From Aug 1 you will no longer be able to put eBay auctions on free blogs such as Blogger, on Hubpages, Squiddo, Infobarrel etc!
A related question was: “Can we use affiliate links on third party sites like Blogger, Twitter, Wordpress, Tumblr, Squidoo or article sites where we “own” the IP of the content but not the actual site?”
For blogging platforms like Wordpress, we’re requiring that publishers use the download-and-install versions of the products so that they have full ownership of their sites. For other promotional methods such as Twitter, etc, it is ok for your links to lead to your own websites that have links to eBay, but not to lead to eBay directly.
So eBay changes things yet again and pisses off even more affiliates! You will know that I no longer can use eBay as I was dumped last year for spurious reasons. eBay seems to be using whatever means they can to cut down the number of affiliates, perhaps in an effort to keep more money themselves? Maybe they think they are so well known that they don’t need anyone else to drive traffic to them but blocking free traffic seems a bit of a strange business plan to me.
if you have a load of blogger blogs or other free blogs that are getting decent traffic and you have been doing well with eBay try using adsense instead. I have found it to be successful, although not quite as profitable as eBay. My top earners for adsense are sites that still have eBay auctions on them as they won’t easily convert to affiliate sales. Sites selling used products for instance. eBay ads are good for bringing in long tail traffic and you can leave the ads there if you take out your affiliate ID.
If you are still using eBay on self hosted sites I suggest it may be time to diversify a bit. eBay is not a reliable source of income and who know what they will do next!
Realy BAD! Lets protest it! Or some thing like this I have about 50% income frome Aff eBay and now what? Stop Eating? I think it will be bad idea for company and stocks will get down!
No eBay isn’t evil – they are in business and they have, and will continue to make business decisions with their own best interests in heart, the interests of the shareholders, not the interests of their affiliates.
It is bad news because lot of people earn money through squidoo and hubpages by adding ebay and amzon ads.
Many blokes are writing articles or in this case writing hubs for money. Some are even doing it for fun and as a hobby. Their plan is to write at least one article per day sometimes even more and keep doing it for several months in a row
There is indeed a lurking danger in not owning the site, I mean, how sure can you be that all your click throughs are being recorded or that your ID is not replaced? Too bad.
It’s a pity, I have a new blog and I wanted to do something with Ebay. Thank you for letting us know and for the tip.
That is really bad for many people with not benefit from this decision. If they prohibited to post ebay and amazon advertisements through squidoo, that will be a big problem!
What is up with the way eBay is conducting some of their business these days? I guess they can do whatever they want (sort of) because they have such a huge market share of these things. The ability to continue with smooth web promotion marketing in this area is obviously going to become limited or have to be done in a new way. What a journey!
This is ridiculous… I am really glad that I found your site.. Thanks so much for the helpful information
20% felt about right – I guess it depends on whether you can afford to lose that amount and still pay the mortgage so the figure will vary. The irony of it was that I was just about to focus on eBay and Hubpages to diversify away from Adsense – oh well!thanks.
This is a huge change and will take some affiliates out of business and for many more will mean that they will take a huge income hit while they rebuild their business.thanks.
No big deal- you can replace amazon and ebay ads with google adsense.
“Realy BAD! Lets protest it! Or some thing like this I have about 50% income frome Aff eBay and now what? Stop Eating? I think it will be bad idea for company and stocks will get down!”
Yup, thats Unfair….
great suggestion! affiliate program is the best way for blogger to earn money. thanks for nice post!
This is bad news, everyone will suffer now.
Samantha Peppercorn
payday loans
It really sad to know about this and its good that you have shared this info many people will be more cautious about this things..
Take the advise to divert back to Adsense. Ebay’s head is getting bigger. She’ll do a big turnaround in a couple of years, however.
I personally prefer to have complete control/ownership of any site that I develop. Just makes me feel better in the end. Whether it’s a smart move by Ebay remains to be seen
This is bad news. I don’t understand why they would limit us that way.
:evilThanks for the info- it turns out Microsoft’s bing really is making an impact, it seems to me your blog is getting a lot of search engine traffic from bing- have you found this to be the case?
This will mean less income for us. But instead of feeling miserable, as we can’t control Ebay, better find alternatives early. There are multitude ways of making money online. Things like this happen all the time.
Thank you so much for friendly caution about eBay new rules. I better follow your suggestion to work around on adsense than relying much more on Ebay.
I hate that, I was dumped to for no reason. I’m starting to wonder about the Amazon program as well, seems that Google and the FTC are starting to crack down on affiliates!
It’s sad that this has come to this point. But I guess this is also a good reminder that all these free things provided by many sites can in no time backfire and can hurt extensively if we are just going to rely on it. The best thing to do, get your site and control it. And do as you please.
Is eBay is bad, ugly nasty company who treats their sellers like dirt and their affiliates worse? Nope, the point is that nothing has changed: he who has the gold makes the rules.thanks.