Clicking your own ads and encouraging clicks

As this is more of an affiliate program I assume that both are OK but I wanted to ask you guys for two reasons... first, to make sure it's fine, and two, in case you have not thought about, maybe you can now ;)

1) Are clicking your own ads (to actually buy) OK within the AuctionAds program?
2) Is it OK to encourage clicks and buying?

I don't have an ebay account, but the little lady does. She plans on buying through my ads once I get them up on the forum, so I kind of need to make sure that'll be OK...

I'm too used to Adsense (but not on my forums) so I get paranoid about even looking at my ads other then making sure the color is OK ;) and I know FULL WELL I should never point to them and say BUY BUY BUY but I plan on putting the ads in my occult classified forum to accent the buying/selling nature of the board. So I'd like to put a sticky thread up saying feel free to click!

Anyone have official word? I looked once, but don't recall seeing this mentioned.

There shouldn't be any problem clicking your own Auction Ads. They are more like affiliate ads than adsense ads, since the commission is based off of sales and not the actual click. I've done the same in the past with some of my other affiliate ads when I personally wanted to buy a product through them.

As far as encouraging your members to click on ads, you need to tread lightly there IMO. Asking people to click can backfire in several ways. The most dangerous could be if you happen to have Adsense on those same pages. Google could consider your click encouragement in violation since the practice could carry over to their ads too. Another thing to consider is how your visitors may feel about being prodded into clicking on ads. Speaking for myself I really don't like being sold to when I visit a site unless that's why I came there in the first place. So when someone tells me to "check out these deals" or "click here for..." I instantly feel spammed. My regular site (not the forum) has plenty of affiliate and adsense ads placed throughout the content, and this has done very well for me. I never ask visitors to click anywhere unless I've explained exactly what they will be clicking on. For me letting visitors click naturally because they want to ends up having a much higher return.

JMHO :D

I plan on being as unintrusive as possible to my members and as such will likely never have actual ads (adsense) on the site...so the confusion between adsense & auctionads should be minimal.

As for the encouraging of clicks it'll be more along the lines of "feel free to check out the ebay ads" rather then the more spammy "please click here to support our site". As my forum is currently member driven and I am implementing AA to help both them (by offering alternatives to our new classified section) and the site itself (to off set hosting). I want them to not fear me getting banned due to invalid clicks or whatever, so while I want to encourage them to check out what's offered in the ads I don't want them to feel obligated too, or to fear any repercussions (for me) if they do. If that makes sense....

So I don't really fear putting off my member base, rather I fear putting off the TOS of AA in encouraging the ads.

And if you buy things from clicking your own ads and earn your commission it'll be like YAY I saved 3 cents on this new pair of socks! *smirk*

You should be fine. They have to buy for you to get paid.