eBay sent members of its affiliate program a notice of new rates on May 29th. Unfortunately for participants, eBay didn’t spell out what exactly was changing.
In addition, different affiliates received notice of different rate changes.
Notice the part in bold below taken from the the terms and conditions of the eBay Partner Network (ePN) under the Compensation section in “Qualifying Transactions”:
“Subject to other provisions in this Agreement you will be compensated for each Qualifying Transaction in accordance with the applicable Program Details. There may be exceptions to the rate card shown in the applicable Program Details for certain Affiliates or certain circumstances. Compensation will be calculated based on EPN’s tracking data at the end of each month, which is definitive and shall control in the event of any tracking dispute.”
At least one affiliate reported a change that would limit payouts to $550 per order. (See update below.)
Similar to other affiliate programs, ePN is designed to encourage publishers and marketers to drive traffic to the eBay marketplace by rewarding them for visits and sales that can be attributed to them through the use of tracking codes.
Earlier this month, we blogged about eBay’s move to cut “loyalty” affiliate rates to zero commissions as of May 2, 2020. According to eBay’s ePN website, “Loyalty & Rewards publishers “provide either purchase rewards or incentives in the form of points, miles, cash back, or charitable contributions.” As we also noted at the time, Amazon made changes to its affiliate program in April.
In a comment on that May 1st EcommerceBytes Blog post, a participant in the eBay Partner Network program wrote, “The Affiliate Program has been getting pretty severely trimmed back now for several years, this is just a further extension of that momentum.” Another reader’s comment indicated such changes could harm eBay (and thus its sellers): “Affiliates will just go where the commission rates are better. So, they’re basically shooting themselves in the foot.”
*Update 5/31/2020: An affiliate wrote to us regarding our statement above, “At least one affiliate reported a change that would limit payouts to $550 per order.”
He said: “It’s $550 per account per day. So for example: We averaged ~$900 a day in EPN earnings. Now, they’ll pay us commissions up till we get to $550 and anything after that they aren’t paying you any more regardless of how much traffic you send them, until the next day resets. Wow, huh?”
Definitives have no place at ebay, yet they’re mandatory in the real world where decisions are made.