC sites I only get $.17 EPC. Granted my zero promotion sites don't get as much traffic as my PPC sites do. But getting money for doing nothing is awesome.
Click to expand...

I know, you're 1000% correct. I was just hoping to brute force some sales and it kicked my ass.

$260 spend ended yesterday, $49 in commissions so far. Will give it until July 6th to really know how much commissions I ended up with.

The kicker is I just threw out a barely modified McJiffy site and let it ride.

I'm going to develop it over the weekend/next week and really try to hit the organics over 3Q08.

I did get 1100 clickthroughs in11 days with my PPC campaign, so the test showed me a lot.
 
I used cubics for a little bit for one of my sites. I had 10 cent clicks with a .15 epc on that site. But since I couldn't track the difference between the organic traffic and the paid traffic I stopped using them. Cubics interface sucks, but I did have a high CTR from my site to EPN. So IDK I think PPC only works if the traffic is cheap and targeted.
 
stack paper said:
True, PPC is a waste when it comes to phpbay sites. Thats the beauty of em, once they're setup, it's income with no upkeep. Can't beat that!
Click to expand...

Bingo. I've had a few organic phpay sites and they're starting to get the targetted keyword searches so I see the potential. I would like to scale it to a 100 sites that each make about 100 a month and then I'll be set in that AM capacity. I really need to get my ass in gear and think ahead to the holiday season. If I do it now and get indexed and established keywords, I could be all set to bank when the holidays roll around.

But yeah ebay needs to get their shit together with their damn reporting...I mean for christsakes it's ebay!!
 
doug102938 said:
Hey turbo I don't know about ebay motors but if you run a report for transactions it will give you the item number of what you got the commission for.. You then just place that item number into ebay search and bam you are looking at the item. If run the report in excel it will by default show the item number strangely you have change the properties on that cell.. or just run the report as a text document and not worry about it. Not sure if that rule applies with ebay motors or not just trying to help.
Click to expand...


I downloaded the transaction reports but when I entered the number into the search feature it said no results found ( It did this for all the numbers) I must be searching in the wrong area? Is there an advanced search I need to do?
 
From the EPN main screen go to reports then transaction download.

Select the start date. Then select download text file.

The item number is the lower of the two numbers. It is the 12 digit one on the same line as 'RSS Generator'.

Simply paste that number into the search box on the main eBay page and it will show you the item sold. No need to do any advanced search.
 
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doug102938 said:
...If run the report in excel it will by default show the item number strangely...
Click to expand...

It's called scientific notation. Just select the column, right click and choose Format Cell, then select "Number" and uncheck the box for commas and set decimal points to zero.

In my experience, phpBay sites are great but too time consuming to get perfectly targetted to work with PPC. The biggest problem is the damn auction titles. Stupid sellers typing in all CAPITALS and throwing in "NO Reserve!!!!1!" and crap like that. Word of advice: Clean those titles up and remove the extra crap in the template. And a simple filter to the phpBay code to remove those unwanted phrases in the title, then convert the title to title case to fix the all lower case or all upper case titles. Drop the "End Date", "Bid Now" and "Buy Now" links... just leave the title as a link to the auction or make another link that says "More info..." or something like that.

Another tip... Add a link at the end of the listings that says something like "Next Page >>" and links to some eBay search results with the same filter you were using on your site. Remember... you don't really care where the user finds what they buys... just that they click into eBay at some point.
 
aahh yes I see it now. That's really handy. It also answers my initial question. Thanks guys, this was helpful.
 
The plugin code you just mentioned to fix the auction titles has been posted on rgordons blog: Make your phpBay auction titles look more professional | phpBay Tips

Random thought...
So if the cookies are set whenever a ebay user clicks onto the site from your page...
More revenue could be brought in by inserting your page in their everyday browsing. Finding links on powerselling or buying communities and forums would be the fastest way to jump the profits on these sites.
 
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