ebay keeps rejecting me for affiliate signup...

thats normal, they banned a lot of affiliates due to the recent cookie stuffing issues.

They have made it very hard to become an affiliate for them. In fact, they also changed their payout scheme that will reduce the payouts for most smaller affiliates.

Ebay are great at NOT telling you exactly why they reject things. Trying to get any helpful information (that doesn't read like - Check our policies and guidelines) from them is like pulling teeth. Most people just give up.

Ebay have recently had a major change in their affiliate program and look to be focusing in on only 'major players'. It is getting very difficult to get approved.

My guess is they now have enough affiliates and people wanting to be affiliates to be able to apply the classic 80-20 rule. i.e. 80% of their money comes from 20% of their affiliates. In theory (and in practice if done right) they can reduce 80% of their overhead for only a 20% drop in revenue. This is also reflected in the new reward structure which make it much less attractive to smaller players and those with 'lower quality traffic'.

This is all explained by Ebay but not at the detail you need to be sure of acceptance as an affilite

Basically they have raised the bar for new affiliates. Also the more applications you make (and get rejected) the more likely you will get rejected the next time.
Some key stuff is
1. Aged domain (at least 2 years) -
2. Absolutely no advertising (adsense, affiliate, Amazon etc)
3. Contact page (full details as per adsense/google quality score stuff)
4. About Page
5. Terms & Conditions page
6. Privacy Policy - (anti spam -find generator by searching Google -' adsense privacy policy')
7. Tons of QUALITY content
8. Fully indexed in Google
9.No adult content - make sure it's 'family friendly'.
10. No links to dodgy/blackhat/adult/illegal/undesirable sites
11. A site that looks visually attractive & professional
12. Clear and descriptive answers in your application

As you have already been rejected 4 times I am guessing either you have a fundamentally flawed view of the requirements or maybe one of your earlier applications had a big NO NO in it. Either way I suggest you start a dialogue with Ebay. I think after 4 rejects you need to do more than just stick another site in.

OK their responses can be ambiguous and sometimes plain unhelpful but persevere anyway.
Be very polite and keep re-asking. I did have some issues with ebay listings (not affiliate program but the principle is the same) a while back and used this method successfully to eventually get an agreement.

I just listed everything I did - i.e. I have a two year old domain that has never been used for anything other than a completely whitehat website, I consider the quality of my content to be excellent ...etc. etc....I feel I have complied with all your policies and guidelines. Can you please give me further assistance and information that will help me with approval to your program other than generic references to your policies.

Eventual you get to a point where they will be more specific (probably just to shut you up!)

You need to focus on one application and get it accepted. Putting in new applications may well just get automatic rejection.


I confess that I was rejected by Ebay affiliate program a little while ago and have not yet followed my own advice. Mainly because I have more pressing stuff to attend too. I had an aged domain, all the appropriate additional pages, hundreds of pages of quality content, a nice professional looking site with loads of traffic. The only thing I can see that was wrong (as I know now) is that I had both Amazon and Adsense ads on the site) It was my intention to replace these with the Ebay affiliate links once approved but left them on to monetize whilst waiting for approval. Obviously too cocky as I never thought that I would be rejected.


Moral of the story is get all your work done on your site, make a good detailed application (very important) and get a dialogue going with the approval team.


Good luck