I received an interesting email today from eBay’s in-house affiliate program, the eBay Partner Network (ePN).  Receiving an email from them that can be described as interesting is event enough to blog about it, but this one is really interesting for those of us who blogged and journalised every change and nuance of 2008.

Let’s start this post off with a quote from the email, oh all right, I’ll actually post 99% of it (bold highlighting is by me) -

We are making some changes to several of our Asia programs.

We have decided to close down the Singapore and Hong Kong affiliate programs as of February 1, 2009, and make India a more limited invite-only program.

Our Singapore and Hong Kong sites are increasingly focusing their marketing efforts on bringing more sellers, rather than buyers, to their programs. Given that eBay Partner Network is today primarily a buyer-acquisition focused network, we’ve decided it was best to close these programs for now, until we can better support seller efforts.

Beginning February 1, 2009, we will begin redirecting traffic from geo-targeted affiliate links destined for eBay Hong Kong and eBay Singapore back to eBay.com. Publishers currently geo-targeting traffic to these sites will not have to do anything differently, since we will re-direct this traffic automatically. However, please note that creatives for Hong Kong and Singapore will no longer be available in the eBay Partner Network interface. Publishers not working with these programs will not be affected.

We have also decided to make India a limited invitation-only program. We want to focus in the next few months on growing the Indian program through larger affiliates that have established track records in India or in other emerging countries. Publishers currently accepted in the Indian program will not be affected and will be able to continue to promote the Indian site. New publishers joining eBay Partner Network will no longer see the Indian program as an option upon sign-in and will have to apply separately by contacting customer service if they want to promote the Indian Program.

We expect a minimum impact from these changes given the small number of affiliates currently driving traffic to these countries. If you have concerns or experience any problems during the transition please be sure to let us know by contacting customer service.

Now, are you thinking what I’m thinking?  Did you read last week’s editorial, on BuildaSkill, about Australia closing the Education Specialist training program?  And, did you catch the pre-Christmas post about eBay Malaysia ditching PayPal?  Hmmm?

OK, so what does that email tell us?

It tells us that eBay have admitted Hong Kong and Singapore do not have enough sellers.  Yet, it then says that the buyer-attracting eBay partner network needs to stop sending buyers to the few sellers that those two sites have already got.

I’m confused, and as a seller listing on both of those sites, I’m mightily pissed off that eBay is cutting efforts to provide what I pay them for – a steady or growing level of buyer traffic.  (Yeah, yeah, yeah – I know, there are no fees on HK and SG, but you get the point?)

The email then tells us that India is not performing too well either.  ePN is not going to allow any more “little people” to promote the site, but is instead only going to allow the giants to join in for the foreseeable future – “Diamond PowerLinkers”?  Again, this will affect sellers on that eBay site too.  They will see a stalling in the rate of buyer acquisition, I would think.

What does it message overall?

In my opinion, this signals one or more of several circumstances.  Last quarter’s eBay staff redundancies may have hit ePN hard – remember ePN is technically part of marketing, and there were heavy redundancy ratios in the marketing division globally. It could also indicate that the technology infrastructure of ePN was under assessed and under funded, and is struggling under the volume of affiliates it has attracted for the number of sites marketed (shouldn’t have moved away from Commission Junction guys – at least they know what they’re doing in this arena).

Secondly, that’s five Asia-Pacific sites that have been hit hard in hallowed areas, in the last couple of months – Malaysia stopping sellers from offering PayPal (despite a new PayPal Malaysia website opening up last quarter), Australia losing the eBay Education Specialist program, HK & SG losing the ePN buyer-attractors completely, and India having a restricted ePN program.

Tie those eBay newses to older events, such as the fledgling eBay.com.th being sold off to South African owned Sanook.com, and of course eBay.cn being sold off to TaoBao after a completely disastrous initial period, and it’s not looking rosy for eBay in Asia-Pacific and the Orient.  China, the financial powerhouse of the region is crashing under the current global crisis, which heavily impacts the mineral resources-led Australian economy (China is their primary buyer), and the financial services-led Singaporean economy losing trade volume because of the Aussie-Chinese slowdown.

If China’s not manufacturing, Hong Kong has little or nothing to sell, and with the four major Asia-Pacific economies taking a simultaneous hammering, outsourcing and IT wizardry in India comes under pressure to shrink and tighten belts.  India’s massive textile-manufacturing and agricultural sectors will also be taking a pounding due to exchange rates.  Sterling for example is at an all-time low against Asian currencies, and the UK has always been a major market for India, whose products may now be more expensive than home-grown and EU-made wares.

Another 1997-type crisis may be on the cards for Asia-Pacific, and eBay might be preparing the ground for assisting its arrival by cutting off buyer’s visibility of what’s for sale out here (albeit a minor contribution overall).

There is a third, less obvious, possibility too.  Note in the email the reference to HK and SG affiliate advertising redirecting to eBay.com in the good old US of A.  Is this an indicator that all is not well in eBay Amereeka’s region?  Could it be that 2008’s disruptive innovation has been too disruptive and buyers are shunning the home domain?  Have Donahoe’s Dunderheads now so irreparably broken the unbreakable that they have to start stealing buyer eyeballs from their overseas sites, just to prop up the traffic numbers for Wall Street?

Or could it be that the ePN team are actually telling the truth, and the lack of international visibility options from eBay Singapore and Hong Kong are really causing a dearth of seller registrations?  Perhaps they should introduce the International Visibility Fee that eBay India pioneered long before the UK stopped its users from being seen in the New World.

What do you think?

Ed