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You know, I could probably look it up, but I have no idea what ACRU actually stands for. However, for new eBay affiliates, what it actually is, will mean something different than it has in the past. It used to mean that eBay partners received a minimum of $25 for one of these which is a new eBay member sign-up who ends up placing a bid within 30 days of joining.

That has all changed as of today, again, for new affiliates only. New partners who sign up with eBay after August 1st will get paid for new eBay member sign-ups based on the quality of their traffic. The range will go from $1 per sign-up to $50. When I first read about this I thought there might be every level of payment in $1 increments, but it turns out there are only 4 levels that break down as follows:

Traffic Quality - Payment
Very Low - $1.00
Low - $10.00
Medium - $28.00
High - $40.00
Very High - $50.00

This looks like a pretty good payout, but it remains to be seen how eBay is going to determine traffic quality. And the way they are determining your traffic quality won’t be decided until the following month of when your ACRU’s are posted. In other words, if you get 6 new eBay sign-ups in August, you won’t know what traffic quality level you’re at and what you will be paid until the 9th of September.

One issue I see is that there are several days during the month when traffic takes a huge spike and doubles or triples from the average number of clicks I normally send to eBay. This seems to be some sort of a searchbot anomaly and greatly skews your EPC. It also would be nice if eBay would give some clearer guidelines as to what they define as low, medium, high and very high quality, especially since your level can change from month to month.

Suppose you send PPC traffic to a BANS store and it doesn’t work in that you get lots of clicks, but no buyers or no bidders. Is eBay going to take into consideration the numbers of clicks you send, bids that are place and winning bids placed. What about overall numbers of sales, will high volume affiliates be compensated accordingly? With eBay not disclosing their methods as things have been clearly defined in the past this leaves the door open for all sorts of issues and unhappy affiliates. It might be in eBay’s interest to be a little clearer on what they expect from the traffic being sent their way.

New affiliates will end up being the guinea pigs for this new ACRU payment system from eBay as affiliates who signed up before August 1st won’t be subject to the payments. However, later this year, all affiliates will be moved over to the traffic quality system for ACRU’s. I just hope my traffic quality comes in at medium or better. 

ACRU’s are only a small part, around 10%, of my total revenue from eBay, so this won’t be that big of a deal when the change goes into effect for all affiliates. But for those that do earn a lot of income from signing up new eBayers, this might have a huge impact on their bottom line. Let’s hope eBay works all the kinks out of this as soon as possible.