Here is a free way you can make money in the Ebay affiliate program with nothing other than an email account. Nothing more, not even a website or blog.
1) Go to the “For Sale” section of any Craigslist city. The very last option is the “wanted” section. That section contains posts from people who are looking to find or buy a variety of things.
2) Pick an item that is reasonably popular that might have a fair amount of listings: somthing like “Ipod”. You might have to play around with this until you get the right item for you.
3) Now (for this example we will use the Ipod) do a search in the search field and that will bring up all the ads from people wanting Ipods or things related to Ipods. If there are no ads pick another item but if there are some ads, go in and read a few of them to see what they want.
4) The next step is to go to Ebay and type in the exact search you want. You can search for all Ipods in Seattle using the advanced search if you are in the Seattle Craigslist or you don’t have to be that specific and just search for all Ipods anywhere. Once you have that page open with the search you want listing all the Ipods, copy that URL as that is where you are going to direct your “customers”.
5) You then need to go to Ebay’s flexible destination tool which you can find here. Fill in your Commission Junction PID number (you did sign up for the CJ Ebay Affiliate program first right?) and then paste in the URl that you copied from the Ebay search. Finally, enter in the text that you want your customers to click on to take them to the Ebay Ipod section. Something like “click here” or “right here” will do.
6) The final step is to email all the Craigslist people who placed the ads with your information. An email that is worded similar to this will work well:
Hi,
I noticed you were looking for an Ipod. I did some searching and found some Ipods that you might be interested in right here (the “right here” would be your link to Ebay as exlpained above in #5.)
I hope this helps.
Your Name
Send the email and then do it again and again for each of the people looking for those Ipods. By the way, this is not spamming since these people have placed wanted ads and you are simply pointing them in a direction that may help them find what they are looking for. Always be curtious of course and try to help them.
You can do this in any city, for any item, and the wanted ads keep changing so you will never run out of ads to respond to! If you have questions about the Ebay affiliate payout structure please see this post from last week.
This system is not neccessarily an easy one but it is free. It costs you absolutely nothing to try and the more you do it the easier it will become. Remember, you get $25.00 for everyone who signs up and wins an auction through your link! That is a nice payoff that may motivate you to send off another batch of helpful emails.
Technorati Tags: Ebay Affiliate reveiw, Ebay Affiliate marketing, How to market Ebay
I’m not sure this particular technique would be welcomed on craigslist. And remember, the definition of spam is very subjective.
I ran a very successful site that had a 250,000 member database on our regular mailing (went out about 3 times a week). The database was double opt-in and we saved the ip/time of both the original signup and double opt-in.
Each time I sent, it was normal to get 5 to 10 spam complaints sent to my host accusing me of spamming them. Of course we included at the bottom of each e-mail not only the original date/time of the signup and IP address but a link back to our site to review the full record and to unsubscribe.
Our e-mails were clearly identified and some of these people had been on the list for months and in fact at one point or another would be very active on it (we know how many links in the e-mails you clicked, etc.).
Spam? I honestly think not. Remember, the people placing the ads are requesting help. They want responses. By doing a search for them and providing an easy way for them to get there (through your link), you are really providing a service. I have not had one person get upset and a handful have thanked me. I have had several people say something like “thanks, I never thought of Ebay”. Ebay is very mainstream but not everyone remembers to go there everytime they need something.
Thanks for the great idea. This sound very interesting and I am going to try it out. I’ll let you know how I do.
I just started looking for ways to make money online and this sounds like a great idea. I don’t have any website yet but I can try this to see if it works. Can I join the Ebay affiliate program without a website? Thanks.
Thomas,
If you don’t have a website sign up for a free blog at Blogger.com and make it as good looking as you can. That should be good enough to have Ebay accept you into their affiliate program. After that, you are good to go.
wow..I never thought of utilizing the Ebay affiliate program like this. Has this system been successful for you? If yes, at what rate?
Anyways Great site, Keep up the good work!
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thanks
very interesting
i will give it a try
very interesting and innovative!
I started this some time ago whenever i had some time to kill just search Craigslist and then ebay, and send the url of the offer in ebay to people looking for it.
people usually send me an email to thank me, little money started to roll, that was OK, until i got an email from CJ that upon sign up it has been cleared that i should not use any email campaign for ebay, and I should stop promoting ebay using email campaign or my account will be suspended.
so i did stop doing it.
if anyone got a solution for this appreciate your post here. thanks
sorry for double posting,
I just found this while searching, you may want to know this:
http://forums.ebay.com/db1/thread.jspa?messageID=2007958994&forumID=118&x#2007958994
Ebay is a great way to use, and actually start out for like beginning affiliate marketers, if your just starting in the web marketing, with affiliates then ebay is the place you should go.
I’ve been doing this very same thing but I never added ebays link into the mix. That is a damn good idea and it’ll make me look more professionl thanks.
There is a ebay plugin that is similar to this except when people go to your sites from the search engines it shows a related ebay product link like the search… :)
This is an awesome idea. The best way to avoid violating ebay’s rules would be to just post a link on your own website/blog, then email a link to applicable page of yur site. I’ve started using this method yesterday when I read the article, and have already received a bunch of clicks. I think this will work out well.