I opened my email today and found some information from Ebay on terms fo service coming into effect in August according to their blog.
It’s about what they consider their “Accepted Business Model”. The things that stood out for me were:
*Publishers may only place links and/or promotional content on sites they own. Affiliate links on third party sites such as Craigslist, MySpace, etc. are not allowed.
*You will not redirect any traffic to middle servers for the sole purpose of masking your referring source of traffic. This includes the use of URL shortening services (including but not limited to tinyurl.com, short.to and cloakedlink.com).
Ok, I understand the concept in general.
But why on earth would they stop someone with an affiliate account from seeking traffic from MySpace or another third party site? I can see how posting Ebay affiliate links on Craigslist would probably violate Craigslist’s terms of service, but bands and local businesses could have a presence on MySpace (the site seems pretty well ranked for some local search keywords). Why not link to items they don’t sell on Ebay?
I can see why you wouldn’t from the affiliate’s point of view… hand posting individual links that may constantly change would be a time consuming nightmare. But I don’t see Ebay’s complaint on the surface of things.
How do you react to these new changes? Will they affect your ebay business?
Search Engine Joel on July 21st, 2009 at 11:59 am
I personally don’t like ebay, they have became too greedy and pushed a lot of sellers and affiliates away. My personal opinion though.