eBay Affiliates: Be Careful How You Tweet

[eBayNews]

eBay announced more changes to its affiliate program, the eBay Partner Network (ePN). eBay originally announced changes to accepted business and compensation models in eBay Partner Network in May. Friday's announcement explained that eBay was making a few updates to the ePN Platform concerning domain validation; dashboard updates; special business models; and click filtering, and it answered member concerns in a discussion board thread (see post number 37).

eBay said "Direct to eBay" links (or any automated redirects to eBay) are banned from third-party sites such as Craigslist and MySpace. Affiliates may not use sites like Twitter to link directly to eBay - "It is ok for your links to lead to your own websites that have links to eBay, but not to lead to eBay directly." Also of concern to affiliates was the banning of third-party trademarks in their URLs.

eBay also announced on Friday that affiliates must complete a Special Business Model form to apply for approval for business models such as Loyalty and Incentives, Downloadable Software, and Electronic Communications.