ZinText - Contextual eBay Affiliate Advertising Platform

I have been in the web publishing business for 7 years now, and along the way I have experimented with almost every advertising network available. In terms of traditional web advertising (banner ads, boxes, skyscrapers) I don’t think anyone can really beat Google’s AdSense. I use them exclusively except where we sell direct advertising, which is always going to be more lucrative (no middle man!). There are many other ways to make money online, including popunders, interstertials, affiliate links, and lots more I am not going to mention here. As a rule I avoid “no choice” advertising like popunders or interstertials, because I hate them in my personal surfing experience.

Another interesting way of advertising surfaced a few years ago. Pioneered by companies like intelliTXT and Kontera, in-text advertising is something you have seen on the web and may not even know it. A web publisher simply places a few lines of code into their website template, then the network analyzes their content and links certain words that their advertisers have purchased. These links look like normal links but they have a double underline and when you hover your mouse over them they pop a little dialog balloon with some marketing copy. If a visitor to your site clicks, you get a fixed cost per click, and you share that revenue with the ad network, usually intelliTXT or Kontera. (for all the people who are going to comment and point out companies like tribal fusion who also have in-text advertising solution, I know. I know.)

I personally used intelliTXT, then switched to Kontera for marginally better performance. I was making $2 - $3 eCPM with Kontera, meaning for every thousand impressions I was making a few bucks. Not bad, I thought. At the same time, I was messing around with ebay’s excellent affiliate program, creating niche stores like Cars For a Grand and Get a Cheap TV. If you don’t know about eBay’s program - learn. Anytime you send a click to ebay it sets a 7 day cookie, so anything they buy you get a fee for. Great thing is, everyone uses ebay, so almost ANY traffic is going to result in commissions. Their fee schedule changes but is very lucrative, check out details at affiliates.ebay.com.

With some inspiration from Shawn I decided to build a simple web application that would behave like intelliTXT or Kontera but instead of splitting cpc fees with an ad network, would deliver clicks to ebay. I tested it on my forum archive with great results. Instead of $2-$3 eCPMs I was seeing $8-$9. Seemed like some pretty simple math to me, so I am offering this service to the world. For free you ask? Of course not, this is America Jack! Just kidding, it is free, I only take a VERY SMALL % of clicks as a fee for using the service.

I have asked eBay’s affiliate team repeatedly to sign off on this program and they have been at best unresponsive. I got one response back that obviously hadn’t read my email in any detail, so I have contacted them again and again and will hopefully get a response soon. I have looked over their terms and conditions, and the T&C of CJ, and the program seems to be well within their rules.

Oh I forgot to mention I also set it up with geoip targeting so a visitor from the UK would go to eBay UK, a visitor from Australia would go to ebay.au, etc. So if you are going to use it make sure you are enrolled in all the available eBay programs on CJ.

www.ZinText.com

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