Yeah, yeah, don't make fun of me. So I don't know what AuctionAds is...give me a break, we've got a lot going on here at the MozQuarters (especially with Rand in China...in fact, the Moz Squad will be very busy today
Basically, you sign up on their site to be an AuctionAds publisher and insert their ad code on your site. They show relevant eBay products to your visitors (relevant meaning related to your site's content), and you make money when a visitor clicks on the ad. I chatted with Neil Patel about AuctionAds because he's pretty familiar with the site, and he said that AuctionAds places a 30-day cookie on users who click through from your site, so during that time if they convert into a signup or win an auction you can get paid. According to Neil, sometimes you can get paid if the user simply bids on a product but doesn't win (apparently this depends on the geotargeting, the location of the user, and what version of eBay he or she is using).
Neil said that AuctionAds is much better than Adsense if you have a lot of social media traffic, and he knows people who make over $10k/month with it. I'm not sure how well the platform is working for BuddyTV, but I did see the products they served me:
I would think that more relevant products for BuddyTV would be TV shows on DVD, not audiobooks and sheet music. Oh well.
Have any of you used AuctionAds? If so, how satisfied are you with the service? Does it bring a nice stream of revenue?
P.S. Neil just fired me an email saying that AuctionAds takes no revenue cut--they pay out 100% to the publisher.
I really like AuctionAds and and think it is a great source of revenue. In fact, my site has realeased a wordpress plugin for AuctionAds. It was featured on the AuctionAds Blog.
I think AdSense or YPN is a much better way to make money. I have made over $12,000.00 with AdSense alone... With the AuctionAds you only get paid if someone makes a purchase but with AdSense or YPN you get paid every time the ad gets click on. My buddy Tim Carter over at askthebuilder.com generates over $1,400.00/day with AdSense. If you can get the traffic and have great content there is still money to be made.
Chitika's eMiniMalls is another publisher network, just does not pay as well from my experience.
Has anyone noticed that Adsense revenue/performance has dropped conciderably in the last year or so?
I am getting more visitors but revenue is declining. Weird.
I'll have to look into this AuctionAds thing.
A colleague of mine mentioned, you have to have many revenue streams on multiple sites in order to make any sensible return.
Personally for all the effort involved and no guarantee on the targeting, could have a negative impact for SEO.
Just my thoughts....;-)....
Good reading otherwise.....
I wonder if the average web user is getting wise to what Adsense is? I believe many people have clicked on Adsense in the past because they've mistaken it for regular links. I hear more and more people mention Adsense in regular conversation now. Even if they don't know or can't remember what it's called, people mention "the Google ads" more now. It always seemed like the point of Adsense was trickery: fooling people into not realizing the links were ads. If "the average user" knows what they are now, they're way more likely to skip over them.
AuctionAds is a Shoemoney project.
Its actually a joint venture between my parent company and Media Wiz (owner of text link ads, review me, etc..)
Thanks for the heads up. This might be interesting for monitizing blogs.
If they pay out 100%, where's their revenue coming from?
Jamie,
According to Neil:
Have you ever had the experience of reading a newspaper story about an event to which you were close? Frequently it makes you realize how sloppy the reporting was and question the acccuracy or completness of other stores you read. I'm afraid the comments in this thread resemble that.
People who have never bought anything on Ebay, who haven't taken the time to understand how and when they will get paid, and who have not taken the time to read and understand how auctionads works, are publishing comments that look very silly.
I must admit the comments provide excellent insight into how thorough and informed the posters are :)
I operate a well established (10 years) special interest site where I know what my users are looking for. I answer questions on this site daily so I am monitoring it almost full time. I KNOW exactly what is going on on my pages at least 65% of the day. My experiance is similar to that of Silly Bill but on a larger scale. 44,000 impressions, 4,400 clicks $17. (Which I'll never see due to the $50 minimum payout)
With adsense ads I make about $250 for that number of impressions and $1000 on that many clickthroughs.
We tested auctionads in place of google adsense ads in a couple prominent positions on our home page and popular forum pages. The auction ads never performed as advertised, the system broken or overloaded and rife with faulty logic. IF it had performed properly the income might have been 30% more. Still not enough.
1) Using simple key words for items that there is always a sufficient number of on ebay worked only about 50 to 60% of the time. The rest of the time completely irrelevant  "junk" ads were displayed. I complained to auctionads. The first response was that there might not be enough items for my keywords (there are always thousands - I KNOW these ebay categories)
2) After numerous complaints I was told of the unpublished "10 minute" rule and that it was probably my problem. If you do the math that is only 144 page hits a day. My pages with the ads were doing a thousand or more page hits each a day (often more than 10x the minimum) and the auction ads stats reported such. When I reported the problem it was looked into but never admitted to being a problem on THEIR end, it was always MY problem. It was NOT my problem.
3) At least once a day but usually more often the system would time out leaving ugly error blocks on my pages OR empty "$0.00 bid" spaces OR irrelevant ads for an hour or more. For one full weekend the system never produced a relevant ad.
4) While the click through rate per impression was roughly the same as for adsense ads or higher the income was much less. This may be due to the item categories but it resulted in ebay receiving advertising at much lower rates than they can (and DO) buy on google.
5) The final breaking point was when instead of keyword related ads I had pages loaded with inappropriate sexually targeted (gay interest) ads. This was against our long standing family friendly policy and I was forced to remove the ads from dozens of pages.
It is fairly obvious from the way the system acts that the 10 minute rule is an excuse for a broken system. On one simple page that rarely met the 10 minute rule andwith a single ad unit the system provided the right ads 75% of the time. On the higher traffic pages that never ran less than one impression every 1 minute with multiple ads the system only provided the targeted ads 50 to 60% of the time.
The sad part of this is that the system is not new. Problems are being denied rather than being fixed.
I LIKED the content the ads provided. Our users had mixed feeling on them but they DID attract click throughs. All they had to do is provide the ads to fit the keywords as promised. If the system had worked I would have expanded it to many more pages.
The system also needs a filter like google provides. While I selected the keywords to attract the ads I wanted there are MANY unscrupulous dealers on ebay in every category. It would be easy to filter ads from specific dealers (IF the system worked).
I suspect the system is overloaded AND does not have complete support from those that maintain the ebay database system.
If you care about what kind of ads run on your site then don't run auction ads.
I'm using auction ads on a couple of sites as a test and am very pleased with the results. You have to put more work into it than simply slapping up the adsense code, but it pays off.
Hi,
Im a new auctionads.com supporter and love it, its honestly the most user friendly and easiest to join affiliate program ive ever found. I was signed up and had an ad running within 5 min.
The customer service i have experienced so far from Shoemoney and from the staff at auction ads, is prompt and professional. And, while i havent converted a sale yet. My CTR is better than any other program i run, so its only a matter of time. im also targeting high dollar goods, so if i only convert one a year i will be happy.
my only reservation is the amount ebay pay out to affiliates, as a professional ebayer, it hurts to think so much of my listing fees go to others, so hopefully i can recover some this way,
kindest regards
phillip
I've been using AuctionAds for a while now. Not making a lot on them, but I do think that they are a nice way of making money. Pictures of the actual products can help a lot when trying to get people to click though.
Auction Ads have some problems they haven't addressed yet. Their ads don't always trigger based on the keywords in the javascript so they end up showing completely irrelevant ads often. Occasionally I've seen it work right, so I'm not sure if it's a caching problem or if the system is slow to update to changes in keywords. Not quite ready for prime time IMHO. In addition, they also seem to have a problem in responding to publisher questions related to the issue.
High click-through on our automotive photo/audio/video hosting site. I define 'High" has averaging 1.5% CTR over the last 2 weeks. Ran it for 1 week and started seeing fairly decent results especially compared to the impressions (it outperformed Tribal Fusion and AdWords) on day #6 and #7.
Revenue has dropped back to nearly $0.00 the past week, which is odd because CTR's are up, impressions are up -- I'm hoping that the 30-day cookie and the multi-day auctions are going to help in the long-run.
Will continue to run it for an entire month and will post a full evaluation. So far, we like what we see, and the dynamic targeting of keywords based on content we pull from pages of our site is quite nice. Their targeting engine does need some work -- I routinely see ads that are definitely not matches for the very broad keywords we're supplying.
I just started using AuctionAds on my blog...so far it has had REALLY high CTR's, but no revenue yet.
I try to do specific post targetting, but it's a pain to do it in each post. I may try the plugin that was mentioned above. I'm still trying to give it a chance, as I see the potential. I could image things like cars making a ton of money if people are bidding and winning.
I signed up for it when Problogger readers could get a free $5 for signing up.
I just launched a new blog, so I'm not expecting it to make $ right now. I did get some clicks on it but no sales.
Last night, though, some ads were popping up for civil war memorabilia for people like Robert E Lee who i don't exactly consider a hero (despite my North Cakalaki residency).
Not only did it not match the theme of my site, but i didn't want to offend any vsitors. So i took the ads down.
I'm hoping the service will improve and by the time i'm ready to monetize the blog, everything will be good to go.
I as up to chuck up the auctionAds code on my site, until I read about the poor targetting and decided against it. I may test it on my smaller less well known websites just incase anything breaks.
Yes, they'd definitely have to be serving well-targeted ads if they're targeting at all. Serving poorly-targeted ads isn't going to cut it!
Actually the ads are 100% targeted by the user through keywords and it can ever get more advanced by max/min price and even seller ids. So untargeted ads are either the result of a site getting less then 1 hit every 10 minutes (to grab new auctions) OR user error ;)
Jeremy, I realize this is basically what you just said, but I thought I'd post what's on the AuctionAds FAQ
It made things a little clearer for me and I thought it might for someone else.
AuctionAds FAQ
Hadn't heard of them either, thanks for the heads up, looks interesting.
BTW, nice job on winning the SMX pass from Aaron. Ass chap sucks!
Yeah, I didn't want to have to throw the "ass chaff" card but I did, and it worked:) Thanks.
That and the mythical beast killing... grats
Youuu!! You stole my pass!! :)
Congrats.
I saw you won too. Conrgats
Had it up for about 3 months now with a massive $16 return (although that hasn't actually hit the bank yet...)
I have to say that I found the system for setting up the targetting rather clunky - I was doing it more to see how it worked, rather than from any expectation fo being able to retire this year - maybe that pulug in will make it all a bit easier...
In Germany eBay.de /.at runs a similar affiliate program: eBay relevance Ads.
They pay out ppc 15ct (Euro = 20 ct US$) and up to 25ct per bid/buy via German Affiliate Brooker. It seems it is limited only to eBay.de/.at for european sites.
They crawl your site for keywords and you can give hint-keywords and kategories when else fails.
With eBay relevance Ads you can earn more than with adsense on a product related site. Seems that Auction Ads uses their scheme.
We do have a partnership with eBay .de and are on the top revenue tier that passes on to users.
Thanks for the heads-up Rebecca. I got an email from these guys a few days ago & wondered what it was all about. (I've since been informed that the answer to my question was not the hokey pokey).
I run a site that gets a ton of traffic in Feb. + Mar. but not much the rest of the year & was disappointed with adsense revenues this year. But since I get so little traffic throughout the rest of the year, it's hard for me to test different revenue streams. Maybe AuctionAds relevance will improve in the next 8 mos. + it will be something to think about in '08.
Isn't AuctionAds run by ShoeMoney?
It made the list of money makers from John Chow too...
https://www.johnchow.com/make-money-on-the-internet-april-2007/
Although he didn't post earnings from it the past few months that I saw.
I am not a big affiliate earner, however the topics always intrigue me. There are a few sites I run where AuctionAds may fit well, but I am currently trying other forms of monetization for it.
RE: Rand being in China ...
I thought the new posts rate was down lately and the topics haven't been quite what I am used to seeing regularly here.
Ah, the last four posts (before Rebecca's) were written by Rand while he was in Seattle. And the post prior to that, posted by Scott, features Rand on a video.
???
Maybe my minimal detail comment caused the wrong impression, as it often does in general.
Not to say that he hadn't written any of them, or that they are in any way not "up to par." It's just that it seemed you all had a lot going on at the moment and perhaps maybe the amount of posts were down. The diversity of the topics recently is good too, just bringing it to light. It seemed to me you all bring something different and unique to the mix (obviously the point, but good job).
eCopt, Rand left for China today--as Jane said, all of his posts from this week/late last week were written while he was still here.
Rebecca, stop the charade, we all know that you are Rand :)
It's amazing what a Schick Quatro razor and a dark wig can do...
sniffle ... no. no, please.
"Rebecca, stop the charade, we all know that you are Rand :) " Hahaha! I actually burst out laughing out loud when I read that. The office I'm in is always quiet.
Totally bummed that my last few posts weren't up to standards for you :( I'll have to work even harder while I'm here in .cn land.
The posts are great. If you work harder we won't be able to keep up, and this is all good stuff. If you work harder, you might peg it - in fact I'm surprised you can do as much as you do already. If you peg it, someone will inherit Moz-Land, and we've got 'from-the-horses-mouth' knowledge that that might be a very not good thing. So just enjoy, come back safe, and we'll hang about for the next installment with baited breath :-). And I was wondering if we shouldn't start calling ourselves something - you know like Fish-letts ;-)
Rand, your posts are great! I don't know what that guy's talking about.
Best blog that I've found.
Don't be bummed Rand, you do a fine job of running your firm and the posts on your blog are always up to standard in my book. All I was trying to say is that by the look of the posts lately it seemed to me that you all must be really busy working for clients, planning speaking events, making Whiteboard vids, updating 2.0 Awards etc.
Not to mention the fact that the Viral Marketing & Linkbait Article was due on the 15th and it doesn't appear to be updated on the articles page.
With all that who has time to post a million times? No one.
I am glad you are doing so well and that it hasn't diluted the quality of posts. All I was saying about the topics is that they seemed more diverse, and that's a good thing.
Thought I said this all after Jane and Rebecca came to your defense for no reason, as I was not trying to say anything negative.
eCopt, that was admirable of you to clear up what you meant by your comment. Don't worry, we're not out to get you. :)
I have been using Auctionads for several weeks and deleted it all from my website this morning. Problems I encountered:
1. Over 2000 page impressions....sales: 0
2. Despite many attempts to block nonrelevant KWs from Java script, unrelated ads kept appearing, even porn.
3. Complaints to Auction ads had little effect.
4. Auctionads website is often down, leaving great white gaping holes in your web pages where ads should be.
5. Conclusion: Auctionads sucks.
Thanks for the feedback, Silly Bill. It sucks that you had such a negative experience with them.
I am surprised to read that people do not make any revenue with AuctionAds.
If well targetted (you have to know your visitors really well) it can and will do wonders, especially on product related sites as mentionned before.
For us at www.side-line.com it is close to what we earn with adsense, though summer is less well going (less ebay auctions anyhow) than the months before.
An extra advantage is that we realise now that our visitors are actually also buying stuff and not just passng by, which is good to know. Anyhow, our site always did well with affilate sales, so it's no big surprise.
And at least in one case it convinced an advertisor to spend a nice amount on publicity on our site because he saw we actually generate sales and not just clicks.
PS: Silly Bill: 2000 pageviews is really peanuts you know... we generate between 17.000 and 25.000 a day and that is still very little to what many others do on here.
With a site that is receiving thousands of visitors a day it is a must have.