5 Ways to Make Your Site Sticky and Increase Your ePN ACRU Quality

There has been alot of debate on the ePN Forum about the eBay ACRU system and how its just too hard for affiliates to control the level of engagement from their visitors. This post is my take and understanding of the ACRU system, as well as a few ways you can achieve higher quality scores!

What is a CRU or an ACRU?

If you are like myself, you see quite a few references to both CRU and ACRU in your ePN dashboard every month. The key difference between the two are that one of them bought something, and the other just bid on something, but did not win.

CRU – Confirmed Registered User, is a person you referred through your affiliate link who bid on an item, but did not win the item. The good news, is that if the person bids on another item within the first 30 days, you should still receive compensation as an ACRU (Waiting on confirmation, as there is some gray area)

ACRU – Active Confirmed Registered User. This is a person you referred through one of your ePN links that not only confirmed their registration, they completed a money exchanging transaction within the first 30 days.

Of course all of this assumes that they do not click through another affiliate link during the 30 day process, or the credit goes to the most current affiliate cookie.

Understanding ACRU Quality

One of the biggest hurdles we must face as an affiliate in ePN is accepting that we DO actually control the quality of our visitors! eBay has said they want to reward higher quality traffic from affiliates with higher payouts per ACRU. The amount you can earn ranges between $1 – $50 per ACRU.

ACRU Quality is not based on individual campaigns, but instead, it is a rating of your entire ePN account and all of the campaigns and visitors you send through the system. In other words – if you have 10 campaigns and 5 are very good but the other 5 are very poor, your entire account will suffer the consequences of the poor performers, with a reduced quality score.

The focus of increasing your quality score actually has nothing at all to do with eBay itself, its all about your OWN website and the level of repeat interation you build with the visitors you cater to.

Sending 100 clicks to eBay through your affiliate ID is ALOT more valuable, if you continually send repeat visitors. Which do you think is more valuable?

1. 100 unique click visitors – coming from your site..
2. 100 unique clicks from 10 visitors, repeatedly coming from your site over time.

Its safe to assume you are related to the visitors you send to eBay. In other words, “This Visitor” = “Your Customer” and is related to your campid. If you can find a way to get that same visitor to buy products on eBay from your same campid, over and over, your quality will naturally increase!

5 Ways to Make Your Site Sticky & Increase ACRU Quality

It is too easy for us to sit back and say that we have little to no control over the amount of engagement or quality of our referred site traffic, when in fact, we have 100% control of it!

Sending repeat traffic to eBay is probably the easiest way to increase your ACRU quality! It shows that YOU are engaging your site traffic, versus relying on eBay to do it for you. The list below represents 5 relatively simple things you can do to encourage repeat traffic on YOUR site.

1 – Setup a User Discussion Forum!

By adding a forum to your site, people will naturally revisit and become involved in discussions, based around your website topic. It also gives you the added luxury of having more to write about on your blog or site pages, that will attract new users to the site.

2 – Provide a Steady Stream of Fresh, Relative Content!

Keeping your sites’ content fresh not only increases your search relevance, it gives users a reason to bookmark your site and come back often! Visitors will quickly recognize a stale website and see no value in bookmarking the page to come back.

3 – Start a Weekly eMail Newsletter or Publish an RSS Feed

With the advent of WordPress and services like Feedburner, every website should have a newsletter! By encouraging your visitors to subscribe and receive fresh content updates, you have immediate access to repeat visitors!

Often times, you can promote signups by offering a free service to your visitors in exchange for signing up to receive updates. This can be anything from a free eBook to free access to a members only area of your site. Only you know your visitors and what may appeal to them.

4 – Make it Super-Simple to Bookmark or Subscribe!

While a simple bookmark may not be as rewarding as an email or RSS subscriber, you want to provide every possible option you can employ to encourage your visitors to revisit, and make it as easy as possible for them to do so!

As a matter of fact, while you are here, I encourage you to subscribe to my own site updates by Email or RSS feed, where I publish content that helps you succeed in affiliate marketing and Niche focused website building.

5 – Become a Solution Guide Versus a Link Clerk

Back in my day of retail store management, I held weekly training sessions with the sales team and we focused on being a Solutions Provider, versus simply clerking the items we sold in our stores. There is a HUGE difference! We found that when we touched every person who came in, our sales conversions increased dramatically, and we measured that through a shopper-trak device that counted every walk-in.

As a Solutions Provider, you are there to guide your visitors through the selling process from start to finish. Your content asks and answers the questions, then  presents them with a final solution to their needs. In other words, you interact in a content environment with your visitors!

As a Link Clerk – the visitor comes in looking for XYZ product, you point them to it, and you are done. This method almost assures you that your conversion rate will decrease, as the shoppers are left to themselves to do research and decide what to buy.

Bottom Line

eBay has developed a way to make it very rewarding for publishers who build communities and then expose their communities to products for sale in the eBay marketplace. They have repeatedly said they want quality just as much as quantity, and by engaging your own visitors with your own content, you will be rewarded at the highest levels.

eBay does not really want affiliates referring shoppers to their system – they want well informed repeat buyers who have already done their research, made their decision, and preferably… are being guided into the eBay marketplace by their Trusted Shopping Guide, You!

What Other Ways Do Encourage Repeat Traffic to Your Site?

Previously Published Articles You May Like to Read:

• ePN Quality Click Pricing QCP Affiliate Intent Target!
• A Few Ways to Protect Yourself from ePN Termination
• 3 Tips To Understand and Succeed with ePN Quality Click Pricing!

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