eBay cuts out the middle-man, moves affiliates in-house

eBay today announced the eBay Partner Network, a new affiliate platform launching on April 1st. The move is expected to give affiliates -- and eBay -- a chance to make more money.

Some of the new features that eBay lists in its announcement include:

• Easy global registration to multiple countries simultaneously
• New, targeted banners and rich media creatives
• New landing page optimization and geo-targeting capabilities
• More detailed reporting capabilities for eBay’s programs

This new network means the previous eBay affiliate network, Commission Junction, will be phased out and eBay is asking all affiliate members to migrate their accounts to the Partner Network by May 1, 2008. eBay is offering those who jump on board with the new platform early (in April) the opportunity to earn a 5% bonus for traffic sent through this new eBay Partner Network.

What eBay is essentially doing here is cutting out the middle-man, Commision Junction, as Tech-Exposed.com notes. eBay has a huge affiliate program with 100,000+ partners, but had to give some of its income from every transaction to Commision Junction. With that company out of the picture, eBay only stands to gain more money.

This move is a massive blow to ValueClick, the parent company of Commision Junction, specializing in online ads for publishers. See our previous coverage on ValueClick here.

Amazon, which runs another large affiliate network, has also been tinkering with ways to make its users more money recently (our coverage).