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| sunray |
 Posted: Thu Jan 28, 2010 8:59 pm |
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What Is The Block With Alternatives Marketing?
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Site Admin
Joined: 01 Jan 1970
Posts: 6689
Location: UK
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While few people on the alternative forums I read - or this forum for that matter - seem to want to talk about the importance and potential of affiliate marketing to grow a marketplace, this article we published a couple of days ago is attracting some serious traffic from elsewhere on the net.
If the point of the article makes any sense then I'm struggling to know what the reason is why eBay alternatives seem shy about getting partners to promote them properly? It's strange because I honestly believe none of them will ever become truly competitive until they do. |
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| Passion Vine House |
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Posted: Thu Jan 28, 2010 9:51 pm |
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What Is The Block With Alternatives Marketing?
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Admin
Joined: 30 Nov 2006
Posts: 4030
Location: Los Angeles
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Let me give you a 'real world' parallel that will perhaps explain where I stand on the subject of affiliate marketing.
I know two guys who live near me. They are passionate about cars, were working in car sales and about two years ago they both became unemployed.
They had a brainwave that they would go to all the car showrooms in our general locality, believe me there are many, and offer to work as independant car sales men for a commission less than what the showrooms were paying their employees. The dealers agreed as they did'nt have to keep the salesmen on their payroll and all that entails.
The two guys pick out the most likely to sell vehicles and then they set about finding buyers through all the free advertising avenues that are available here. They are very successful sellers. The dealers are delighted to see them on their lots of course.
I look through eBay and I find items that I'm almost certain will sell. I advertise those items and most times I can match a buyer to the item and eBay pays me, it's that simple.
Now I look around the alts and I see items that should be selling but are not. I could work hard and point potential buyers to those items but why should I? The vast majority of the alts are not going to give me a red cent for that hard work.
Unfortunately the alts either don't have the money for advertising or they don't see the value of affiliates. |
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| sunray |
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Posted: Thu Jan 28, 2010 10:00 pm |
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What Is The Block With Alternatives Marketing?
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Site Admin
Joined: 01 Jan 1970
Posts: 6689
Location: UK
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Good analogy PVH.
But to add to it; just imagine if those car salesmen were also able to sell their own car stocks using the dealers forecourts and they still pick up commissions on all car purchases made by people they pitched to but didn't sell anything to for a week afterwards?
When a seller promotes their own listings on a blog or website they don't just earn commissions on anyone they send to eBay that buys their items. They earn commission on anything purchased by the people they send to eBay no matter who the seller is 
Expensive? Yes. Take it out of eBay's fees and they could charge much lower fees. But they wouldn;t make anywhere near the same level of sales and sellers would see far less competition for their items.
Marketing works. But marketing costs money too.
Fee free = thin earnings = weak marketing = poor sales = lost sellers = poor listings = lost buyers = goodnight sweetheart |
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| leapingcat |
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Posted: Sat Jan 30, 2010 8:54 am |
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What Is The Block With Alternatives Marketing?
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PheeBay Supporter
Joined: 19 May 2007
Posts: 230
Location: Somewhere in England
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I can see the problem of the vicious circle that the alts find themselves in. They haven't got the resources for a proper marketing strategy, but sellers won't pay higher fees because the marketing is so poor. So perhaps the alts should be realistic and abandon the person to person marketplace and leave that to Ebay where the high fees bring a degree of professional marketing and concentrate on the small businesses who are suffering from Ebay's changing direction. Promote the site as a platform for selling with low fees that allow you the resources to do your own marketing. This could result in a higher number of listings and sales and hence fee income to enable the alts to develop their services, perhaps even an affiliate scheme  . |
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| sunray |
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Posted: Sat Jan 30, 2010 2:54 pm |
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What Is The Block With Alternatives Marketing?
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Site Admin
Joined: 01 Jan 1970
Posts: 6689
Location: UK
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I agree leapingcat.
For much of the past few years people here have banged on about the need for sellers to do their own marketing if they want to use cheaper alternatives to eBay and generate sales.
Unfortunately a quick check on the forums of any of the more established alternatives will reveal the same old "why don't you advertise?" posts from sellers who don't seem to associate the lack of fees they are paying to the question they ask  |
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| Zolanta |
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Posted: Mon Mar 29, 2010 4:30 pm |
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What Is The Block With Alternatives Marketing?
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PheeBay Supporter
Joined: 23 May 2007
Posts: 277
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| sunray |
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Posted: Mon Mar 29, 2010 4:56 pm |
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What Is The Block With Alternatives Marketing?
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Site Admin
Joined: 01 Jan 1970
Posts: 6689
Location: UK
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Basically it is paying people for driving buyers to your website. It works because advertisers only pay for actual results (it's rare that people simply pay affiliates for clicks now).
Probably the best example to look at is eBay's afiliate scheme to see how they operate. Once upon a time they used to pay about 33-50% of their revenue to the introdcing affiliate on all successful sales generated within 7 days of a buyer click through. They've now changed it to a more difficult to quantify payment structure but (for me anyway) it seems to pay better as I currently get around 80% of eBay's fees on all purchases a buyer makes within 7 days of me generating the click through.
eBay's affiliate marketing is huge and they pay out millions upon millions each month. As a result there are thousands of websites (including some of the most massive) driving constant buyer traffic to eBay.
It is so very easy to do from the affiliate's point of view. Start a niche website about something you're interested in. Publish some informative content that will attract natural search traffic and place some links to your niche relevant listings at eBay. Give it a few weeks for Googlebot to pop by and start watching your earnings grow.
To run a proper affiliate scheme you need to offer a share of what you earn on sales for so long after the introductory click through. Managing the affiliate scheme can be done "in house" using various software or you can outsource it to people like Clixgalore or CJ (who used to do the eBay scheme).
for sites charging less than eBay and offering far fewer listings you would probably need to offer a worthwhile % of the fee income generated by a buyer for 30-60 days. Te idea is that a webmaster can generate a modest regular income to justify the website expense at least. Do also remember that you are only paying out money that is being paid to you by sellers. The beauty from your point of view is you wont have to pay a massive advertising bill not knowing if you will generate any sales.
Soem sites simply pay affiliates for clicks that result a new member signing up. eBid for example will pay £1 or $2 for any new sign ups through their scheme managed at Clixgalore. Peronally i don't think such a scheme will prove anywhere near as productive as the revenue share on sales model but it's another option to consider although you may end up paying for new accounts that never generate you revenue. |
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| Zolanta |
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Posted: Mon Mar 29, 2010 5:02 pm |
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What Is The Block With Alternatives Marketing?
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PheeBay Supporter
Joined: 23 May 2007
Posts: 277
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| sunray |
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Posted: Mon Mar 29, 2010 5:06 pm |
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What Is The Block With Alternatives Marketing?
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Site Admin
Joined: 01 Jan 1970
Posts: 6689
Location: UK
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| Zolanta |
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Posted: Mon Mar 29, 2010 5:29 pm |
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What Is The Block With Alternatives Marketing?
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PheeBay Supporter
Joined: 23 May 2007
Posts: 277
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