Opportunities to make money online literally increase by the day.

Today I came across the news that eBay is to start offering those who list with the auction giant the opportunity to drive more traffic to their listings via eBay AdContext.

Basically, this keyword ad programme will be very similar to Google’s Adsense and similar contextual advertising programmes. Adverts promoting your listing will appear on related websites in the hope that they will drive targeted traffic to your listing and increase your number of bids or sales. So if you are selling diamond studded dog collars for example, ads promoting your listing might appear on dog related websites.

If a sale results, then the website that brought the buyer to eBay will receive up to 70% of the listing fee. And that website could be mine or yours

The big difference is that those listing on eBay won’t have to bid for keywords like those who partake in Google Adwords do. Instead, eBay AdContext will be offered as a service by eBay to those listing on the site.

Whether that means for free or for a flat fee I don’t know, but I assume not. Afterall, everyone knows that images enhance listings and increase bids, sales and therefore the auction site’s income, but that doesn’t stop eBay from charging extra to include them.

Last year alone, eBay hosted auctions worth US$44 billion across 34 international markets and earned US$3.4 billion doing so. It aready generates significant traffic via Google Adwords, but at a significant cost, and this new program is no doubt an attempt to reduce those costs by cutting out the middleman and going direct to websites.

For people who run their own websites, eBay AdContext will be yet another way of generating revenue. The fact that a sale will need to result for you to get paid means that I can’t see it being a direct threat to Google Adsense’s dominance of this particular market, but it will certainly be worth testing when it becomes available later this year and certain types of sites could earn a pretty penny from it.

A similar program actually already exists through eBay’s affiliate program and as well as displaying standard banners you can have site targeted listings that are automatically updated each time the ad is displayed. These live listings appear on your webpages via the Editor Kit (you can become an eBay affiliate through Commission Junction by the way).
I’ve only had lukewarm success with this to date to be honest, but if you have a website that draws considerable traffic there is money to be made. Remember that ebay.co.uk sells a mobile phone every minute and a car every four minutes.
Several eBay.co.uk affiliates earn over £100,000 a month because it pays them up to £14 for each and every new active registered user they send eBay’s way. Obviously these affiliates must generate huge amounts of traffic, but it just goes to show what can be earned simply by sending visitors to your website to somebody else’s (and let’s face it, they will all leave your site one way or another anyway, so you might as well get paid as they head for the exit).

Despite my lack of success to date with eBay’s affiliate programme, I’ll certainly be giving eBay AdContext a whirl when the time comes. Who knows what it could earn me until I give it a go?