Has anyone got anywhere with the Bonanzle affiliate program and API? For anyone who doesn't know, Bonanzle is a small but growing auction site that looks like it's aiming for eBay's jugular and seeing a lot of growth. They have an affiliate program, and a web service too, those these are still all in beta. I signed up for both but have not taken it any further - it'll take a bit of time to study the API and see how it works, and also I have some unanswered questions about how you make affiliate sales using the API. There is a big downside that I can see - the affiliate program is opt-in only for SELLERS. I.e. if you promote a product whose seller has not opted in to the affiliate program then you get no commission, tough luck. Hopefully though, sellers will see the wisdom of opting in to get more exposure for their products. Anyway, I'd love to do something with Bonanzle, maybe make a version of my Wordpress plugin for it, but still seems like early days. Anyone done anything with Bonanzle yet?
That's strange. Why would they allow sellers to choose whether or not their auctions can be promoted by affiliates? Unless they are taking a cut from the sellers that do opt-in it shouldn't be any of their damn business.
Little bit odd, isn't? I think the seller is effectively paying the affiliate commission in the form of an additional selling fee if they opt in, so they figure not every seller will be keen on that. Unusual model...
Oh, if that's the case then I don't see it going anywhere. Given that they are small and need to grow the smart thing to do would be to make it very attractive for affiliates to promote it. But few sellers are going to opt-in to pay more fees so there will be few auctions eligible for affiliate commissions. Would make more sense if it was opt-out. Then for those sellers who read the fine print they could get reduced fees at the expense of fewer bidders on their auction. Would really like to see someone kick ebay's ass but I don't think this is going to be it.
Looks like ebay has nothing to worry about here - sounds like this place has less of a clue about running an affiliate program than ePN does
I am sure they have their reasons! For one thing I get the impression that they are not relying on the affiliate marketing model so heavily - you know, the one eBay seems to be trying to worm out of now! If you look at the site it's quite nice, it has some of that "community" feel eBay lost a long time ago. Maybe AM is not so important to them...