Scott Fillmer » ebay

eBay Partner Network Affiliate Replaces CJ

Scott's Misc — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 12:45:20 +0000

Today eBay announced the official opening of the eBay Partner Network (or EPN) which, in 30 days no less, will replace Commission Junction as the sole affiliate program for eBay.

For those casual users of the eBay affiliate program, the email this morning might come as a bit of a surprise but they have been working on this for some time, and promise to have a better reporting and functionality, although I have been very happy with Commission Junction for many years now.

The news didn’t go unnoticed by those in the blogging world where you could find several posts this morning like eBay Partner Network now live by Sue from Tamebay, eBay Dumps Commission Junction from Net Profits, a good discussion from Shoemoney in eBay Affiliate Program FINALLY Drops the CJ Dead Weight, and several others. For those working with the eBay affiliate program in one way or another, this is big news.

What is an Affiliate?

If you are unfamiliar with how affiliates work, it is a simple concept that has been around for quite some time. A company offers an affiliate partner (the user) an incentive of some kind, usually money, to promote their company. At this point almost all companies do this in one form or another, and even small ecommerce sites can setup affiliates for their customer. I am both an affiliate partner and an affiliate provider through one of our small ecommerce sites.

You can even see this on non-eccommerce site and large B&M companies. DirectTV has offered $50 to anyone who gets a friend to sign up for a new satellite TV account for a long time, this is just a simple affiliate offering that can be done by anyone who has a friend who needs their service.

How Much Does an Affiliate Pay?

This is always the question. How much can I actually make using something like this. The answer is just about as much as you are willing to put into building your affiliate network. For most of us, we don’t have a 40 hour work week we can devote to an affiliate program, so we use it where we can, when we can.

I have posted my most recent report below, so you can see it isn’t much. We current run about $100 a month on the eBay affiliate program but it doesn’t take much effort to produce results like that below. We have made as much as $500-$600 a month and as little as nothing. It all depends on how much work you want to put into the program.

If you have time, and minor programming skills, there are many people that make a nice living with all the various affiliate networks. Like anything else it can take quite a bit of time to initially set up, but once set up, it can run and produce some nice revenue without much effort or maintenance.

Using an Affiliate Program With eCommerce

It works very similar to an ad network like Google Adwords except without the ads. It can also be perceived by your customers and visitors as an unwelcome way to use them to receive a payment for something. So if you use it on an ecommerce site you should keep a few things in mind.

Don’t let it take away from direct sales
Don’t let it effect your customers perception of your good business practices
Use it sparingly in areas of your website that need some filler
Make sure you are familiar with the TOS of the network
Have real expectations about revenue, and plan accordingly
Know the effect on customer service and be willing to change

As with anything else you do on your website, make sure that the benefit you receive for using something is worth doing. I know many sites that use Google Adwords in various places and receive little or nothing in return. If you are making $1.00 a month on a banner ad on your header, perhaps a $25 ad sold to a supplier might be a better use of that space.

This section could be expanded to pages and pages as there are several issues involved with using an affiliate program and an ecommerce site you earn a living from, so proceed with an ounce of caution when adjusting a shopping cart platform. The customers that buy from your site daily are far more important than an affiliate program, so make sure they are happy first.

eBay’s Affiliate Program

I have been a part of this program for probably 5-8 years now, and they have always used Commission Junction. Thank goodness for us, the migration over to eBay’s platform will not be a huge expenditure of time, but it will take some re-coding and apparently, it needs to be done by May 1st.

There is already someone in the forums who seems to have been denied an account but it does seem to be operating on an automatic basis as far as the sign up process goes. I simply filled out the forms on the sign up sheet, received an activation email, then you will have to go back to the site and enter your payment information to be paid. I did try to move a few of my applications over and they were not completed on eBay’s end yet, they said… coming soon… so hopefully they will be fixed quickly. Then comes the fun part, moving all your affiliate links over to eBay program instead of Commission Junction.

The Google Effect

I thought I would mention this in passing as well. I few weeks ago, Google also announced a change in the way their advertisers can use their URL structure for ads. This was, I think, an attempt to keep affiliates that mislead customers but it had to have a huge effect on the affiliate programs in total.

Important Change to URL Policy Enforcement
Starting in April, display URLs for new ads will be required to match their destination / landing page URLs, without exception. Please adjust your URLs accordingly when creating new ads. -google

You can now no longer display a url and have the link url go to a different place. This technique was used for good purposes by many people but also used to trick people into thinking they were an official advertiser for that particular display url company.

Conclusion

It does look like the new EPN will be good once all the work is completed on eBay’s end, and on the providers end. The report functionality looks great, and the process seems to be a little more straight forward than before. It was always a semi-confusing process to a newbie, but many things are until you learn the in’s and out’s.

Have you moved your links over yet or joined the new EPN?

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How Buyers Can Suspend or Cancel Amazon Marketplace Seller Accounts in 5 Easy Steps

Scott's Misc — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 15:00:33 +0000

If you work or sell anything on the Internet long enough you will come into contact with all kinds of people and personalities you may never run across in the course of your daily routine. This of course is not always a bad thing, most of the time you can meet and interact with so many more people than you ever could in person, but every once in a while you will come across that individual that makes you think how far can they actually take this. And the answer can quickly become very obvious, about as far as they want to, and usually way farther than you would want them to as well.

I have sold different products and services on the Internet now since about 1993, so I have run into my share of not so pleased customers or buyers that no matter what you do or say they are pre-determined to be displeased. I think I could write a book on it, but another article that comes to mind that I will write soon is called The Customer is NOT Always Right, but I will leave that for another post.

The Customer is Not Always Right… Really

Well, this is an old saying, but buyers can go to far. The Internet allows people to say and do things they would never do face to face, even though there really is a real human behind the screen, sometimes buyers (customers) can use the Internet to take advantage of the systems in place. There is a difference between good customer service and common sense, and you have to weigh the effects of each situation. I really don’t think the customer is always right, but a company should still live by that adage as best they can. When you can’t, minimize any negative effects that might occur and move on.

Recently I came across one of those buyers on Amazon that just would not be happy no matter what we did. He ordered a book from us, we shipped it to him within 24 hours, and he received it very quickly. It was then he determined that he wanted the book to be a hardcover (even though a printing in the same edition and publication year did not exist). It was not a gift or anything, just for personal reading, same words, same everything, just a paperback copy. After explaining that a hardcover didn’t exist he demanded a full refund, and wanted to keep the book.

That is the point at which I should have just said, ok, keep my book, here is your money back, can I do anything else for you?

The customer is always right
Re-read my step 1

I Guess the Customer is Always Right After All

If I took my own advice here I wouldn’t have anything to write about, so if you don’t do step 1 above, learn something from the mistake. In the end, because of the way Amazon is setup to deal with their Marketplace sellers, I had to refund the book price and the shipping anyway, and had no means to get the book back other than just to ask the buyer to return it, which he refused.

This buyer did threaten me with the standard I will file a claim and leave negative feedback thing, neither of which I wanted over a sale like this, but it did cause me to dig into this customer service cause and effect a little deeper than I had in the past. When pushed by a dumb seller, how far could a bad or unethical buyer take it to an Amazon Marketplace seller if they so desired? As far as they want.

Is Being Right Worth Your Amazon Marketplace Account

I guess you could win the battle and loose the war pretty easily here. After knowing how far a buyer could go, I might re-evaluate how right I really was here. If I had to choose between my single book and my seller account, I would probably have refunded the guy twice what he paid for the book. In a recent blog post, 10 Steps to a 7 Figure Income From Your Site, number 5 on the list is of course, The customer IS always right. If you are in business for any length of time you will soon learn that the liability all rests on the business, and whatever the problem is, it probably isn’t worth it in the long run. The screen shot below was from a canceled account from just 4 feedbacks, it doesn’t take much sometimes.

The steps I will outline below did not happen in this case, of course, it is just the scenario I found with not to much trouble, and I know I can learn something from it. After I tried to explain to him that he was indeed wrong, I promptly emailed him back to say how unprofessional I was and if I could do anything else to let me know. As of this writing that is as far as it went.

How an Unethical Person Can Get Your Account Canceled

Noticed I have now changed to person and not customer or buyer. I really think that there is a line, usually that is the line of law, that once crossed, the individual is no longer considered a customer or buyer, and should not be treated as such. It is nothing more than simplistic fraud, and not even very smart, but, who ever said common sense prevails. If you have someone that has it in for you, especially over the Internet, they may not stop until you are down and out.

I hesitated to list these steps in the first place but did so because I found them (1) readily available on the forums, (2) something anyone could really figure out anyway, and (3) something I (we) can learn from the next time there is an unruly customer. Good customer service should be the key.

There Are Three Ratings So There are Three Steps

A little background on Amazon’s policies. Amazon has a Seller Performance Measurement plan that shows what they expect from their sellers. For the most part there are three different areas Amazon looks at, the seller’s Feedback, A-to-z Guarantee Claim Rate, and Media Refund Rate. Each of these figures need to be below a certain rate to remain in good standing. Knowing these, it is just a matter of doing the math.

1. Look at Seller’s Feedback, Times 10%

If a seller has a feedback rating that is 100% and 100 feedbacks in the last 30 days, 10% of that is 10 feedbacks. The total negative feedbacks allowed by Amazon is 5%, or in this case 5 negative feedbacks over the 30 day period. A buyer only needs to buy 10 books or 10 products and then they can immediately leave 10 negative feedbacks, well above the limit.

2. File A-to-Z Guarantee Claims

The number of claims against the seller can only be 0.5% of the orders received. The above 10 purchases would all need to be filed as a claim against the seller. This can’t be done immediately, there is a minimum time limit allowed to receive the item before they can file a claim against the seller, and if the next step is taken first then it doesn’t come to the A-to-Z claim.

3. Request Refunds Through Media Refund

A buyer can do one of the two last steps to be effective. If the buyer doesn’t want to wait to file the claim they could bully the seller into issuing the refunds. If the seller refunds all 10 products in the example above it would far exceed the 5% allowed by Amazon. Of course the seller doesn’t have to refund the orders, they can wait until the claims are filed.

The seller may also find out what the person is doing and refuse to ship the product, and in this case, the seller will need to refund the orders as well. Amazon gives you 24-48 hours to ship or refund the order in question, all of which will not be good for the seller.

Seller’s Can Take Standard Precautions

There are of course a lot of variables here. One being that Amazon will actually take action against the buyer and actually look at the situation and understand a good seller from a bad one. Another would be that the seller could follow some standard practices that might help their case and protect them from this kind of fraud.

Sellers should always ship their orders with a tracking number
Ship orders within the alloted time
Respond to all emails as quickly as possible
Keep in mind, you never know who you are talking to or where it could lead, good or bad
Make professional acquaintances that you can talk to about problem customers
Do your research first. Groups and forums are a great asset, your problem is most likely not unique
Remember step 1 above and bite your tongue

This situation outlined above would be a perfect storm situation in reality. I did find a few sellers that had some of these problems but not many. It takes a buyer that is willing to go to these extremes and actually spend their own money, Amazon would have to be totally oblivious to the buyers activities (which I doubt they are), and you would have to have some pre-existing issue or issues with one of your ratings.

My experience selling on eBay and some other channels tells me this isn’t really exclusive to Amazon. Usually when a seller account is suspended or canceled there are at least some underlying reasons that the seller or company usually omits or slants, it is just natural, and we can never really know what information the Trust and Saftey or Alliance teams have gathered to make their decision.

It does happen though, and any selling channel company that tells you it can never happen doesn’t know what they are talking about, in my opinion. A recent post about Google, Get ANY Adsense Account Banned, spelled out a similar scenario, and eBay is probably the biggest and easiest target of all. Each sales channel has its own weaknesses that customers can abuse and exploit. What is important to remember as a company or seller is that we can probably stop most problems before they become something bigger ourselves by just good old customer service.

Update, April 4th

Ironically, that is how it ended for us on Amazon as Amazon Marketplace Sellers. The email screenshot at the top was the actual email we received after a quick string of bad buyers (click the image to see the entire email). We were able to give no explanation, no time was allowed to correct what the “buyer” complained about, and no grace period or way to get back in as Amazon Marketplace Sellers. One email and we were out and our business was gone. I knew it would eventually happen, and it did take a few years for something like that to catch up to us, but in the end I knew it was only a matter of time. We spent many good years on eBay and many good years selling on Amazon and learned a lot about selling online (see We are No Longer Amazon Marketplace Sellers).