eBay is in the “Big Easy” (New Orleans) this week for its annual Developers Conference and has added a new affiliate tier to its developer program. This tier will make it easier for eBay’s affiliates to increase their affiliate commissions.  

The additional tier in the eBay Developers Program will allow members who sign up for the program to have access to eBay’s application program interface (API). eBay’s Affiliate Program helps members earn money by driving new users and bids to the eBay marketplace, with the top 50 affiliates earning an average of over $1 million in yearly commissions.

Affiliate tier members will have access to the most current eBay information, such as real-time pricing, specific product details and bidding times for all of eBay’s listings. Additionally, they will be able to use actual product images from eBay on their sites. A recent pilot program of affiliates using the eBay API found that access to the tier had the potential to increase affiliate commissions by an average of thirty percent.

Vaughan Smith, senior director, eBay’s Internet Marketing said, “By allowing and encouraging our affiliates to use the eBay API, we’re helping them grow their businesses more effectively and directly tap into the power of the eBay platform.The affiliate tier brings together the entrepreneurial spirit of our affiliate community with the technical savvy of the eBay developer community, and we expect that it will be a catalyst for the creation of new and highly profitable affiliate businesses.”

Smith also said he believes the addition “will enable innovation around the development program, because we have the best developers in the world. And we encourage them to always try new things.”

A good example of initial success with the program is a company called Pluck, which offers a free suite of applications that integrate with Microsoft Internet Explorer and enable users to search, retrieve, organize and share Internet information. Launched in May 2004, the Pluck application suite was downloaded by over 10,000 users in its first 30 days.

Pluck is also a certified member of the eBay Developers Program, and built the Pluck suite of applications to connect to eBay via the eBay Application Programming Interface. “Working with the eBay Affiliates Program in combination with the eBay Developers Program simplified things greatly for us,” said Dave Panos, CEO of Pluck. “From sign-up to development to tracking, the entire process was geared toward making it easier and faster to build our business.”

The application suite is available to users at no charge, and Pluck makes money by referring traffic to relevant Web sites. “Our business model is based on our ability to monetize driving traffic online,” said Panos. 

When users access eBay through Pluck’s suite of applications, Pluck is paid a commission for each new user that registers, as well as for each bid or buy-it-now transaction these users conduct.

While the application has only been available for a month, Pluck notes it is already seeing success with the eBay Affiliate Program. Panos stated, “The commission structure, combined with the support we receive from the affiliate team in the way of tools, services and access to account managers, is smoothing the way for us to build a very successful, sustainable business based on the eBay platform.”

The program has an initial $250.00 sign-up fee. Once affiliates are certified in the program, they receive free access to up to three million affiliate API calls per day dependent upon their application and traffic volume. After affiliates pay the one-time fee, there are no additional membership fees or incremental call fees for participation in the program.

In other eBay news from the conference, the company has purchased Baazee.com, an India based trading company. Baazee.com has over 2.6 million registered users who trade in a wide range of item categories including Electronics, Cameras, Phones, Computers, Movies, Mobiles, Fashion, Music, Home, Toys and Travel.

Baazee.com India Pvt. Ltd, a subsidiary of the New York based Baazee.com, Inc. started its operations in India in January 2000.