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In the last part of the Make Money from Your Blog series, I covered the ins and outs of Text Link Ads. Today’s contribution to the series covers the very new service AuctionAds.

What is AuctionAds?

AuctionAds is an affiliate opportunity whereby eBay auctions are displayed in an advertisement-like format in a specified location of your website. They appear as banners and are available in various formats whose dimensions are similar to those of AdSense and YPN ads. Below is an example of a 468×60 AuctionAds banner.

What are the benefits of using AuctionAds?

While appearing like various other advertising and affiliate banners, AuctionAds are fairly unique. Typically, ads that intended to drive sales have a set price, which is displayed in the ad. AuctionAds, on the other hand, displays the current bid since it is essentially one giant affiliate for eBay, the well known auction site. As such, the prices displayed are much more often going to be relatively low, encouraging a higher CTR than comparable affiliate systems.

Publishers utilizing AuctionAds on their site will receive 100% of the commission revenue earned from eBay. The commission is paid on a scale, which is changing for the better as of June 1, 2007. Below is a screen shot of the new commission scale.

For comparison, below is the old commission scale, which is still being utilized until June 1st.

You may be skeptical about the validity of the program considering and wondering how AuctionAds makes a profit if they are giving away 100% of what you earn according to eBay’s commission scale. The idea is rather ingenious in its simplicity.

If, for example, AuctionAds has 50 members generating $20 in revenue, then each member is receiving a 40% share, or $8 each. This means that for these 50 members, AuctionAds is paying $400.

However, AuctionAds is receiving more than $400 from eBay. Since they are one big affiliate, this means they generated $1,000 in revenue (50 members * $20/member) for eBay. This puts them higher on the payout scale, meaning they receive 52.5%, or $525, of the revenue earned. After paying $400 to their members, AuctionAds still pockets $125 for doing nothing more than accepting members into their program.

$125 is not much for one month, but this example only included 20 people. Imagine even 200 websites generating this revenue for eBay, and AuctionAds makes $1250/month. If 2000 websites do the same, that’s $12,500/month that AuctionAds earns.

Are there any drawbacks from using AuctionAds?

The primary drawback to AuctionAds is the same as any other advertising banner placed on a web page. It takes up space and may interrupt the flow of a website if not placed well.

Also a concern is the potential of an inappropriate image appearing in the banner. When testing the system in setting up a banner layout, I came across an image of a naked butt appearing as the item’s image in the preview section. I imagine that this is not too common, but it did remind me that anyone can place a product on eBay. With this in mind, the product images and descriptions may be a bit more outlandish or unexpected than alternative affiliate programs whose products are set up by professionals.

So how do I get started?

Getting started is easy. Simply go to the AuctionAds website, and sign up. The only information required is your account information (email address, password, and website URL) and your payment information (name and address).

Once your account is created, it is simply a matter of setting up your banner and installing it on your website. The banner setup process is rather simplistic: simply provide keywords relating to items you wish to include and the colors you want to utilize in your banner. If desired, each banner can be associated with a campaign for reporting purposes in order to determine how well each banner is working. AuctionAds provides a preview of your banner along with the JavaScript code required to place the banner on your website. That’s it!

How do I track my earnings?

Tracking earnings is done easily through AuctionAds’ reporting interface. After logging into their website, simply click on the “Report” link. Specify a specific date or date range as well as which campaigns to filter, click “Show Stats”. In addition to displaying a table of your impressions, clicks, CTR, and revenue, AuctionAds provides a graph of your impressions and revenue over time. (Note that my stats on the right are almost all zeros because I haven’t implemented it on my site since signing up.)

AuctionAds pays its members monthly via PayPal. A member is required to have a minimum AuctionAds balance of $10 in order to receive payment.

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