What I am about to say is because I have been a long time member of the eBay affiliate program, now called eBay Partner Network. It is also of value to anyone that is starting or currently responsible for managing an affiliate program for a company.

My affinity for their brand is the result of being a partner for over three years, my wife being a seller on eBay for nearly ten years, API ease of use and the ability to earn revenue consistently for three years as part of the partner network.

But try as they might, eBay has not driven me away from the partner network . . . yet. They transitioned the program from Commission Junction to an internal program two years ago. The metrics and other monitoring tools suffered as eBay had to get their affiliate legs underneath them. No longer could an affiliate view the extensive reports for click monitoring, referrals, purchases, week to week comps, etc.

Then eBay transformed the program most recently from their CPA (where a partner was paid if their link resulted in a sale)  program to a CPC program. This isn’t your average CPC program with prices set per click – it is based on an algorithm that calculates the quality of the clicks from a given link on a 24 hour basis and assigns them a monetary value.

With this most recent transition to CPC and a program controlled by an algorithm (see: bot) eBay developed a Transparency Team. This team has the task of reaching out to partners that have links that aren’t performing in a manner that matches the eBay partner agreement (see: fraudulent).

This is a great idea in theory. However, this team wouldn’t need to exist if the eBay partner network returned to the same type of reports that Commission Junction used. Instead, when reinventing the wheel, eBay eliminated any useful monitoring for partners. Thus making participating in their program as opaque as it can be. Metrics that provide a payout, ranking or trip the algorithm to send an automated email stating that a partner is somehow engaged in fraudulent activity are nonexistent.

Ebay has removed any substantive accounting for themselves in the process of monitoring or payouts, the crux of a developer or user becoming an affiliate. Hiding reports from users that are accustomed to them as part of other vendor programs isn’t transparent.

The problem is that this is a basic customer service issue that has not been addressed by eBay. Reporting, prompt replies and useful feedback data would allow partners to build better programs that meet eBay’s standards and can be crafted to drive more quality traffic to eBay.

This example says it all:

Two months ago I was contacted by the eBay Partner Network Transparency Team (see: bot generated email) stating that in their quest to be transparent I should do the same and that I was failing as a large percentage of my links weren’t sending referrer data. Meaning that they don’t have a record from these links of the website where the link was displayed and clicked on.

Fair enough to ask me about the links. Not fair or right, accusing someone of not being transparent when all of the click data is hidden away. Not fair is waiting two months to reply back with meaningless data stating that eBay is right. See below:

What am I supposed to do with this data? What part of it is actionable by me as a developer and affiliate?

Ebay sure is right that I have a high non-referrer rate and that bots are removed. I guess I should stop questioning their authority . . . sure. I’d do that if I knew what the criteria were or what bots are being removed. Because for nearly two years they didn’t remove a single bot from click data.

I’ve requested more data from the Transparency Team like IP addresses and user-agents of those clicks. Since I can’t track the click that is actually going to eBay without breaking the user-agreement with eBay I will be at their mercy to figure out if the clicks are coming from mobile devices or and some proxy bot that has a lust for finding its way to eBay auctions. Maybe the bot master was blocked by eBay for not being transparent enough when scraping their auctions.

Ebay, this isn’t how to be transparent or run a valued affiliate program. If my experience hadn’t begun with your program on Commission Junction I wouldn’t have such high hopes for how the current partner network could operate. As an affiliate, I want to make money, but I also want eBay to succeed.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/4

Ebay Partner Network and Transparency is a post from: TechStartups.com

Like you, I’ve been a member and user of PayPal’s service for years. They were early to the game and grew accordingly with a product that made buying online drop dead easy. With an exit to eBay they were integrated into a powerful money minting machine.

They also joined a culture of apathy and disdain for those that help them line their pockets – developers.

Like their acquirer, PayPal continued to build a mediocre developer community, foster it with partial code samples, limited information and limited support. Now in kindness to PayPal they did begin providing better support a few years ago and are pretty good when it comes to engaging  developers on the message boards offering solutions – a problem that has plagued eBay for years.

Visit any eBay developer board and you’ll find replies that focus on posting in the wrong thread topic instead of offering a solution. It shows the developers that they aren’t a priority.

I was looking forward to the release of the brand spanking new PayPal X Developer Network. Hoping that my previous experience wouldn’t hold true and that there would be a renewed focus on the developers that are integrating the PayPal gateways and API’s into their platforms. But they let me down.

The new developer community site is plagued with broken links, the same old code samples and forums that stopped loading threads on October 28. The intention is there but the execution is hit and miss.

I can forgive them this time, though. Because it appears that their intention is to focus fully on their API implementations and integrate the legacy products like IPN and PDT into a more standardized solution.

Which will help PayPal as it moves toward working with developers to create a wider range of solutions like mobile and in application micro-payments.

Something else of note with the new PayPal X Developer Network is the improved site IA. Thank you to the person(s) that restructured the information and worked with the UI person(s) to highlight what developers want most . . . documentation.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

PayPal X Developer Network Same as it Always Was is a post from: TechStartups.com