Important Updates to the eBay Partner Network

As we announced on the eBay Partner Network blog post on Apr 22nd, we will be rolling out the newest feature and tool release with several upgrades for eBay Partner Network on May 1st. This upgrade includes:

• New functionality for the Link Generator tool
• The ability to link your eBay account with your eBay Partner Network account
• A new way to calculate earnings per click (they are now calculated as earnings per one click vs. per 100 clicks)
• New business model descriptions (to help us provide you with better customer service tailored to your model when possible)

Please read more about each of these enhancements in this post.

Please note a few more things about this release:

• Conversion data may update a bit later than usual in the day during the rollout and a few days after (from May 1st to May 5th)
• The category report will be unavailable during the afternoon of May 1st as we roll out the upgrades (from approximately 1pm to 6pm PST)
• We will be updating some our click filtering system to include a few additional known bots. This will not affect most publishers, although a few may see a drop in their click numbers

Finally, please note that as of July 1st, we will be winding down our partnership with publishers who directly promote eBay through three types of business models: tier-2 paid search, ad networks, and sub-affiliates. Please read the details about our decision and exactly who it will impact here.

If you have any questions on this, please contact customer service through this link: ePN-cs-english@ebay.com.

The eBay Partner Network Team

Reminder: Hong Kong and Singapore Affiliate Programs Will Be Shut down on January 31st 2009

Please note that the Hong Kong and Singapore programs will be shut down on January 31st 2009. If you are still active on these programs, we recommend that you stop your campaigns now, as you will not receive any more commissions from February 1st onwards. There will however still be a payout for January activity. Other programs are not affected.

The eBay Partner Network Team

2008 Tax Info for eBay Affiliates

Dear US Publishers,

We wanted to notify US Publishers of some important information related to your taxes.

At the end of January 2009, you will receive a 1099 tax form from eBay Partner Network if:

• you are a United States citizen or legal resident and
• you had $600 reportable tax activity for the year 2008.

eBay Partner Network Forms 1099-MISC will be postmarked via US Postal Service no later than January 31, 2009.

To ensure the accuracy of the 1099-MISC Forms that you will receive from eBay Partner Network, please log-in to your eBay Partner Network account and make sure that you have entered the latest and correct information for your account:

• your name
• Tax ID
• most recent address

You can find additional information about the 1099-MISC Form from the IRS website, www.irs.gov.

Please note that eBay Partner Network is not authorized to give you any tax advice. Please reach out to a tax advisor to get qualified advice about your taxes.

Warm wishes,
The eBay Partner Network Team

2009 Changes to Singapore, Hong Kong and India Affiliate Programs

We are making some changes to several of our Asia programs.

We have decided to close down the Singapore and Hong Kong affiliate programs as of February 1, 2009, and make India a more limited invite-only program.

Our Singapore and Hong Kong sites are increasingly focusing their marketing efforts on bringing more sellers, rather than buyers, to their programs. Given that eBay Partner Network is today primarily a buyer-acquisition focused network, we've decided it was best to close these programs for now, until we can better support seller efforts.

Beginning February 1, 2009, we will begin redirecting traffic from geo-targeted affiliate links destined for eBay Hong Kong and eBay Singapore back to eBay.com. Publishers currently geo-targeting traffic to these sites will not have to do anything differently, since we will re-direct this traffic automatically. However, please note that creatives for Hong Kong and Singapore will no longer be available in the eBay Partner Network interface. Publishers not working with these programs will not be affected.

We have also decided to make India a limited invitation-only program. We want to focus in the next few months on growing the Indian program through larger affiliates that have established track records in India or in other emerging countries. Publishers currently accepted in the Indian program will not be affected and will be able to continue to promote the Indian site. New publishers joining eBay Partner Network will no longer see the Indian program as an option upon sign-in and will have to apply separately by contacting customer service if they want to promote the Indian Program.

We expect a minimum impact from these changes given the small number of affiliates currently driving traffic to these countries. If you have concerns or experience any problems during the transition please be sure to let us know by contacting customer service.

Thanks for your continued support!

The eBay Partner Network

eBay Partner Network site live - Get your new ID now!

The eBay Partner Network site is now live. Sign up today to get your new affiliate ID. As an added bonus for joining early, eBay Partner Network members will get an extra 5% commission during the month of April.

As previously mentioned, eBay affiliates who use Commission Junction must migrate to eBay Partner Network by May 1, 2008 or they will stop getting commissions.

See here for information on how to update your code.

Congratulations to Our Widget Developers!

The eBay Widget Build-Off Contest was a blast for us to host, and we are very encouraged by the enthusiasm and creativity the developer community has shown us. We want to thank all the developers who have entered their widgets for your passion and courage to show us just how cool eBay widgets can get. In our mind, you are all winners. But the average scores separated the masters from the experts by a sliver. So we want to take this opportunity to share with the rest of our developer community and eBay community whom we’ve chosen as masters of eBay widget development.  Details on the winner widgets and their developers are coming soon.

In no particular order:

Winner: Ztail.com’s gallery + related keywords selection widget

Winner: Ty Kroll's widget for disappearing eBay listings as they end

Winner: Mark Johnson's (Portland Studios) widget with 3D animated flip-the-widget for listing details design

Winner: Thai Huynh's new and improved eBay To Go

Winner: Ben Longoria's shoe rack widget for all the shoe fanatics out there

(Note: winners are subject to signing all necessary paperwork)

Congratulations again to all the winners! And thank you all again for participating in this quick contest and all your hard work :o).  You guys are awesome, and eBay Partner Network will be proud to share the winner widgets with the rest of our affiliate community.

By the way, we’re also opening up nominations for our annual Star Developer Awards. We’ve got five categories this year across eBay, PayPal, Shopping.com, ProStores and Skype:

• Most Innovative Application
• Early Adopter
• Service to the Community
• Best Design
• DSR Rockstar (improving customer service)

Please send your nomination to us via email to developer-relations@bay.com, no later than Friday, April 11th. Be sure to include:

• your name and contact info
• the nominee’s name and contact info
• the award category, and a brief explanation as to why you think the application is worthy of consideration.

Be sure to put “DevCon Star Developer Award” and the category name in the subject line of your message.

eBay Partner Network Migration

eBay affiliates who use Commission Junction must migrate to eBay Partner Network by May 1, 2008 or you will stop getting commissions

But relax, it's a very minor code update to use the new eBay Partner Network affiliate tracking values.

And as a reward for early migration, all eBay Partner Network members will get an extra 5% commission during the month of April.

1. Sign up with eBay Partner Network after April 1, 2008 to get your new tracking ID.
2. Use your new tracking ID instead of your old tracking ID
3. Update your tracking partner code

Please click here for details.

The Art of Affiliate Marketing

Facebook, ah yes, the flagship of open platform social networking sites, the epic dominance of growth in this lucrative online networking environment. With such an enticing prize to be had, why not attempt  conquering your own piece of the Facebook social landscape?

One such intrepid affiliate developer has truly helped the eBay art community reinvent its online presence by plugging it into the Facebook social graph, effectively leveraging the need for self-representation to virally market beautiful pieces of art available for sale on eBay. Appropriately enough, Tuan Le named his Facebook application "ArtFest."

ArtFest has made browsing art listings on eBay  easy, and more intuitive in some cases than eBay's own browsing experience. That plus the vast supply of beautiful paintings for you to showcase and buy surely augments the beauty of one's profile and personal life. Who said "ads" had to be boring and intrusive?

eBay salutes the artistic innovation of Tuan Le and the support of our art community for sprinkling Facebook with a dash of aesthetic enrichment.

Winners of eBay Widget Contest

Congratulations to the winners of the eBay Innovate Widget Contest:

• 1st place winner (of a Sony PSP3) was the iPhone My Ebay application by SilkSystem Solutions

Search, Watch, and Bid from your iPhone. Customized interface for the iPhone while leveraging key features such as page transitions, number pad-pop up, etc.

• 2nd place winner (of an 80 GB Apple iPod Video) was the Vista sidebar tool by Intelligroup Ltd

Notifications, at-a-glance information for your watching, bidding and selling lists as well as feedback score and more from your Vista sidebar.

• 3rd Place winner (of an 8 GB Apple iPod Nano) was the My eBay Quickfeed for iGoogle by vallaeys from Top Tier Inc 

An RSS feed for iGoogle that automatically syncs with eBay to always show you the most up-to-date information about items you are watching, selling or bidding on, or add a saved search.

• Developer community winner (of an iPod Shuffle) with 73 votes and 53% of the total was Auction Watch gadget for Vista Sidebar by Ty Kroll

eBay Auction Watch allows you to track and bid on eBay auctions directly from your Windows Vista Sidebar. Integrated with your My eBay Bidding and Watching lists, details are updated automatically and seconds count down in real time.

Congratulations to all of these developers!

- Delyn

Shopping API: Affiliate parameters for more calls

Affiliate parameters have been added to more calls. The following calls contain affiliate support:

• FindItems
• FindItemsAdvanced
• FindProducts
• GetSingleItem
• GetMultipleItems
• GetUserProfile

If you use affiliate parameters, a URL is returned in the ViewItemURLForNaturalSearch field with your affiliate tracking information that can be used to generate affiliate commissions. For more information on the Affiliate Program, see http://developer.ebay.com/programs/affiliates/. For instructions on how to use the affiliate parameters, see the Shopping API docs.