Can I Really Make Money As An eBay Affiliate Using Your System?
I received an email yesterday from someone who bought The eBay® Affiliate Blog System Package about a year ago during pre-launch and never acted on the information it provided. He had some questions about the “profitability” of promoting eBay using my system.
Yes, we all do this, don’t we? Buy the latest “make money online” ebook or program, we’re so excited because we just KNOW this is going to be the “one thing” that spells our success online and allows us to quit our day J-O-B.
Buuuuut, then we realize it takes some W-O-R-K or skill or time, and we begin to think “Geez, what if I put in all that work and learn that new skill and spend all that time doing this and it still doesn’t make me any money?”
So that shiny new “make money online” toy sits on our hard-drive collecting digital dust and we’re off to find a new “silver bullet” that will make all our “make money online” dreams magically come true.
Well, I can assure you of one thing, Bob hasn’t made a dime from The eBay® Affiliate Blog System and never will until he decides to take A-C-T-I-O-N!!
Here’s my response to Bob (Bob is not his real name, I’ve spelled it backwards to protect his identity).
Hi Bob,
Thanks for contacting me with your questions. I’ll try to answer as best I can.
“How can an [eBay] affiliate make any money if that 3-4% that ebay charges [sellers] has to include ebay’s cut?”
As an eBay seller, I WISH ebay only charged 3-4% of the selling price of my items. Contrary to what you may have heard, eBay has significantly increased the fees they charge sellers for selling their items on eBay. Fees are more in the 8-12% range and affiliates get at least 50% of those fees.
Now that may not sound like much money on cheap stuff like DVDs or books, but if you do your research and target high ticket or extremely popular items like computers, cars and car parts, cell phones, digital cameras, industrial equipment, etc., those fees really add up.
Interestingly enough, people who come to your eBay affiliate site and click thru to eBay many times end up buying items totally unrelated to what they looked at on your site.
“I realize that new sign ups create $25, but is that really what ebay marketers are after?”
Yes, many eBay marketers are targeting new sign ups and eBay has changed the payout for that as well. Based on what eBay determines is the quality of the people you send to their site who sign up for a new eBay account, you can make up to $50 per new registration.
“I wondered if perhaps I was missing something and I’m hoping that you might help me to understand if promoting ebay is a viable business model?”
I don’t really consider promoting eBay as a “business model” I think of it as simply another income stream, because it’s so quick and easy to set up a site to promote eBay items using my system.
I can have a new site up and running in about an hour. By using some common social marketing techniques, I can have backlinks, traffic and income within 24 hours. Once you get the hang of it, you’ll be able to set them up quickly as well.
Now, I am not talking about making gobs of money from one or two eBay affiliate blogs or depending on eBay affiliate blogs to generate enough income to pay all your bills while you sip a MiaTia on the beach. It is simply a quick and easy way to generate an additional income stream.
How much you make is up to you and depends on the niche you pick, how much time you spend promoting your sites and the promotional methods you use. Obviously, people who use PPC tend to make more money, faster, than those who depend on organic traffic.
And, yes, if you’re trying to make a full-time income from eBay affiliate blogs you will have to build a lot of them like people do with Adsense sites. But keep in mind, they can also go bust, just like Adsense sites do, so don’t put all your eggs into one basket! Diversify!
Bottom line is, you won’t know if it will work for you and you won’t know if you can make money from it, until you give it a go.
HTH,
Tamara
September 01 2010 09:52 pm | Affiliate Marketing
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