Professional eBay Affiliate Jacking
Posted on February 20, 2008
Filed Under Damn Affiliates
In the last few days there have been several instances with the incorrect reporting of eBay affiliate commissions through CJ. No doubt this will soon be resolved, however during the forum discussion, an important issue has been touched on how some very large Powersellers and organizations with close ties to eBay are engaged in Affiliate cookie jacking. Let us discuss.
First to define the goal of the eBay affiliate program
- The goal is that by use of the affiliate program, eBay will be acquiring customers and sales that would have never bought from eBay if not for the work of the affiliate
- For this referral, the affiliate is entitled to %50-%75 of the eBay revenue from the final sale and $25-$35 for each new referred ACRU (Active new user Registration)
Seems pretty simple? Basically without the good work of affiliates, eBay would have never had this business and therefore they pay up to %75 for the referral. Not bad and pretty generous on their part.
The standard eBay affiliate model involves creating a content website and through this website- users clickthrough to eBay and purchase. Now before we review the following mal-practices I want to say that I am not an expert on the eBay Affiliate TOS, but what I can tell you is that these practices are causing both eBay and honest affiliates to be losing quite a bit of revenue to wasted money paid to cookie-jackers
The bad models
- Ad-ware Cookie Stuffing. Companies such as Zango and others get the user to install a tool-bar, screen saver or other semi-virus that is stuffed with cookies for eBay and also every other major shopping site they can think of. What happens is that the spyware stays in the background on the users computer, but when that user visits eBay or other shopping site of their own accord, the ad-ware does an invisible pop-up of the exact same eBay page, but stuffed with their cookie.
- This means that If I have the ad-ware on my computer and visit eBay to buy something, the ad-ware is going to trick eBay to make it think that I was referred by them and then they get paid %50+ of the eBay fees.
- This is very bad for honest affiliates who will spend their own $$$ to refer a user to eBay only to have their cookie overwritten
- To note, that eBay is well aware of such practices and does their best to stop, however there is question of the commitment of of the commission partners who get paid more for such a thing because there are more commission
- Browser Cookie Stuff. In practice a user has to click on the eBay rover link in order to have the cookie placed on their computer, however there are certain high-traffic websites that all you have to do is visit the page in question and automatically your browser is stuffed with cookies from eBay and whoever else they can get away with. It is a quite easy piece of code to implement. This practice is highly against the TOS but still continues.
- Ebay Application Stuffing. This is a common semi-approved/mostly ignored tactic used by numerous eBay application developers. what they do is create some helpful application either PC or browser based and give it to you for free or a small fee. While this application may be useful, in the process of performing the action, it will also stuff your browser with the eBay affiliate cookie, effectively stealing the commission from eBay and other honest users.
- The most common application of this is Bid-Snipping software. Almost all bid-snipers are stuffed with an affiliate cookie, so even if they are giving it to you for free, be aware that they are stealing from eBay in the process
- Officially approved Powerseller Cookie Jacking - famous auction companies such as Auctiva and others are famous for introducing tools that they give free to the sellers, but in the process of using the tools they steal away the eBay commission.
- A common approach is to create a gallery software and give it free to sellers. When the buyer clicks on the gallery to inspect the items a new window is opened in which the items are displayed embedded with the companies cookie. Whether this is against the eBay TOS or not I am not sure as I am sure that they have lawyers figuring out exactly what they can do. However allowed or not it is not fair towards honest affiliates who will spend time driving sales to eBay only to have their cookie overwritten by a parasite.
- Large Powersellers are also notorious for multiple re-directs of traffic that end up with the buyer using their cookie even if the buyer came to eBay on their own.
Comments
5 Responses to “Professional eBay Affiliate Jacking”
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Your description of Ebay Application Stuffing is incorrect. Sniping software and other service based software that refers users to eBay using an affiliate code is simply an affiliate lead. Cookie jacking refers to replacing the cookies or affiliate codes assigned by website during the request.
This is typically done by resident programs that intercept or proxy calls to ebay or make background requests to the ebay site to assign and overwrite a legitimately assigned cookie.
While a sniping program could do this, sniping programs are not by their nature stealing cookies or affiliate revenue. They are earning affiliate revenue by referring users.
The cookie based affiliate process works by the last assigned cookie getting the revenue. So if a user is referred to ebay by one site and then is referred to ebay a day later by another site, the second site will get the revenue generated after their cookies was assigned. This is perfectly normal. Reassigning the cookie in the background without the user’s knowledge or action is what is at issue.
Jake M-
what you say is correct. while legal and within the TOS (not sniping programs but others) i still do not agree with the process as they add no value. But that is the way it is and the rules - so what does that teach us?
Do it better than them or get out of the soup.
I hope the problems you mentioned with CJ will not occur with the new Ebay affiliate system.
Unfortunately the problem seems to be more rampant than ever, especially with companies such as Auctiva.
An affiliate works hard to send someone to eBay through their quality content rich / useful advice site, the individual goes to eBay to make the purchase. Under normal circumstances, the affiliate would be paid, but the second that the potential purchaser clicks on Enlarge Images for example, s/he is taken to Auctiva (in this case) Images.
Auctiva then actually overwrites the cookie of the original affiliate with their own.
The purchaser then buys the item, the original affiliate does not get paid, even though s/he sent that purchaser to eBay, instead Auctiva gets paid the commission (in this case), for simply redirecting the buyer to the auction from ‘within’ eBay itself.
In other words Auctiva steals the affiliates cookie in a nutshell.
eBay think this practice is ok, as long as it does not occur in disproportionate numbers, whatever the dickens that is supposed to mean, according to the present discussion taking place on the EPN Discussion Forum at eBay.
Many affiliates understandably are absolutely furious that such a practice is not only condoned, but is allowed apparently, to continue, as it makes a complete mockery of all the hard work and effort on the part of the original affiliate who is doing his or her best to send high quality traffic to eBay.
That’s why I don’t rely simply on eBay for affiliate revenue. Become an affiliate for every merchant you can get your hands on and use their datafeeds and promote the crap out of them along with eBay. Use as many avenues available.