Oct 24, 2009

How to Legally Sell an Affiliate Product on eBay



by: Brian McGregor
If you're involved as an affiliate for any product, you've probably wrestled with how you can sell the product on eBay. 
 
After all, eBay offers you a massive potential audience of 147 million members. And people who read about your product will likely have found it by searching thus saying they are interested in the product area in which your product resides. 
 
The bad news, however, is that there is no easy way to market affiliate products on eBay! 
 
First of all, if you haven't heard of affiliate selling, here's a very quick description of how it works. 
 
Fundamentally, selling an affiliate product requires that you get interested buyers to click on a special link. This link takes the person to the product owner's sales page. More importantly, the link also contains your unique affiliate code - it is this code which ensures that sales made from your introductions are recorded in your affiliate account. Finally, if your prospect purchases the product, it is the owner who handles product delivery and who also you with your sales commission payment.

On eBay, you could easily set up an auction saying how marvellous your affiliate product is. You will certainly attract a number of people who would be interested in buying. The problem is, you have no legitimate way of selling it to eBay members! It's against eBay's rules to have a link in your auction page which takes your readers away to another website to make a sale. 
 
Also, if you think about it, you don't have the affiliate product to deliver. There's no mechanism for you to make the sale on eBay, and deliver the product. If you recall, this is handled automatically by the product owner. 
 
So here are two ways in which you can tap into the eBay market with your affiliate products. 
 
1. The Simple System
You create an auction which explains the benefits of the affiliate product you're promoting.
What do you offer on your eBay auction for the affiliate product? You sell the information on where to get hold of this superb product. And you sell these details for just one penny. 
 
Whenever someone "buys" your information, you send them an email saying thank you for your purchase. You then explain they don't really need to send you a penny, and here is the link to the fantastic product in which they've expressed an interest. 
 
Of course, the link is YOUR affiliate link. 
 
By the way, in your auction description page please think of a new angle for the product. You'll find almost everybody who is an affiliate for any popular product will be using the suggested sales material supplied by the product owner. 
 
This means that you just appear to be one of many, and the standard sales pitch will be littering the internet. Your interested purchaser has probably seen some of these already. Why should they take notice of your one penny auction for the same product? 
 
Lace your auction description with personal and credible information about the product, and you will get some of those prospective buyers to go with you. Incidentally, you could find that your one penny auctions are removed by eBay. After all, a one penny auction doesn't bring eBay very much by way of listing or final value fee. 
 
If this happens to you, you could try system 2 below, and you can also place your one penny auction on other auction sites such as Yahoo, Amazon, QXL etc 
 
2. The Not as Simple System
With this system, you need to do a little research before you launch your eBay auction for your affiliate product. 
 
The objective here is to create a package of items which are related to your affiliate products, and which you auction at 0.99 cents or pence. 
 
First off, you need to create a 2 or 3 page report about your affiliate product. Ideally this should be based on your personal experience with the product. Failing that, it should be written in your own personal style. The key point is that it must include your affiliate link to the product. 
 
The next step is to find other items for your "package", you do this by using Google search to locate related free products. Let's suppose you're an affiliate for an ebook which teaches how to paint and draw figures. On Google you would search for something like "figure drawing" free. 
 
It took me under 10 minutes to locate the following freebies:
Photographing Your Artwork (free ebook)
3D Figure Drawing Studio software (free trial)
How to Sell Your Art (free newsletter) 
 
And there are many more you could unearth given a little more research time. Be a little careful in your selection - you don't want to give away something which will compete with your affiliate ebook. 
 
Having found your items, what you now do is bundle them up and add them to your 2/3 page report. You then create an auction which offers the whole package for 99 cents or pence. 
 
There's no way eBay can possibly object to this auction.
As you can see, all it really takes to get your affiliate product in front of eBay's massive market place is a little creativity. 
 
About the author:
Brian McGregor specializes in showing website owners how to make more money from their sites by applying inventive and original use of eBay. For a free copy of ‘The eBay Traffic Funnel’ which shows you how to use the power of eBay to make more money with your website, visit http://www.more-auction-sales.com/websites/
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