eBay sellers are always complaining about the outside advertising on the site because they feel that it sends buyers to their competitors. In light of that, I thought you’d find this very interesting.

This email came over from eCrater on July 13th:

Hello,

My name is Jennifer Bahk and I work on the Google AdSense team. Google AdSense and eCRATER have been working hard over the past couple months to integrate Google AdSense and eCRATER together. More specifically, with your eCRATER account, you are now able able to sign up for an AdSense account and earn revenue by becoming a part of Google’s publisher network.

Google AdSense is a free and easy way for website publishers to earn revenue by displaying Google ads on their website. I specialize in working with eCommerce publishers, like yourselves, to help them use Google AdSense to compliment their sales revenue.

According to eCommerce industry standards, only a very small portion of traffic actually results in a sale. This means that a majority of eCommerce traffic exits without converting into sales. Unconverted traffic is a lost opportunity.

Google AdSense can help you turn this lost opportunity into a new revenue stream by placing ads strategically on your website. DesignerApparel is one example of an eCommerce site that has had great success with Google AdSense. DesignerApparel.com offers premium designer clothes at affordable prices. They implemented AdSense for content and specifically targeted certain pages within their site.

In a recent interview with Dominic Ang, President of DesignerApparel.com, Dominic states, “While we were initially concerned about potential cannibalization, we have found out that using certain spots for AdSense such as the end of a page or in exit pages can drive significant additional revenue with no loss in our core e-commerce revenue.

To learn more about this opportunity please click at http://www.ecrater.com/earn-with-adsense.php

To sign up for AdSense, please click at https://www.ecrater.com/login.php to log into eCRATER and start the signup process by either creating a Google AdSense account or associating your eCRATER store with your existing Google AdSense account.

Sincerely,

Jennifer Bahk
The Google AdSense team

But is is a good idea to put outside advertising on your webstore? Is a few extra ad dollars worth the risk of losing the sale to an outside link?

Even if you don’t like to idea of advertising in your store, I do like two things about this. Firstly, they are letting the sellers opt in instead of just adding ads without asking like eBay did. Secondly, they’re giving sellers all or part of the revenue that results from the sales which is also a heck of a lot more then eBay ever did. If eCrater had to do this for some more revenue to survive as a site (which I suspect is the case), this is really the least painful way they could have done it.

But, as a seller, how do you feel about this? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this below.

Here are the official terms:

How it works

  • Google AdSense and eCRATER give you the opportunity to convert the traffic in your store to revenue by placing ads on your store product pages. You get paid when a visitor clicks on any of your ads. The money you earn is paid directly from Google.
  • In most cases you will receive 100% of the revenue coming from your store pages. eCRATER will receive the revenue coming from your pages in the main marketplace.
  • You will be able to easily filter out any competitive ads if you decide so.

Who can participate

  • Merchants that have at least 5 active products.
  • Merchants whose products are compliant with the Google AdSense policies. If some of your products are not compliant you can still participate but we will show Google AdSense ads only on pages that are fully compliant.
  • Merchants whose products do NOT come from affiliate, cataloged or dropshipping programs.

Special Cases

  • In certain cases you will not earn revenue from your store pages. Instead eCRATER will collect 100% of the revenue. These cases include:
  • Store inactivity for more than 60 days.
  • Instead of choosing more specific global category you listed the product in some of the main categories.
  • You uploaded no image for the product or the image you uploaded is too small (width and height < 250px).
  • You do not accept Google Checkout or Paypal in your store.

Would you put ads on your store?