Seán Crotty

News & Conferences

Figured I should point to one of my posts on the ReveNews.com affiliate news site.  I wrote about "Going International" as an affiliate or an affiliate program.

Since Jim Kukral asked me to join as a contributing blogger, I've done a recap of the Affiliate Summit conference, two items about the eBay Developers Conference:  the date & place and registration & affiliate sessions, and a description of a talk by Douglas Hofstadter.

Speaking of the Affiliate Summit, I've been accepted to speak at Affiliate Summit East in July.  Shawn Collins has graciously bestowed a full hour on me to talk about eBay Web Services for Affiliates.  If you're in Orlando, Florida on Monday, July 10th, please stop by Walt Disney World, Hilton Hotel, Grand Salon VIII from 2:00 to 3:00 p.m. for my presentation.

eBay API Usage Report

Excellent new feature for people who use eBay Web Services.  The just-released API Usage Report enables you to see what API calls you've made.

Before, you'd have to keep track of this yourself.  Now, this web form will show you exactly which calls you've made over any given period of time.  You can even look six months back and specify hour ranges.

A very useful service for affiliate developers who want insight into how the eBay API increases their results.

Spoke at Affiliate Summit

Got to speak at the Affiliate Summit conference a couple of weeks ago.

I was on the “Evolution of Data Feeds” panel, on Tuesday, January 10, 2006 at 2:00 p.m.  We had 160 people in the audience.  Discussed data feeds in general, eBay’s current data feeds, Web Services from eBay, and when to use each.  I highlighted Verizon’s Superpages and Earthlink’s TechShop as two great affiliate sites that use eBay data.

The panel was moderated by Larry Adams of Performics, and included Vinny Lingham, Connie Berg, and Asif Malik. Some of the topics addressed were:

-- the problem of data latency and the propogation of old data (an API with time updating is one solution)

-- should datafeed structures be standardized? If so, how? (disagreement on this, since source data is changeable and publishers have many different needs)

-- the relative performance of banners vs. product data from a feed. (product data almost always does better)

-- the general trend toward merchants offering web services / an API (definitely a good thing)

The summit is run by Shawn Collins, and has grown quickly since inception in November 2003 . This show, at Bally’s in Las Vegas, sold out at 1,200 attendees, with 400 people on the wait list (tickets were going for a premium on eBay). The show alternates between the West in the winter and the East in the summer. The next one will be July 9-11 at Disney World in Florida.

I would highly encourage people to speak at a conference on behalf of their company. It’s a great deal for the company – which gets lots of exposure. eBay got a mention on the “Companies Attending” page, the “Speakers” page, and my bio page.

After I spoke, Jim Kukral, publisher of the affiliate news site ReveNews.com, approached me and asked me to be a contributing blogger on ReveNews. I said I’d be delighted and he set me up with my own area of the site, including a bio, and a link section for things I think people should see. Jim welcomed me with an intro post, and I started off by describing my favorite sessions at the Affiliate Summit.

API-enabled “it”

A while ago, I worked with Agency.com (the ad agency that creates much of eBay’s online creative material) to get them set up on the eBay API.

With our latest big ad campaign, the “it” campaign (you may have seen it …), Agency.com uses the API to show live information from eBay.

So, when you put your mouse over one of the ads, it will show you the actual prices on eBay of the items shown in the ad. It also shows you how many are available right now.  Pretty cool.  Real-time ads.

This article, "eBay Campaign Mixes Mystery & Comedy”, explains that “A series of API-enabled Flash ads were developed to illustrate that "it" could be any one of the millions of products in over 50,000 categories -- from cars to clothing to collectibles -- that are available on eBay.”.

In the spirit of full attribution:  BBDO is eBay’s agency of record and led the development of the "it" campaign.  The videos from the campaign are funny, including a “teaser ad” that mimics certain other tv ads, and parodies of talkshow hosts in four countries.

eBay Affiliate Developers

I run the Affiliate Tier of the Developers Program at eBay.

As you probably know, eBay started as an auction site and is now the largest e-commerce site in the world.  A Developers Program creates tools for programmers so their software can automatically interact with eBay.

Affiliates are people who have a website with special links to other websites.  When people follow these links and buy something on the target website, the affiliate gets a commission from the owner of the target website.

Not all sites offer affiliate commissions.  eBay does, through the eBay Affiliate Program.  eBay provides:

text links

Click here for eBay!

buttons

and

widgets

which affiliates can include on their website.

My program (the Affiliate Tier) is for software developers who want to create more sophisticated websites.  These “Affiliate Developers” sign up with me and get access to the eBay Application Programming Interface (API), also called eBay Web Services.

With our API, they can present anything that’s currently on eBay on their own website to entice people to go look at items on eBay.  For instance, they can show all U2 CDs available right now on eBay.  They can show statistics about how many items are on eBay, category lists to help you find what you want, ... in short, anything that would improve a users' shopping experience.

A great example is Verizon's Superpages, which shows you eBay items related to your online yellowpages search!

I've just surpassed the milestone of 1,000 affiliate developers in my program.  If you'd like to learn more, feel free to check out developer.ebay.com/affiliates.

Article catches fire

I was interviewed by Web Pro News last week.  They're an online e-commerce journal with 400,000 subscribers.

The resulting article was a little spicer than expected:  "Affiliates:  Make API Love The eBay Way", but it gives a lively account of my affiilate developer area, new API calls, cool apps, and some current opportunities.

The ripple effects have started.  The article was picked up and commented on in ThreadWatch.org, an internet marketing community website and in Search Engine Journal, and posters are responding to those items as well.

Pretty cool.  Great to spread the word about the whole API affiliate area and have so many people pass it around.