(Writing this blog post has been on my To Do List since the end of Oct and I kept forgetting to write about it. Sorry! Senility, it can apparently happen to young people.)

The eBay Partner Network (who I make fun of constantly despite the fact that I actually really like this program) came up with a really great idea for the holidays. It’s a promotion that will benefit sellers and bloggers alike and it has me very excited. I’ll let you tell them in their own words:

How does the Promotion work?

If you increase your earnings during the months of the promotion by at least 20% compared to your earnings in August 2010, you will be eligible for a bonus on your total earnings for that month. These bonuses will be tiered as follows:

Earnings Increase compared to August 2010

20% – 34.99%  –  Earn a 10% bonus

35 – 49.99%  –  Earn a 30% bonus

Greater than 50%  –  Earn a 50% bonus

(…)

Please note that bonuses will be calculated separately for November and December, and paid together with the rest of your earnings for that month. For example, if your November 2010 earnings are 25% higher than your August earnings, you will earn a 10% bonus on your November earnings. If your December earnings are then only 10% higher than your August earnings, you would not receive a bonus for December.

With this promotion, there’s even more opportunity for you to benefit from the peak holiday shopping season this year with eBay Partner Network!

If you just clicked through to the original article, let me clear up any confusion. The original post said the promotion was only for Europe but a few days later they updated it here to include the US and Canada.

So all you have to do is refer more customers to eBay during the holidays than you did in the retail dead zone that is August and you get a bonus. Pretty easy, right?

I like this for two big reasons. As a seller, eBay is basically paying bloggers to send more traffic to eBay this holiday season which is a win for us no matter how you slice it. Even if you only use the Partner Network to link to your own items, you’ll probably still see an increase in revenue because of this because you are almost guaranteed to sell more in Nov/Dec than in August. Love that!

The second big reason I like it is, as a blogger, it’s like a little Christmas present and a great incentive to come up with creative ways to use eBay Partner Network links. Also, I know personally, this announcement made me send out a memo to
the bloggers within my company to favor eBay referral links over Amazon
Associates for the next two months and I’m sure I’m not the only person
operating under that logic. Might this make at least a dent in Amazon’s retail lead?

If you’ve got an EPN account that’s been mostly inactive, dust it the heck off this holiday season! If you did not referrals in August, that’s got to make it that much easier to do more in November/December and who doesn’t like a little extra cash!

Anyway, a great idea out of the EPN that I wanted to share. How will this effect how you sell and blog this holiday season?