Decoding Advertising with Ben Liu, owner eBayFeesCalculator

Reading Time: 3 minutes

The last year has been a quite a difficult year for publishers specifically in terms of programmatic advertising, irrespective of their location and geography. The hope and the growth plans with which they stepped into 2020 came crashing down when the world got hit by the COVID-19 wave. 

But 2021 has sprung fresh hopes and publishers can see CPMs rising again. The skepticism of the pandemic has faded which has made advertisers less worrisome for investing in programmatic campaigns. 

To conclude, publishers are on a road to recovery with better solutions available to them to reach their goals. To discuss this, we conducted an interview with Ben Liu, owner of eBayFeesCalculator and a VDO.AI Publisher to give his insights on his experience and the strategies his team has adopted. 

Ben’s Journey from a Marketer to being a Publisher

“My website started as a side project a few years back and like any other website, the major challenge for me was to get relevant and genuine traffic from prominent geographies. Each location has a different CPM attached with it, hence our main focus initially was to optimize and bag the traffic from countries having maximum benefits for us.”

– Ben

“Since our site provides calculators for eCommerce sellers, we had to work out the formulas keeping in mind the varied marketplace we had to cater to and the subsequent payment providers. For example, the fees of eBay US sellers will be different from the fees of eBay UK sellers. The same applies for the sellers from different countries paying via PayPal, Etsy, etc. Even the conditions (social, economic, and political) affecting the fees were different so we had to think of a solution to make this website geographically friendly.”

– Ben

Types of Revenue Sources

“For continuous flow of revenue, we adopted standard banner ads and modern video ads. Since the type of ads, their quantity and placements differs website to website, for eBayFeesCalculator, traditional banner and video ads by VDO.AI are working quite well. “

– Ben

Views on New Age Programmatic Video Advertising

“Like I mentioned before, the type of revenue stream would differ based on the website’s experiences and various other factors. As far as our website is concerned, we use both banner and video ads. I believe publishers need to leverage this alternate revenue stream to not just monetize over it but also increase the user engagement. Both these ad types do compliment each other, however, what makes it seamless is a perfect placement.”

– Ben

“For us, after associating with VDO.AI we experienced a significant increase of 40% in our revenue along with some growth witnessed in the user engagement and experience.”

– Ben

On Content Analyzing

“Since we deal with currency calculations and the market changes every day, we need to always keep up-to-date with the data and trends. Hence, we make sure that the content changes whenever needed. Along with this, we also do heaps of keyword research every week to see which calculators can benefit the eCommerce sellers more. Additionally we also look at the countries which provide the best CPM to research the relevant keywords in those countries.”

– Ben

COVID-19 Impact

“Our traffic continues to grow every month, and not to our surprise it did in 2020 too. But the overall online ad spend dropped heaps during the first few months of COVID-19 affecting our revenue. On speaking with other publishers, I realized that this has been the situation with them too. But I am glad that it the revenue started recovering towards the end 2020 and we take pride in telling you that we gave rise to another ‘record year’ both in terms of traffic and revenue.”

– Ben

Last Words for the VDO.AI Team

“My account manager, Sumedha doesn’t leave a stone unturned to solve my queries or look into my concerns. In fact, the entire team at VDO.AI have the expertise at what they do. I would like to express my gratitude to the entire team (both tech and account managers) for enabling my website to grow in terms of revenue and user engagement.”

– Ben

About Ben

An experienced digital marketer, Ben kickstarted eBayFeesCalculator with an aim to help the users in their transactions. Using the right techniques of SEO, PPC and Social Advertising, Ben conquered his dream of ensuring maximum user engagement and revenue for his website.

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