March 17, 2008
eBay, CJ, and St. Patrick’s Day
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I’m a little torn up this morning about what’s more important to talk about, the eBay and CJ news or that it is St. Patrick’s Day. So let’s combine.
eBay announced today that they are taking their U.S eBay and Half.com affiliate programs in house.
More details are available from eBay directly, but the short of it is that on April 1st, affiliates will be able to register for the in-house program with a goal of having the program migrated affiliate links by May 1st.
Yes, change out affiliate links.
A year and a half ago, eBay changed their links from standard CJ tracking links to their own “rover” tracking links on an eBay domain, specifically rover.ebay.com. The most obvious reason for this, or seemingly so, was that they could just cut CJ out of the mix once they had ownership over the tracking links. We’ve been waiting for this other shoe to drop for so long that it was all but forgotten. It’s beyond me why they aren’t leveraging this in the transition. Perhaps that was never the plan in the first place and it was always just about SEO as some others speculated.
I spoke to Dave Osman, Sr. Vice President of Operations at Commission Junction who told me that this has been in the works for a long time now, and has been factored into the public company’s financial forecasts for quite some time. I’m sure CJ will be just fine.
eBay hasn’t ended the relationship that they have with Valueclick and will continue to employ the services of the Medaiplex division.
From a purely selfish standpoint, I think this could be a good thing. First of all, I’m not a major eBay affiliate, so the fire drill doesn’t affect me in any significant way. We’ll have only a little bit of scrambling around to do.
eBay is the type of client that can essentially demand anything from a vendor. Custom requirements keep development teams from focusing on product improvements and are generally very disruptive. Hopefully this will allow the CJ product development team to focus more on non-ebay-specific requirements and innovate more in the way they should be.
Surprising news? Does this impact you?
I tried to have a story ready to be “First!” with the news, but it was scooped by ValleyWag last night, and my good friends Shawn Collins and Sam Harrelson were hovering over the submit button this morning. Be sure to read their takes on this as well.
And, you know what they say, if you can’t be first, be better. Do they say that? I don’t know. I do anyway.
So, I celebrate the occasion, and St. Patrick’s Day with the inaugural video blog by yours truly.
OK, maybe not better. But different. It was fun for me anyway. A beer at 8am on Monday. Let me know what you think.
From the video: Shillelagh is the correct spelling of, well, “shil-lay-lee”
Valleywag didn’t scoop us, they broke the embargo (as did Mashable who ended up on Techmeme). Ah, tech blogging
Thanks Jim.
Look at you acting all like you don’t own makemeajingle.com.
*cough* spammer *cough*
I own it, yeah, but I don’t make any money from it. Goes straight to the jingle maker. I get nada. More fun than anything. You going to order? You need a jingle.
Great job on the video! Since your posts tend to be longer, and I don’t always have a chance to get through them right away, video will really help me keep up with your blog.
Also, thanks for pointing out another great part of being self employed…the option to have a Guiness for breakfast. Mmmmmmm.
Broke the embargo? or heard from an insider?
Sam, you think Valleywag got a call from Ardis? I doubt it.
I don’t know Jim, we’ll see. I was going to mix some music in there. “Shipping up to Boston” by Dropkick Murphys, but it started to eat into my day too much. Baby steps.
James, thanks much. I’ve been watching these guys with their different techniques wondering what I could do. And actually, I’ve been thinking an video executive summary of my admittedly long posts might be a good thing.
Nice stuff on the first video - always good to kick off the video career with a can of the Brown.
You’ve inspired me to jump start my own St. Patty’s Day.
Yea, over 10% of my revenue now is coming in from Ebay’s affiliate program in CJ. Just have to put off some stuff I’m developing for a couple of weeks and hope it doesn’t take a whole lot of effort to convert links over to the new format.
Scott, it was a great first video. Nice work. The first time is always awkward, heh.
You need a jingle though. I just got one.
http://www.makemeajingle.com
Video = good
Guiness for breakfast = smart
O’Byrne’s the world ’round are proud of you, lad!
Nice video, nice beer! Happy St. Patty’s Day!
I wish I could leave work and start my St. Patty’s Day…
Keep the videos coming. Adds a new dimension to the blog.
Checking out the background in the video… Do you live in a log cabin? Wish I had trees that mature in my back yard.
Jangro - not sure if this is a Google Reader thing or what.. but just wanted to let you know Sam tweeted this post 2 hours before it showed up in Reader for me. I’ve noticed that happens on my blog too. Not sure if there is a ping setting that can be adjusted, or if specific to Google Reader. Some blogs seem to update almost instantly, while others have a lag.
There can always be a positive in any situation even though at first it may not seem like it. For CJ, I’m sure a lot of their time was spent on Ebay and now they can focus their time on other areas. Good point Scott!
Actually, Jeremy, I live in a lean-to while I working on the log cabin on weekends. If you look closely, you can see a grizzly bear pass by.
Thanks for the comments everyone.
hopefully the ebay/cj transition will go a lot smoother. and they better up their commissions now that they dont have to pay a 3rd party
good stuff, more videos please
[...] Scott Jangro - Scott just made his first video today. Smart cool guy. Stop by and tell him to do more videos. Blogger Unleashed - Vic has a rough around the edges style but he is doing tons of video lately and dropping lots of interesting information. [...]
Good stuff Scott!
This is good for eBay but an inconvenience for affiliate. Now I have to go back through posts and update links. UGH!!!
It’s about time. A juggernaut like eBay does not need to rely on CJ, especially when they were doing so much outside of CJ already.
Awesome video! I loved it. When can we expect the next one?
I recently came accross your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I dont know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog.
i have not been promoting CJ for months.. Ebay is not doing good to me.. anyway cool vid and beautiful site..
I for one am thrilled that ebay is taking affiliate program in house. The stats that CJ usually reports is never close to what I see through other tracking measures. Changing out the affiliate ID will be a big chore for some but I don’t have enough sites using it to matter much.
This stinks for CJ as it is one of their biggest profit makers.
It is good for ebay affiliates however as it will allow better tracking and will still work with BANS sites.