Community Chat, August 5 @ 1:00 pm PT - eBay Partner Network

[tyler@ebay]

Hi everyone! Thanks for joining us for the Weekly Chat with eBay Staff. This week we’re joined by the eBay Partner Network team to answer questions you may have about this program.

If you're new to our weekly chat, welcome! To post your question, click Reply in the lower right corner of the first post between 1-2 PM Pacific Time, type your question, and hit submit. The format of our chat mirrors the format of our Community Discussion Boards, where each post will appear in the thread chronologically - so if you don't see an answer right away, don't despair! We'll get to it. 😀

The Community Team will review each question as it comes in, and will quote the original question in our reply. This quote and the reply will appear later in the thread, so just keep refreshing and scrolling down to see our answers.

The chat thread will remain open until 2 PM PT at which point we'll close it from additional responses. After that time, we'll continue to work on responding to any queries that might still be unanswered. You will get a notification when we respond. See you Wednesday!

About the eBay Partner Network:

Basics about the eBay Partner Network can be found here, including details about the program, some FAQs, and a video on getting started. 

Already a member of the ePN? Consider requesting to join the private Community Forum group of other dedicated ePN sellers (link here).

[gwzcomps]

I was invited to the previous version of this program.  I didn't join because of the typical vague wording of the UA.  It implied if I got in trouble or broke a policy regarding the affiliate program I would risk losing my selling account?  Seemed kind stupid since I have never had an advertiser threaten my livelihood if I advertised wrong.  I don't know if this is still the case.

Also where is my incentive if all I get is credits towards my FVFs?  Last I knew Amazon's affiliate program paid in real money.

[deb@shipping]

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@backtousa1 wrote:

New to eBay Partner Network and want to find more videos on how to get it going.  I have an account already just not sure where to start!! 

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Hi @backtousa1, thank you for the question.  At the moment, the best video and information resource for getting started  is the ePN Seller Center landing page here.  The eBay Partner Network Help Center is also a great resource for answering questions you might have.

[shoplc-us]

In the "create a promotable link" area where you paste the eBay URL, it also asks to select a campaign and for a custom ID. What do those mean?

Also, so you can earn money from commissions whenever anybody clicks on the link AND still if someone purchases the product?

How much is the commission from getting clicked links?

[highervenue]

My first time here...could you please help me on what do I need to do?

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

A few years ago, ebay had a tool , I forget what it was called, that allowed us to create a page with a number of thumbnails to our listings (or other listings) It was a bit like Pinterest.  One problem with that was that non-GTC listings lost their link when they ended. But now all fixed price listings are GTC, so that is no longer a problem. And now that I can get free FVFs for my items (and affiliate fees for others' items), I'd love to see this return. It would be easy to create an entire page of related items, and if I could create an EPN link to a page like that it would be great to post on Social Media. For example, the Holidays are approaching....I could create a page with vintage Christmas items (my own and other sellers) and post that as a link.

Any chance you guys would consider doing something like that?

And if not, is there another way I can create a group of listings and have only one link for the group?

[dan@epn]

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@my-cottage-books-and-antiques wrote:

Now that ebay has added the free FVF incentive for sellers, I signed up (but really haven't done much with it yet).  My impression is, there are really two different groups here: people who are basically affiliate marketers (who benefit from things like ebay Daily Deals and other special offers that they can market), and regular ebay sellers who are not primarily interested in affiliate marketing, and are primarily interested in the free FVFs. I'd like to see some tutorials (perhaps including actual ebay sellers who are using the program in primarily this way) aimed at those of us who are not really interested in flogging the hottest stuff, but want to push our own stuff (and maybe our friends' stuff). Any chance the team could put something like that together, with insights and strategies targeting those kind of sellers?

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@my-cottage-books-and-antiques 

The way we're set up, it's really up to you what you promote and where you promote it. We have lots of different partners, who do all sorts of different things. We have people who promote deals, and others who promote very specific niches of products. We have people who set up web sites to promote eBay items, others who develop mobile applications, and others who do it only via social medial. It's really up to the partner, as you'll have a good chance to know what kinds of things will be interesting to the audience you're sharing with.

We do have helpful resources at these two sites:

https://partnernetwork.ebay.com/

https://partnerhelp.ebay.com/helpcenter/

Thanks!

[go-bad-chicken]

Questions

If I post an EPN link to one of my listings and the

prospective buyer then clicks on it and arrives at that listing of mine

that I advertised on social media platform, and does not convert on

that specific listing per se but ends up clicking on one of the

Sponsored Listings located on my listing page and that Sponsored

Listing happens to be one of my Sponsored Listings, will I be

charged the Sponsored Listing Fee based on the percentage that I

set when I initially created the campaign?

How exactly are the fees and credits calculated in these types of scenarios? I have read all of the various information pages that eBay currently has for the EPN program and can not find any details that specifically address this highly probable situation.

Because what I am finding as of late is that each one of my own

listings contain approximately 48 various Sponsored Listings within

each of my listings that belong to me and that I created. But the

kicker is that of those 48 Sponsored Listings approximately 45%

are my Sponsored Listings.

Does that mean that should I choose to participate in eBay's EPN program is their a possibility that I might actually be incurring more fees due to my labors on social networks due to the fact that almost half of the Sponsored Listings shown on each of my listings are my Sponsored Listings?

Generally speaking there are 6 Advertising Carousels located within

each of my listings. 4 of which are Sponsored Listings advertising carousels.

Similar sponsored items - 1/2 - 12 listings total.
3 of the Sponsored Listings belong to me.
3 POTENTIAL SPONSORED LISTING FEES

Sponsored items from this seller - 1/2 - 12 listings total.
12 of the Sponsored Listings belong to me.
12 POTENTIAL SPONSORED LISTING FEES

Sponsored items based on your recent views - 1/3 - 18 listings total.
6 of the Sponsored Listings belong to me.
6 POTENTIAL SPONSORED LISTING FEES

Explore more sponsored options: - 1/1 - 6 listings total.
1 of the Sponsored Listings belongs to me.
1 POTENTIAL SPONSORED LISTING FEE

People who viewed this item also viewed - 1/2 - 12 listings total.
0 NONE of the listings belong to me.
NO POTENTIAL OF FEES BEING ASSESSED

More from this seller - 1/2 - 12 listings total.
12 ALL of the listings belong to me.
NO POTENTIAL OF FEES BEING ASSESSED

[deb@shipping]

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@myprojectfit wrote:

Hi!

Is there a link for joining the partner network?

Thanks!

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Hi @myprojectfit thank you for your interest in joining The eBay Partner Network. You can sign up by clicking here.

Thank you!

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

The EPN links are long and clunky. I know we can use bit.ly (or whatever) to shorten them, but it would be great if you guys came up with an in-house way we could do that with one quick click. (Or maybe automate it, so it would automatically shorten if we set that as a preference.) Any possibility of that?

[dan@epn]

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@la-perfumerie wrote:

How do we create links to our listings or to our store? 

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@la-perfumerie  First, sign in to your eBay Partner Network account https://partner.ebay.com/

We have several different options for creating links, but the easiest one is to use the "create a promotable link" section of the home dashboard. You can take the URL to your listing or your store, paste it into the box, and it will create an EPN link for you to copy and paste wherever you plan to share it.

[nancyscottagetreasures]

Once a return / refund case has closed, can it be re-opened? Everything I find says no but ebay re-opened a return case that closed on July 22 and charged my credit card for the balance on a partial refund. I refunded a partial due to the item being returned with damage. Now the charge is on my credit card account as of two days ago, which I have disputed. Thanks.

[throwthings.com]

The promotional video prominently features sending the links by email. In addition to eBay we sell through our own site and other marketplaces. There are times when someone will contact us directly that it would make sense for us to send them a link to the eBay item instead of selling something through our site. This is not a situation of an eBay customer looking to purchase something off eBay. Although emailing links is covered in the promo video the Code Of Conduct specifies that this can't be done without prior written approval. We requested such approval about 2 1/2 years ago but the request was denied. We were not looking to use the links for any kind of an email campaign - just in direct communications initiated by a potential customer. Have the policies changed? Would something like this be approved? No sense in going through the whole process again if it will just result in another denial.  

[patel@selling]

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@qcconsign wrote:

Hello,

QC Consigns is new to the Partner Network.  We have signed up, but now that we are in it does not seem as simple as the introduction videos made it out to be.  Is there a step by step tutorial to help newbies like us?

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@qcconsign  Thanks for signing up.  This getting started page is a good resource to help you out:  https://partnernetwork.ebay.com/solutions/getting-started-with-the-ebay-partner-network

This article also provides a bit more detail than the video and might be helpful as well - https://community.ebay.com/t5/Announcements/Traffic-Month-Driving-revenue-and-traffic-with-the-eBay-...

High level, the process once you have signed up is:
1) Use the Ebay Partner Network tools to create affiliate links - you can paste the URL to your store or individual listings into the tool, and the tool converts it to a trackable link
2) Then, use those newly created links to share them wherever you might be marketing your ebay business - your own website, social media account, email, etc
3) If potential buyers click on those links and end up buying, you will earn the incentive.

[taosa]

Is there a live chat? All I can find is the questions...

[lifestyleproductsrus]

Really need more detailed info. Can someone else post a link to my items and benefit; If yes, how??