Freelance Consultant Blog

Freelance Internet Consultant

Apr
1

eBay Partner Network Affiliate Replaces CJ

Tuesday · Popularity: 43% · affiliate, ebay, news 

Ebay Partner NetworkToday eBay announced the official opening of the eBay Partner Network (or EPN) which, in 30 days no less, will replace Commission Junction as the sole affiliate program for eBay.

For those casual users of the eBay affiliate program, the email this morning might come as a bit of a surprise but they have been working on this for some time, and promise to have a better reporting and functionality, although I have been very happy with Commission Junction for many years now.

The news didn’t go unnoticed by those in the blogging world where you could find several posts this morning like eBay Partner Network now live by Sue from Tamebay, eBay Dumps Commission Junction from Net Profits, a good discussion from Shoemoney in eBay Affiliate Program FINALLY Drops the CJ Dead Weight, and several others. For those working with the eBay affiliate program in one way or another, this is big news.

What is an Affiliate?

If you are unfamiliar with how affiliates work, it is a simple concept that has been around for quite some time. A company offers an affiliate partner (the user) an incentive of some kind, usually money, to promote their company. At this point almost all companies do this in one form or another, and even small ecommerce sites can setup affiliates for their customer. I am both an affiliate partner and an affiliate provider through one of our small ecommerce sites.

You can even see this on non-eccommerce site and large B&M companies. DirectTV has offered $50 to anyone who gets a friend to sign up for a new satellite TV account for a long time, this is just a simple affiliate offering that can be done by anyone who has a friend who needs their service.

How Much Does an Affiliate Pay?

This is always the question. How much can I actually make using something like this. The answer is just about as much as you are willing to put into building your affiliate network. For most of us, we don’t have a 40 hour work week we can devote to an affiliate program, so we use it where we can, when we can.

I have posted my most recent report below, so you can see it isn’t much. We current run about $100 a month on the eBay affiliate program but it doesn’t take much effort to produce results like that below. We have made as much as $500-$600 a month and as little as nothing. It all depends on how much work you want to put into the program.

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Oct
26

How to Make Money Drop Shipping on Amazon or eBay

Friday · Popularity: 24% · amazon, dropshipping, ebay 

Amazon Drop ShipperAre you tired of competing with a drop shipper or drop shipping company that does not ever touch the product, house, or package the product, seems to sell more, and make more money than your competing businesses? You probably are if you are a company that spends time finding wholesalers, buying inventory, cataloging, indexing, valuing, packaging, and all the normal business practices that go along with running a business that carries an inventory based product.

I received an email this week from a “buyer” on Amazon. He purchased one of our books and the subject of his email said, DON’T SEND PACKING SLIP OR INVOICE PLEASE, in all caps, but it was his email to me that told me the story:

Would you mind sending this package without a packing slip and/or invoice? I would really appreciate it. Also, please use delivery confirmation, if possible - I only make this suggestion, as the USPS is far less likely to lose the package.

[item sold and order number was inserted here]

If this item is a different condition (used/new/etc.), binding or media type softcover/hardcover/tape/disc/etc.), edition or version (international/etc.) or differs in any way from your listing, please refund this order immediately.

You don’t need to respond to this email unless there is a problem with the order.

Besides the fact that Amazon requires you to send a packing slip with each order, the shipping address was completely different than the email name or company, so it was obvious to me that this was a drop shipper and we were now the fulfillment company. This email was automatically generated and I had no choice at this point other than to just ship the order.

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Oct
4

eBay PayPal and Yahoo Join Forces

Thursday · Popularity: 16% · ebay, news, paypal, spam, yahoo 

To fight phishing emails. It seems that the three companies came to an agreement (perhaps not quite as hard for ebay and paypal since they are both owned by eBay but who knows) to fight the phishing email problem that ebay users are constantly bombarded by from the moment they join. I use to get these emails and think I would never fall for that, but the emails have gotten so sophisticated in their attempts to scam you that it is hard for even seasoned people to tell the difference, and I even admit to clicking on one when I got lazy and didn’t read the email close enough.

There sounds more to it than just the normal press release this time, they are incorporating some anti-spamming techniques used by yahoo to remove the message before they are even delivered to your spam folder, so perhaps it will make a difference, that would be great.

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