In this eBay affiliate program review, you will read if this is a good affiliate program and how it really works. eBay is a popular marketplace with many types of products, so promoting some of these products and earning commissions sounds an interesting option. However, there are pros and cons as you will discover below.
Overview of The eBay Affiliate Program
eBay affiliate program allows the members of the marketplace to promote other people’s products. It is another feature that you can use to make money with eBay. It has many marketers that follow different business models. Some sellers use dropshipping business models while others sell their stuff.
As an affiliate program, it is quite similar to Amazon Associates and other affiliate programs of big marketplaces. These programs tend to have low commissions and good conversion rates. The same applies to eBay. Affiliate marketers like the reputation and the structure of the marketplace because it can generate sales easily.
The low commissions is a characteristic of the affiliate programs that sell physical products. However, eBay has a wide variety of products. First, you can find many physical products in different niches. There are many categories and subcategories. Each one of them can be the main niche of your website.
Also, there are digital products with similar listings. You can find auctions and listings of domain names, courses, websites, logos, online tools, and other categories of digital products. In my opinion, eBay is not the best option for affiliates that promote digital products, but you may find some good listings.
How To Become An eBay Affiliate
While most affiliate programs have no connection with the actual website, eBay requires an account before joining the affiliate programs. So, the first step is to create an account on eBay. If you are a buyer or a seller already, you don’t have to create a new one.
Then, you can go to the bottom of the website and click the option for the affiliates. If you can’t find it, you can search on Google for the eBay affiliate program or eBay Partner Network. In both cases, you will see a simple page with a video presentation for the program.
Once you click to apply for the program, you will need to fill in some contact details. It is a standard process for most affiliate programs. The only requirement is to have a website. They will review your website manually and approve it if everything is fine.
You need just a basic website with a few unique pages. If you don’t have a website yet, you can follow the training of Wealthy Affiliate. It will teach you how to get started with affiliate marketing and give you the tools to create a website that will get approved from most affiliate programs on the internet.
How Does It Work?
When you get approved for the eBay affiliate program, you can start getting your links and share it on your website or social media. Most eBay affiliates send traffic to the marketplace from their websites.
The program provides some tools that you can use to get your links. You can create links for social media, banners for the sidebar of your website, and the standard affiliate links.
Your job as an affiliate marketer is to send traffic to the marketplace from another platform. A good strategy is to create content relevant to the products you promote. Many affiliates earn a full-time income from this program alone, and there different claims around the internet.
Commissions and Payments
eBay has a unique commission system. The affiliates earn up to 70% of the revenue of eBay. Most products on the marketplace are listed by eBay sellers, and they give a commission to eBay up to 10%. This is the profit of eBay from each transaction.
Then, you earn up to 70% of these transactions, so it’s up to 7% per sale. For new buyers, the program doubles the commissions. We can agree that it does not sound great, but eBay’s good conversion rates can generate multiple sales without much traffic. Lastly, there are 24-hour cookies. After the first 24-hours, you don’t get credit for any sales.
Compared to other affiliate programs, the commissions are not good enough. Affiliate programs with digital products pay up to 75% per sale and have 60-day cookies. However, it will be harder to promote products from not so popular vendors. Every affiliate program has pros and cons, so you need to choose the best option for your business.
You can get paid from the program through PayPal or direct deposits. These options are enough for most affiliates, and the minimum cashout limit is $10.
Pros and Cons
Pros:
1. Big Brand: It is easier to promote big brands with a good reputation than programs with bad or on reputation. People already trust them, and you don’t have to convince them about anything. In many cases, you will promote a product, and they will decide to buy something else on the marketplace but you still get a commission from the sale.
2. Good Conversion Rates: The reputation of the marketplace builds trust, and the site’s structure is optimized for sales. You can see everywhere recommended products, calls to action, nice product pictures, and interesting auctions. eBay is a selling machine.
3. Payments: It is a legit affiliate program, and you will get paid once you reach the cashout limit. It is very important to work with legit programs.
Cons:
1. Low Commissions: The commissions are the only real issue of the eBay affiliate program. You actually earn up 7% per sale for existing customers for 24 hours. While it is similar to the Amazon affiliate program, we can’t ignore that there are affiliate programs with much bigger recurring commissions like this affiliate program.
How To Make Money With The eBay Affiliate Program
1. Choose A Niche
The eBay affiliate program requires an active website. Before you start building a website, you need to decide on your niche. A niche is a part of the market that you will focus.
Every popular website helps people in a specific niche and have some categories of products. There are tech websites, health websites, marketing websites, etc.
If you want to choose a niche for the eBay affiliate program, you can browse the categories and subcategories of the marketplace. Any of these categories will be profitable if there are products to promote, but you need to keep in mind that you will create content for your niche in the future.
2. Build A Website
Then, you need to build a website in your niche and submit on the eBay affiliate program for review. They want to see some unique content and a few standards pages that are common in most professional websites.
I highly suggest building your first website on Wealthy Affiliate. If you follow the step by step training, you will create a website that will get approved.
3. Get Traffic
The problem of most affiliates is that they don’t have enough traffic on their website. So, if there is one strategy that you need to master, you should focus on traffic generation.
The eBay affiliate program can convert with traffic from many online sources like search engines, social media, YouTube, and other online platforms. However, the source of traffic with the higher conversion rates is search engine traffic.
In my opinion, you can work on multiple platforms at the same time. For example, you can create content on your website and share it on social media. Review articles or niche articles that mention products from the marketplace that can work well and generate traffic at the same time.
Learning some basic rules for SEO and keyword research will be extremely helpful in this strategy. The training of Wealthy Affiliate can show you how to target low competition keywords and get ranked on search engines.
4. Earn Money
If you have visitors to your website, it’s quite easy to earn money. You just need to add a few affiliate links to your content when you mention products from the marketplace. Another method is to add a few banners that you can find on eBay or put affiliate links on social media accounts. In both cases, you can use the resources of the affiliate program.
You don’t have to build email lists or sales funnels because eBay can convert with direct traffic. Most people that visit the marketplace already have an intention to buy things. So, your focus should be on adding the links to the right places and then creating more content to get even more traffic.
Conclusion
The eBay affiliate program is one of the best affiliate programs in the world. You will never run out of products to promote, and the marketplace will always get the maximum from your traffic. It can work both for beginners that want to build a website for a category of products and experienced marketers that want to monetize their traffic.
Thanks for reading my eBay affiliate program review. For any questions, you can leave a comment below.
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