More on Ebay Revenue Share System

A quick update on the ebay revenue share:

As previously announced, from March 1st 2007 we’re introducing a new revenue sharing model for the eBay.co.uk Affiliates Programme. We’re excited about these changes because we think they’ll give you more opportunities to make more money.We’ll still pay you for the new ACRUs (Active Confirmed Registered Users) you send us: there’s no change there. But rather than paying a single fee for bids and Buy it Nows, we’ll be tying your earnings per bid and BIN to the revenue we get for the sold item. You’ll receive a percentage of all the revenue we earn (Listing Fees and Final Value Fees) from all winning bids & BINS made by visitors in the seven days after you send them our way.This means that when you send us quality bidders and buyers who purchase higher priced items on eBay.co.uk, will earn you more. Yes, that’s right: The higher the sale price, the higher the reward. However, be aware that this may not be the case in categories with ‘fixed fees’ such as Motors and Real Estate.

ebay.co.uk will offer 25% of revenue (under £100) up to 50% of revenue - for over £500,000

February 20th, 2007 Posted by scifind | affiliate marketing, affiliate, eBay, ecommerce | no comments

An Affiliate Program Is Not a Magic Bullet for Marketing a Website

Recently I have been hearing of companies being wooed by affiliate networks and then setting up an affiliate program with them without actually doing their own research.

Just putting up an affiliate program is not going to generate sales to make the program worth while. Although this is a paid on performance industry setting up an affiliate program is not simply a paid on results affair. Affiliate networks have setup, monthly and override commission fees, so you are going to have to make a number of sales each month simply to break even.

Even if you are a pretty major brand or have a real something unique to offer is is still a bit much to expect the affiliate program run autonomously. You may even get hundreds of affiliates to sign up in the first few weeks, but this means nothing without sales. Indeed those same affiliates have probably signed up to hundreds of different merchants and the current high turnover of new merchants means that given a few days they will probably forget that they have ever signed up.

So what is the missing piece? You have the sales site and products waiting to go out of the door, you have an affiliate program with a major network, you aren’t getting sales.

The missing piece is actually encouraging the affiliates to actively promote your site. There is a big difference to an affiliate that just adds your banner to one that actively promotes a merchant. Affiliates have limited time with which to promote every merchant that they subscribe to, they end up cherry picking the most lucrative for them. 

This is the role of an affiliate manager. The affiliate manager is the reason that affiliate programs succeed. There are a number of good affiliate managers (including myself) who can help your affiliate program. The best starting point is to contact me and ask how I can help.

Simple message is don’t expect an affiliate program to just grow active affiliates, the affiliates need careful cultivating to promote your site.

February 15th, 2007 Posted by scifind | affiliate marketing, ecommerce | 2 comments

Which Dragon Has The Best Website

Ok this is another post about BBC 2’s Dragon’s Den and we have only had one episode to date.

Having a look at the official website for Dragon’s Den (www.bbc.co.uk/dragonsden) I had the idea to write a review on each of the ‘Dragon’s’ official Websites. After seeing Keith Bond’s post about SEOmoz I decided to use this to assess which of these official Dragon’s sites are the best.

Deborah Meaden

http://www.deborahmeaden.com/ 

Page Strength: 0.5 / 10

Duncan Bannatyne

http://www.bannatyne.co.uk/

Page Strength: 3.5 / 10

Peter Jones

http://www.peterjones.tv/

Page Strength: 3.5 / 10 

Richard Farleigh

http://www.farleigh.com/

Page Strength: 3 / 10

Theo Paphitis

http://www.theopaphitis.com/

Page Strength: 2.5 / 10

So there we have it Jones and Bannatyne tie first followed by Farleigh, Paphitis and finally Meaden. To be honest this is probably the order I would rank these in, only in a general webpage sense, the fact is that these people’s websites are carried by the people - brands. This sort of ranking tool is much more useful for you and me, affiliates especially.

Want to know your sites page Strength - see http://www.seomoz.org/page-strength

February 12th, 2007 Posted by scifind | SEO, tools, webdesign, Dragon's Den | no comments

Congratulations to Levi Roots - Plus advice to Dragons and Those pitching alike

Congratulations to Levi for securing £50, 000 funding for his Reggae Reggae Sauce on Dragon’s Den the other day.

If only all business men operated like him. The real victory here was for Style over Substance.

But when will the business men walking into the den learn REGISTER YOUR DOMAIN NAME BEFORE GOING ON DRAGON’S DEN. Well done to Levi (Keith) for registering the .com (see his site -http://reggaereggaesauce.com)  - but you forgot the .co.uk - registered not long after the program aired and is now pointing to a parking page.

I am sure that the new owner will be willing to sell this domain back to you Levi BUT it would be so much easier to think ahead and spend that £6 something to register a .co.uk to stop it being picked up by someone else.

This also goes for the Dragons, Peter Jones  and Richard Farleigh invested £50k in this business - knowing full well that the brand was going to get a big push to millions on national TV and they still didn’t have the forsight to spend £6 on a domain name.

GOT A BRAND - BUY A DOMAIN NAME - simple message Don’t Know How? No excuse Click Here and take two minutes to register a domain name (at the time of writing .co.uk domains are £2.59 a year and .com domains £8.99 a year)

Read about Levi and the dragons here - http://www.bbc.co.uk/dragonsden/

Reggae Reggae Sauce Site - http://reggaereggaesauce.com/

Peter Jones’ Site - http://www.peterjones.tv/

Richard Farleigh’s Site - http://www.farleigh.com/

February 10th, 2007 Posted by scifind | Dragon's Den, Domain names | no comments

Dragons Den Returns. BBC2 8pm Tonight

I love this program.

I begain watching it as an insight to business - but now it is mearly an X Factor style farce with the Judges/Dragons just putting down the often mad ideas pitched to them.

Any one unfamiliar with the format? Probably not - but would be enrepreneurs pitch their business / product for investment.

Originally I thought this was going to give an oppertunity to those struggling to find investment, unfortunatly now the Dragons only want to put money into established business that I would imagine would have no problem getting a load from the bank. Would love to have a program - or even videoblog of one of the more off the wall inventors / business persons that DID get the funding (The egg cooker bloke, the Dr Cap kids etc).

Anyway BBC2 8pm tonight - watch it

More info on the BBCs Dragons Den webpage

February 7th, 2007 Posted by scifind | Uncategorized | one comment