You are in: ECommerce-Guide > Solutions > Affiliate Marketing

ECommerce-Guide Essentials eBiz FAQ Everything you need to know to start your own successful e-business. Selling on eBay How to make money in the online marketplace. PayPal Payments and More What's new in secure payments for your online store. Shopping Cart Software Solutions to close, process and track your online sales. Related Articles • Three Facebook Apps for EBay Sellers • EBay Listing Tips and Seller Promotions • Tips for Selling Crafts Online

Bonanzle’s New Affiliate Program and More Seller News
By Vangie Beal
August 6, 2009

Bonanzle Launches New Affiliate Program

The online marketplace Bonanzle, recently introduced a new affiliate initiative called the Syndicated Seller Program. It lets sellers set the commission they want to pay affiliates who send buyers to the sellers’ Bonanzle items.

Sellers who join the Syndicated Seller Program simply provide the details on how much they are willing to pay affiliates. If you want to pay a referral fee of one percent you can do that, but if you can afford to pay more, let’s say 10 or 15 percent, sellers will find more affiliates linking to their items.

To take advantage of this new program, visit the Advanced Options in your booth and set a default commission that applies to all of your items. You can also choose to set a different commission on some items, which overrides the default for that item.  The program options will also let you list items without any affiliate referral commission attached to the item.

Bonanzle deducts its selling fees from the amount you choose to pay an affiliate partner. The balance becomes your referral commission — the amount the affiliate receives if they send a buyer to you. 

For the most part, the new affiliate program lets sellers pay final sale fees (to Bonanzle) and a commission to the affiliate partner for less than what sellers would pay in fees alone on eBay or Amazon.

To be a Bonanzle affiliate partner you do not have to be registered as a seller on the Bonanzle site, you can simply register as an affiliate.  Affiliate partners can easily create customizable widgets to display Bonanzle items on their blogs and Web pages.

In an e-mail discussion with Bill Harding, Bonanzle’s founder, he wrote, “We think that this program is an exciting, first-of-its-kind solution that satisfies both a seller's desire to get their items published across the Web, and an affiliate's desire to make top dollar on their referrals.”

Currently there are more than 20,000 items that can be sold through the syndicated seller program.  Harding also mentioned that the items at the higher end (mostly software) would net an affiliate almost $100 for referring a buyer who goes on to purchase them. 

“The affiliate program is going to become even more useful when the forthcoming Bonanzle API is unveiled by the end of August, which will allow third-party developers to create applications for Bonanzle—where their development work is funded by the referral commissions they earn,” Harding added.

EBay to Test Top-rated Seller Badges

This week eBay says it will begin testing the recently announced Top-rated seller badge. A small percentage of people will see the badge displayed in search results and item pages until the new badge is officially launched in October.

The top-rated seller status works in eBay's new DSR strategy, and the badge can be displayed by sellers who have only a few 1 and 2 DSR scores, rather than average minimum DSR scores.

Top-seller status also offers the highest PowerSellers final value fee—a discount of 20 percent.  You can read more on the new Top-rated status and DSR scores, in our eBay Policy change coverage, Sellers: Get Ready for New eBay Policies.

Etsy Connects on Facebook

Etsy has recently announced its Facebook Connect application, a new Facebook application that sellers can use to bring news of their own Etsy actions to friends on Facebook.

Once Etsy sellers have connected on Facebook by installing the application, any item they add as a favorite, or item they add to their own Etsy Shop, is shown as a news feed on their profile, and also in their Facebook friend's news feed. The option to send these action notes to your own Facebook news feed is provided on the Etsy page. 

Etsy also offers sellers and interested buyers an Etsy group page on Facebook.

Vangie Beal is a veteran online seller and frequent contributor to ECommerce-Guide.com. She is also managing editor of Webopedia.com. You can tweet with her online @AuroraGG.

Tools:

Add ecommerce-guide.com to your favorites Add ecommerce-guide.com to your browser search box IE 7 | Firefox 2.0 | Firefox 1.5.x Receive news via our XML/RSS feed