Affiliate Marketing Forum

AllanGardyne

eBay has announced that its top affiliate earned more than $1,000,000 in December '03 commissions and over $1,300,000 in January '04 commissions.

"eBay has made several of our affiliates millionaires, but never before in a single month!" eBay says in an announcement to its affiliates.

High commissions are not confined to just one or two affiliates.

eBay's top 25 affiliates average over $100,000 each month ? well over $1.2 million in annual earnings, eBay says.

The top 100 affiliates earn almost $25,000 each month ? that's nearly $300,000 each year.

How are eBay affiliates generating their commissions?

Some are doing it by playing games with the search engines.

According to a press release by Phillip Davies -
http://www.emediawire.com/releases/2004/2/emw104395.htm - many eBay affiliates are repackaging eBay content and flooding search results with millions of old and duplicate eBay listings.

The AuctionBytes forum discusses what it calls "Spoogling", the sport of finding eBay spam on Google:
http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=8272

The affiliate spammers are upsetting dealers in collectibles and antiques who are trying to sell things on eBay.

eBay didn't say in its announcement who its millionaire affiliates are, and so there's no way of knowing if any of them are involved in the search engine spam.

Allan Gardyne

Web sites that work. See the overwhelming proof...
http://www.AssociatePrograms.com/results

thepoolroom · Joined: 11 Dec 2003 Posts: 89 Location: Australia

I see Adwords ads for eBay on nearly every search I make nowadays. So that's probably one way they're getting lots of clicks.
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Bobby · Joined: 12 Jul 2003 Posts: 764

Bobby · Joined: 12 Jul 2003 Posts: 764

Here's a site that is listed in the auctionbytes thread as being a "problem" site.

But if you look at the site, it appears the affiliate has simply followed a lot of the affiliate techniques promoted in various ebooks and set up a site using eBay's affiliate program offerings.

http://www.igamegrab.com/p105-19251-disney-winnie-the-pooh-piglet-coat-hat-rack.html

Bobby

petertdavis · Joined: 10 Oct 2003 Posts: 91 Location: New England

Bobby · Joined: 12 Jul 2003 Posts: 764

Here's another interesting post from that thread.

Go to page 6 of that thread, I believe this link will work - http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=8272&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=75

Scroll down to the 2-12-04 post by abesilverman

He complains of a site that comes up in Google search results when the name of his business is the search term.

Isn't the owner of that site an eBay affiliate who is sending traffic to abesilverman's store...and doesn't more traffic mean more sales for abesilverman?

Isn't the site content generated by ebay's affiliate program rather than content that has been illegally copied by the site owner?

What am I missing?

If I'm selling widgets on eBay and on my own website, and there are people out there (eBay affiliates) who want to send traffic to my eBay listings, I'm going to do two things:

1. I'm going to list a lot of widgets on eBay to take advantage of the traffic other people are generating

2. I'm going to consider setting up an affiliate program for my widget sales website in hopes of finding people who want to send traffic to my website

Isn't this the basic purpose of affiliate programs - to have others generate traffic for your products/services and then reward them for their efforts so you can concentrate on running the business rather than attracting customers?

Again, what am I missing?

Bobby

Bobby · Joined: 12 Jul 2003 Posts: 764

Bobby · Joined: 12 Jul 2003 Posts: 764

This won't make any sense if this page is dynamic, but take a look at the page - http://www.mainseek.com/S231-Real-Estate-Other-Real-Estate.html

Are those three "ads" at the top AdSense ads or just ads that resemble AdSense ads?

Bobby

Debs · Joined: 16 Aug 2003 Posts: 4296 Location: NY

They just resemble Adsense ... there isn't an "Ads by Google" showing.

Debs
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thepoolroom · Joined: 11 Dec 2003 Posts: 89 Location: Australia

Don't forget, $1m in commission earnings isn't the same as $1m in profits! These people may have spent $990,000 buying traffic to earn $10,000 profit.

Still, the numbers are impressive!
_________________
http://www.OneStopUnder.com - serious reading for serious photographers.

Bobby · Joined: 12 Jul 2003 Posts: 764

Bobby · Joined: 12 Jul 2003 Posts: 764

And there appears to be some strange keyword combinations at the bottom of the page -

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Words similar to Other Real Estate -actinotherapy aerothermodynamics aluminothermy apothecary apothecial apothecium apothegm apothegmatic apothem apotheoses apotheosis apotheosise apotheosize backcloth basotho bedclothes behemoth behemothic behemoths bibliotheca
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

What's that about?

Bobby

stevencortez · Joined: 10 Dec 2003 Posts: 6

True. thepoolroom got a point... I had my eyes wide open reading that post! It's probably not profit.

AllanGardyne · Last edited by AllanGardyne on Mon Feb 16, 2004 1:43 am; edited 1 time in total

Yaron · Joined: 13 Nov 2003 Posts: 195 Location: New York City

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