Ebay ditches Commission Junction

18. Mar 2008 | 13 Comments

Ebay Partner Network

If you’re familiar with the Ebay affiliate program you’ll also be very familiar with Commission Junction. These two have gone hand in hand with each other like Strawberry’s & Cream for as long as I can remember. The program has also been a very very consistent earner for me over the years.

But in a move that really didn’t take me by surprise, Ebay have decided now to take the Affiliate Management & Reporting in house with the creation of the Ebay Partner Network, a global affiliate management network encompassing all of the Ebay sites into one manageable interface:

Easy global registration to multiple countries simultaneously
New, targeted banners and rich media creatives
New landing page optimization and geo-targeting capabilities
More detailed reporting capabilities for eBay’s programs

Now you’ll be able to promote every Ebay localisation without having to go through the sign up process for each, which will allow for much more diversification in who you target & also allow you to Geo Target regions you may not have been able to before. The network also takes out the middleman when it comes to support & affiliate issues.

I’m keen to see the new reporting features, as the current ones provided over at CJ are extremely limited, unless you download the daily report via .csv. I’m also interested to see if they provide Geo Targeted ad blocks (similar to what Auctionads was doing).

My heart goes out to Commission Junction, I can’t imagine how much of a hit losing Ebay will have on their bottom line, but the move makes sense. eBay’s Tradera AB, ProStores, Inc, Reseller Marketplace, Media Marketplace, eBay Stores & StubHub will however continue with CJ as normal so all is not lost.

The network opens on April 1st 2008 & all links must be migrated over by May 1st 2008. If you migrate over in April you’ll get a 5% bonus to all traffic for that month only.I’ll report more info when I get it & expect a full review of the new interface & reporting when I get access.

Enjoy this post? Get the RSS Feed

13 Comments on "Ebay ditches Commission Junction"

Geoff 18. Mar 2008, 1:53 pm

Now the big question…how does this affect the thousands of BANS and phpBay sites we have all built?

Stuart 18. Mar 2008, 2:23 pm

Thousands? you’ve been busy

I imagine that everything should be able to switch over quite seamlessly. Don’t forget there’s a months grace for the developers of the two plugins to make any changes.

If anything I reckon it could open up more possibilities like showing listings in PHPbaypro based on where the user is based would equal heaps more conversions.

James Mann 18. Mar 2008, 8:30 pm

The first thing I did when I got that email telling me about the ebay affiliate program moving to eBay was to break into a cold sweat and went to get another coffee.

I love BANS and have only just begun to build a small empire and thoughts of it all crumbling had me for a few minutes.

After I was done with the negative thoughts and that extra coffee I started looking deeper and think it’s going to be a great move.

I don’t have thousands of BANS sites but I do have 6 and that’s income I don’t want to see stop. I’m having too much fun.

SelfMadeDude 19. Mar 2008, 2:02 am

I have only just started researching the possibilities here, looks like I may be getting into this at the right time.

Ed 19. Mar 2008, 5:57 am

That was the first thing I thought of as well – but I think it’s more like the millions of one off links out there that will cost e-bay the most.

I’m sure commission junction will redirect it all so THEY get the credit.

I almost wish they would run them in tandem for a good bit longer. A month isn’t that long in terms of updating your sites when you have a lot of them.

Just messing with my bans sites is going to be enough of a headache.

Kevin 20. Mar 2008, 5:06 pm

As soon as I got that email about eBay moving away from CJ I sent an email out to Wess at phpBay. He told me not to worry, that he’d be making an update to phpBay as soon as the new linking ID procedure was released. He told me not to worry, as it would be a minor change.

So don’t fear if you’ve got phpBay sites!

Ryan 21. Mar 2008, 11:04 am

Sad to see them leave CJ, but at the same time I can’t wait. Being able to target any country (hopefully easily) and the new reporting features will be amazing, maybe now I can finally see what I actually sold.

Also, I don’t think it would be that hard for the makers of BANS or phpBay to update to the new affiliate links, it probably won’t be that big of a deal even if you have multiple sites.

I’d be more interested in how BANS and phpBay will handle or take advantage of all the new features like Geo Targeting, etc., but there’s always patches, plugins or the next version.

Bargain Discount Shopping 24. Mar 2008, 10:37 pm

About time, CJ are not very good, clunky interface, non-payments, no contact, need I go on?!

Vista Sidebar Gadgets 25. Mar 2008, 9:13 pm

It’s about time. The big boys should get out of the Aff Networks if you ask me. Bigger payouts, usually better service as well. Leave the Aff networks for the smaller companies.

Now, does anyone here know of a software to track conversions and stats accross multiple Aff Networks/Offers?

I currently subscribe to:
AzoogleAds
NeverblueAds
CJ
Amazon
eBay
ShareaSale
Linkshare

and many more. It’s a pain trying to get my stats.

Jason Swan 02. Apr 2008, 11:08 am

Hey guys, I had just switched to ebay partner network today and I wrote a small patch for phpBay pro 2.1 to add support for the new network , if you don’t want to spend $50 on a new phpbay, you can purchase the patch on eBay here

Thank you guys, good luck!

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=160225556699

chris 09. Apr 2008, 8:47 pm

If you are looking for an easy way to implement eBay’s affiliate program on your site, try ZinText. All you need is a website and a campaign ID from eBay’s Partner Network, copy and paste the code onto your website, and watch the clicks roll in.

Check it out:

http://www.zintext.com

Millionaire Mindset 29. Apr 2008, 5:24 pm

E-Bay is doing their own affiliate program now… I never really worked with them on CJ, but I heard they had great success rates…

Affiliate Marketer 22. Nov 2008, 8:01 pm

To be honest it is a bit of a pain and all but I have to say that commission junction is not that great, or at least that I find. I have failed to get payments where I should have, they offer very lousy support, and i got mail the one day saying that cj was being sued for certain practices they were committing so all in all im glad ebay made the move.