eBay to launch own eBay Partner Network (affiliate program), to partially drop Commission Junction

eBay is going to launch its own partner network (affiliate program) and it will depart from Commission Junction. This is only for eBay sites, some of the other eBay properties will remain with CJ. Details on the press release directly from eBay. More details on the new eBay Affiliates page. Registration on the new program will begin on April 1st, 2008. No, it's not an early April Fool's day joke. This is for real!

eBay has created a very simplistic blog, named the ePN blog that will hopefully over time provide more details. After all, April 1st is just a week away!

And if you read through the previous notes you may have noticed that there is a 5% incentive for people to switch over to the new affiliate program right away! So if you do have eBay sales, and it's not a big pain to switch over (we don't know how painful it will be yet), you can make some extra $$$. eBay on CJ will remain active until May 1st, to give bloggers and webmasters enough time to switch their links. Oh the pain!

Since eBay uses the rover.ebay structure for links already created via the eBay site, we can hope that those links won't be affected or at least can be easily edited, instead of having to be replaced. But this is only speculation! We have to wait and see what eBay says!

eBay is a good way to monetize your site, but don't expect cash to fall out of the sky. This also depends obviously on your content, readers and traffic. But for specific niches or product categories, people may be interested in taking a look at eBay listings and bidding/buying stuff. Please keep in mind the affiliate program is a PPA (pay per action) program, so you only get paid if people buy stuff on eBay or sign up for eBay.

If you don't want to deal with all the details, there's also the option of using Shopping Ads, formerly known as Auction Ads. They are basically building a shell around the eBay affiliate program, and all you have to do is create the banner ads and specify which keywords you want to use. Because of that, it is compatible with Google Adsense, since it is keyword-based, not contextual, which is what Adsense is allergic to when it comes to the competition. Achoo! Not sure if or how they will be affected with the transition of eBay from CJ to the eBay Partner Network.


Reactions on the Net
The story got some traction at various sites as you can expect since it affects eBay. For example, it made it to Forbes.com. And a short discussion of this at the WebMaster World forums.