eyahoobay

Now that Microhoo is officially dead, could a YBay be on the cards somewhere? Thoughts?

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Big News: Ebay Leaving CJ, to launch the ebay partner network

Wow, this is huge. Online super-auctioneer, e-Bay always had an affiliate program, and it was always through a “trusted third party” At first, they were on a microsoft-owned affiliate network (remember clicktrade?) and later migrated to CJ sometime in the early 2000s.

Anyway, Today is an important day in affiliate marketing history. CJ has lost one of it’s biggest affiliate programs. e-Bay is going in-house. They announced this in an email to affiliates today that all the worlds ebays (including ebay US - Not including some of ebay’s non-auction properties such as stubhub, prostores, etc.) will need to be promoted via ebay’s own system beginning the first of April 2008.

“The new platform will go live on April 1st, 2008 PST, at which point eBay will no longer be running its affiliate program through Commission Junction. Beginning April 1st, affiliates should register with eBay Partner Network and migrate their links from CJ to the new platform. “

More details at the announcement page on ebay

Update: See also: AffiliateTip.com - Apparently, this was probably in the works since september 2006. See link on the affiliatetip post to “project rover”.

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The Official eBay facebook App goes live

Finally! Arguably the world’s biggest e-retail brand - eBay has launched it’s very own app for the facebook social networking platform (a.k.a - The Social OS).

eBay has finally launched its Facebook application, which enables you to share your eBay items within your Facebook profile. While there are a handful of Facebook apps that have been created to interact with eBay, this is the official application that’s been created by eBay itself.

There’s a good level of integration for your eBay account to work within Facebook, showing items you’ve found on eBay (your watchlist) and check out the items your friends have added to their watchlists as well. Security options let you pick and choose what information you want to share, and how this information is shared.

Mashable has the story…

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YPN now using paypal to pay publishers

It is probably obvious from some of my posts here that I like paypal, and so does Yahoo!, I guess. Yahoo’s publisher network is now offering the option of receiving payments via paypal. Cool!

More on: Affiliate Fortune Cookies, Affiliate Tip

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Why isn’t everyone selling on the net accepting paypal yet?

Jim Kukral says:

I don’t get why every online store doesn’t have a PayPal option? I mean, if you’re going to accept credit cards, and even checks, why not have a PayPal option?

I couldn’t agree more. from an e-retailer’s point of view, especially if you are selling cheaper goods, you are making a huge mistake if you are not accepting payments via paypal.

There is a reason paypal has as many as a hundred million users worldwide - it’s probably one of the first media of online transactions for internet users (they are after all, the primary method for paying on ebay!).

Paypal is also VERY easy to use. Sometimes I’m just too lazy to take out the credit card and type in the credit card number, expiry date and CVV2 number, along with my name, address and telephone number to pay for something on the internet. It’s just easier to type in the paypal username and password, press next and finish the transaction.

Jim writes that he uses Paypal as “Fun money” to make impulse purchases, and buy stuff he’d rather not use his credit card for.

If your e-retail website isn’t a huge brand yet, it makes a lot of sense to accept payments via paypal. A buyer doesn’t have to think 10 times before buying from you. if a store doesn’t deliver, it’s super easy for buyers to lodge a complaint with paypal, and paypal will make sure that fraud isn’t happening on it’s platform - a lot of buyers know that.

If you aren’t accepting paypal on your web-shop, I have a two words of advice for you - ACCEPT PAYPAL!

———-

oh, and talking about paypal, I recently filled out a survey for CJ, one of the questions there was if publishers would like CJ to make payments via paypal. - if they do that, that’d be super-awesome.

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How about an Ebay/Yahoo merger?

Few weeks ago, there was a mega-rumor started by the NY post that Microsoft is all set to buy Yahoo (this was later rubbished by Yahoo and many publications as what it was, a rumor). Then, yesterday, Jerry Yang, yahoo’s founder took over as it’s CEO and although he denied any plans for the sale of the internet giant, this has once again sparked the debate of yahoo’s potential sale or merger and many are speculating this would happen sooner than later.

eBay, however is rarely talked about as a company that could potentially buy or merge with yahoo — The weblog ebay strategies has posted some interesting reasons on why an eBay/Yahoo merger would make a lot of sense.

This fits in so many ways it really is a perfect match. This gets eBay back into Asia with ecommerce, it gives eBay/Y!/PayPal a Google Checkout option. The Y! toolbar+skype are a great desktop combo. Skype and YIM go well together. Y!’s graphical ads would come onto eBay and eBay sellers could buy them. Y!’s graphic ads could monetize Skype. Yahoo Stores is a great fit for eBay.

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eBay to sell radio ad spots

Reuters reports that, in direct competition with Google’s Radio Ads offering, eBay will soon begin to auction radio ad spots on 2,300 participating U.S. radio stations.

The move, which puts eBay into competition with Web search leader Google Inc.’s recent expansion into radio advertising, involved eBay partnering with Bid4Spots to power what it calls the eBay Media Marketplace for Radio.

The new auction marketplace is set to go live on wednesday and include online as well as terrestrial radio stations.

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eBay on TV for Time Warner Cable customers

More and more web-apps are getting on the television screen. The latest is e-Bay, at least for time warner cable’s subscribers.

eBay on TV

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eBay to share more revenue starting next month, but on a condition

Techcrunch reports that ebay is all set to pay out twice as much in affiliate commissions to smaller affiliates and the number going even further upwards for larger affiliates, starting June 1.

However, with the increased payouts, eBay has also published new Ts and Cs stating that search marketers may no longer send PPC traffic directly to eBay. Affiliates will need to build landing pages to eBay via which they may route their paid search traffic.

The Terms and Conditions will include this new clause:

a. Search Engines. You will not be compensated for paid search traffic purchased from Google.com, Yahoo.com, MSN.com, nor from any of their content networks, such as Google AdSense, Yahoo! Publisher Network, and MSN ContentAds, if it is linked directly to the eBay.com, eBay Express, or eBay Store domains (not “Commission Earning Activity”). The change in policy is limited to the eBay.com US program, and to the three search engines stated above. Linking to a non eBay domain is allowed.

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Paypal is now officially a bank - in Europe.

Two months after eBay set up a new entity in Luxembourg, its PayPal subsidiary was granted a banking license for the European Union by the Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier (CSSF) in Luxembourg.

Reports AuctionBytes.
The Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier in Luxembourg have awarded PayPal a banking licence, and the ebay company will be moving their headquarters over to Luxembourg early next month.

This is big news, PayPal have maintained from the start that they are not a bank, but a mere payment facilitator, that doesn’t seem to be the case any longer.

Paypal has been operating in Europe for years without requiring to be recognized as a bank, neither were there any news recently that paypal would need to become a bank if they are to operate in europe.

PayPal said on Tuesday that the new banking license would allow it to continue its European expansion by offering its services to more online merchants across Europe.

It would be interesting to watch PayPal in the coming months. Who knows, they might even apply for bank status in the US and other parts of the e-commerce enabled world - Google checkout has suddenly become a major player out of nowhere in a market where paypal was a near monopoly, looks like this is one smart move to stay competitive, We should see some major slashes in paypal fees and some google checkout-like offers to attract merchants to use paypal soon!.

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