Affiliate Rant!

In the better late than never department, eBay has announced a new API call report for members of the eBay Developer Program -

Sneaky and stealthy, the Google we all love. It seems Google has determined that their financial exposure was to great under the old terms of the Adsense Affiliate Program so they changed the terms but failed to let anyone know. Under the old terms there was no time limit on the amount of time a new publisher could take to reach $100 in earnings. Once a referred publisher reached $100, the referring affiliate collected his $100 referral commission. The new terms impose a 90 day time limit for the referred publisher to reach the $100 goal.

I just received a note from Dan Burkhart, Director of the eBay Affiliate Program. In it he writes that eBay has determined three specific instances when affiliate commissions are not being credited under the new commission structure:

You read it right. eBay has announced that effective today it has eliminated all fees within the Developer Program for all users of the new Unified Schema. They have also eliminated all certification fees! Note that free calls do not apply to users of the older schema.