Not only that ... lots of people using auction ads means they have likely to reach the limits for higher commissions which are passed on to you.
So far the pay out is no where near as close... I'm gonna give it about another week just to see if things change... Overall, I'm still not that impressed..
Ya I totally can see for your sites why it does not work out. Directories and proxy sites are always the lowest converting. I recently did a 10 point system why you should use AuctionAds. 1) Auctionads was created to let users easily leverage the very lucrative eBay affiliate system but in a way that is easy for people to use. New users can be running and making money with AuctionAds in as little as 5 minutes after signing up with AuctionAds. 2) Geotargeting - We have relationships with 10+ eBay country programs and automatically geotarget your international traffic for you. 3) Huge Inventory - Because of the vast items up for auction on eBay there is almost no site that you can not show relavent ads to your users with AuctionAds. 4) Editorial Control - With many advertising programs you give them the power to determine what your page is about and match you to the best advertiser. Many times this can result in ads that are either not related or worse case could contain advertisements that you would otherwise want to avoid. 5) Publisher Referral Program - Each time your ad is displayed it also includes a automatic link to auctionads with your publisher referal id. Many people see the ads and want to run them on their own sites and if someone signs up from your ad you will earn 2% of their revenue. 6) Net-0 Payments - With most advertising programs you have to wait 30 or even 45 days to receive payments. 7) Option to open in a new window - One of the biggest gripes of users is that in order to get paid from most advertising programs a user must leave your site. With AuctionAds publishers have the option to open the eBay auction in a new window. This way when they are done shopping on eBay they can resume where they left off at your website. 8) Leveraging the highest tiers of the eBay affiliate program - The eBay program has many levels of payouts based on volume. The users of AuctionAds pool together volume to give everyone the highest payouts possible from the eBay program. 9) Additional Revenue Stream - Due to the pictures in ads and unique display nature of AuctionAds you can feel free to run it in conjunction with other popular programs like Google AdSense and Yahoo Publisher Network. If one of these other programs are already working for you, AuctionAds can be a nice additional income stream for you. 10) Great Looking Ads related to your content - AuctionAds can really spice up the look of your website with relavent content. Between the international offers and the huge inventory of the eBay system its pretty safe to say that AuctionAds is the most diversified advertising program ever. Many people are doing well. We will be having case studies in the future. Again the $$ will speak for itself. The good part is you can run it in addition to adsense/ypn/chitika etc... and it costs you nothing to do a trial run to see if you should put it on a higher tier placement.
I don't own any proxy sites.. You must have me confused with someone else. I've also not got the ads on any directory I own. The sites in question are all pottery related. Niche pottery sites that do about a G/month with CJ... http://mccoypottery.com http://forums.mccoypottery http://auction.mccoypottery.com All good points. Particularly the ease of use. Understood... I just said I needed to give it more time. I guess I should have put things into a clearer context, meaning, if I look at the current stats, the level of impressions and CTR, vs. current programs and past performance (the site's 10 years old).... I've not seen any earth shattering results. I'd like to think the niche nature of the site might have something to do with it, but given the past performance, I'm not so sure about that. Of course I am experimenting with the smallest traffic site I own, so who knows...
Mia, your pottery site is annoying. I often press my scroll button on my mouse to scroll up/down sites quicker or to open things in new tabs ... doing so on your site brings up a message box saying something like "you ip has been logged, don't copy these images" and then another one comes up after that :/
The only problem I have thought is the AD sometimes off big time. Showing car auction on makeup site is kinda turn off to visitors. 80% of the time though is highly target which is very cool.
Yea this is probably the most frequently asked question. Basically if a visitor has not visited the page for that keyword in the last 10 minutes then it will display the "whats hot on eBay" (which are the top selling and highest converting items) until it grabs current auctions for your product. Obviously if we cached them longer the auctions being shown would be over.
Someone explain to me how this can happen: By all means, tell me how any action on eBAY can result in 1 cent? So far, in the 4 days I have been running this system, I have received more than 2200 clicks and earned less than $5.00; with my current PPC with Adsense, that means I have LOST about $259.00 because I removed the Adsense ads to make room. As it is reportedly a 7 day cookie, I will leave it for a total of 10 days. But so far, I wouldn't call AuctionAds unimpressive, I would call it downright laughable.
You may wish to use use negative keywords which AuctionAds appears to support. So, lets say you definately do not want car ads to turn up but are ok with handbag ads (I get a lot of car, handbag and fluffy toy ads when my particular keyword is not cached), you can modify the particular line in the code from AuctionAds as such: auctionads_ad_kw = "makeup -car -toys"; If you are specifying different brand of makeups then do the same as above but with a ; in between. For Eg, You are targeting Lancome and Maxim makeups only and do not want ads for card or toys, thent eh code changes to: auctionads_ad_kw = "lancome makeup -car -toys;maxim makeup -car - toys"; I believe the above is correct and is allowed by AuctionAds - Shoemoney may be better able to clarify on this
There are a lot of good points in Shoemoney's 10 points for trying AA. I didn't know about #2, the geotargeting, that's pretty cool. #7, opening in a new window, is something that I think I will do. And #10, nice looking ads, I agree. Overall it really seems to be optimized for publisher friendliness. Now if I could just get some of my cheapo visitors to win some auctions. The way it looks so far for me is that I might end up with nothing but referral earnings.
Any chance you are working on the 10 minute cache thing so lower traffic sites will show relevant ads? What if you increased it to 1 hour? I don't think I've seen an auction end within an hour. Or possibly another solution that would draw the data realtime? The reason I ask is because I want to start a bunch of site with auctionads, but they are not going to have much traffic at first. Thanks!
Just got an email from eBay affiliate with CJ regarding the tracking issue wondering if it is effect the perform of AA as well?
ShoeMoney, while you are hanging around answering questions: Any chance of putting in a variable to limit the lowest an item can cost that will appear on your site? One of my sites targets a niche that should show high cost ebay items, but all that I ever see are under $5 items, severely limiting both of our income potential. It would be nice if each user could choose the limit, some sites work well for $5 items, other would be better if it were $100+.
Ok guys please understand that I try to answer questions as much as possible but always email support if you have a question as a primary channel. I do not think we will ever change that setting. It is based on the average live span of auctions. As long as your website receives 1 human visitor every 5 minutes it should not be a problem. That is something we are looking at doing. its definitely on the list. Right now a lot of our resources are focused on keeping up with the growth but other more advanced options are definitely in the works.
I like the idea of this but as far as earnings go..your never gonna make much off this. From what i've read you only get money if the person who clicked on your ad won the auction. The odds for this are so bad. Let me give you an example. Say you had 10k impressions on your site and had 500 clicks. out of those 500 clicks probably 50-100 or so are accidental. 200+ are just curious. The rest are interested but depending on your niche on your site, a lot of people don't have over 50$+ to spend buying stuff on ebay and you would only make like 5$ off that 50$. to even make any money you would have to get visitors to buy items over 200$+ and the probability of that happening is very unlikely. or have almost 50% or more of those clicks convert to buying small priced items. Im not trying to bash you or anything, its a great idea and i'm glad someones trying to find alternatives but this will never be as good as Adsense on your sites. And if your say adsense is unpredictable... you couldn't even accurately predict your earnings through these kinds ads. I do applaud your work but inless the % of earnings is increased this will slowly sink.
Shoe... I am lost here... what is it that your product offers that can't be done with the eBay affiliate tool? I just don't see it... can you please explain? Serg