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Affiliate Ebay Home Business Program Change
eBay recently launched a new affiliate program replacing the seven-year-old program it has had with ValueClick's Commission Junction platform. Called the eBay Partner Network, this affiliate program will be managed in-house incorporating all of eBay's global properties. It will go live on April 1, 2008 and for those who are apart of this Affiliate Ebay home business program will need to make the switch by May 1, 2008. eBay has spent the past 18 months investing in improving its infrastructure and making changes and upgrades to its back end and technology. As a result, eBay has improved the integration of data analytics and search functions. This is part of the company's desire to bring its marketing data in-house, reports Will Martin-Gill, senior manager of Internet marketing. As the head of business development for affiliate marketing at eBay, Martin-Gill stated that "We're starting to take a closer look at the touch points we have with buyers and customers." With the rollout of a new, improved eBay and Half.com platform, they won't have to run their affiliate programs through third-party vendor, Commission Junction. Properties owned by eBay including Reseller Marketpalce, Trader AB, ProStores, Media Marketplace, StubHub and eBay Stores will not be affected by this new platform. They will continue to work through Commission Junction. eBay's current affiliate network is about 100,000 strong globally with about 60,000 members in the United States. Martin-Gill stated that the affiliate network provides a "significant" level of business to eBay; however, he declined to give specifics. He did state that eBay has been expanding the internal team structure, and will have adequate support staff available to deal with affiliate questions and concerns prior to the program's launch. A number of commerce-related web content sites on the Internet are utilizing a variety of tactics including banner ads and paid searches in an effort to monetize their websites. Martin-Gill said that he hopes that some of these folks would consider giving eBay a try, adding that an affiliate link to eBay would be considered "value-added" versus traditional advertising for the website visitor.
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