A Few Ways to Protect Yourself from ePN Termination
It looks like there has been another round of eBay Partner Network affiliates getting terminated from the program. At this point, there is no rhyme or reason behind the terminations and from those of you I have communicated with personally, it is hard to find out why your sites were dropped. I know several of you have gone above and beyond the typical point & click stores they wish to eliminate.
Edit: As much as I hate to say, this recent rash of account eliminations has struck far and wide, but is not BANS specific! If you visit the ePN forum, you will see that there are some affiliates who have hand built sites for many years. I read one persons nightmare of being cut with a site that generates 10,000+ daily visitors and earns him $500+ every day! EPC was in the $20 range…
eBay has a Town Hall meeting tomorrow from 1:30-3:00 pm pacific that is open to all. There will be a Q&A where people can ask questions. It should be an interesting call and we may get some answers.
Ways to Protect Yourself from ePN Account Termination
1 – Archive all non-performing Campaigns NOW!
I did this myself several months ago and continue to do it on a weekly basis! Login to your ePN account and check your reports tab, if you have a site that is just not delivering quality traffic, archive it for awhile while you build it up! Yes, this means you will not earn anything from this site for a short while, but it may be better off in the archive than jeopardizing your entire account!
2% bid-bin/clicks ratio is my own magic number…
I know someone will ask what determines quality traffic. For myself, I look at the number of Bids/Bin, divided by the number of clicks sent. For example, I have one site that is a great performer. This month, I have sent 5,640 “clicks” that resulted in 491 “Bid/Bin”. That results in almost 9% click/bid ratio. I view that as good, actually very good! On the other hand, I a fairly new site (3 months old) that showed 1159 clicks with only 28 bid/bin, less than 3% ratio. This site is on my watch it list and may be archived soon as I work on traffic targeting!
Many months ago, I mentioned that I review my sites approximately once a month and either delete or archive those which aren’t performing. Out of all the affiliate sites I have in the ePN, I only keep 15-20 in the active campaign list at any time! Those that are less than adequate are removed as I either develop content and site quality, or they are eliminated completely!
Edit: After further review, ePN has done away with the delete campaign option! The archive method ONLY allows you to categories your campaigns and does NOT eliminate it from tracking. I will figure out the best method to delete a campaign and repost here.
Edit: There is NO WAY to delete a campaign. The eBay pinks suggest you simply edit and reuse the same campaign number on new sites.
This is VERY odd as I recall deleting campaigns in the past. I know I have, otherwise, I would have 150+ campaigns in my account manager and I don’t, I only have 16!
2 – Focus on Content first – Affiliate Links Second!
eBay is making it VERY clear they do not want thin affiliate sites in their network. While I know many of us do not purposely build thin sites, we all have a few in our closets that we forgot about for some reason or another. Make the decision now on whether you want to keep these sites or not!
If you do want to keep them active, work on them several time a week and add new content! If it is a BANS only site, pick one store category and write your own content above and below your store listings. If you continue doing this each week, you will have a very unique and content rich site in no time at all!
3 – Minimize your Non-eBay Advertisements
This is pretty basic… if your site looks like nothing more than an ad banner farm, get rid of those ads! I’m not suggesting you cannot have other banners on your sites, just avoid filling your header and sidebars with every kind of ad you could find! I have seen several BANS sites that truly make you weed through the ads in order to see the auction listings!
A single header banner is great, maybe a few spread into the sidebars etc. Make sure they are niche centric and useful to your visitors! The last thing you want to do is make your site look like an affiliate website!
4 – DO NOT BUY TRAFFIC
We are all enticed by the “10,000 hits for $10” ads! Don’t Do It! Build your sites slowly and methodically and focus on quality, organic search engine traffic for qualified visitors. Buying generic traffic will only result in your account being terminated!
What if I Still Get Terminated?
First and foremost, Don’t Take it Personally! eBay is doing what they feel is best for the overall success of their business, it is nothing personal against you or your websites. It was likely done by a computer generated algorithm and all is not lost! You can appeal to a human at eBay and have your account manually reviewed.
1 – Request a Manual Review!
If you are confident you didn’t buy traffic or participate in any shady techniques to get traffic to your site, send eBay an email, explain how you built your site for visitors and that would like to have this decision reviewed. The email address to send your request is: eBayPartnerNetwork-Quality@ebay.com
Make sure you provide all relevant information in the initial email. Nothing could be worse than appealing for reinstatement with no information for them to review. Make sure you include at least the following information:
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Your full name
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The exact email address your ePN account is registered to
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Your contact phone number
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A few of the websites in your ePN account
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Describe your traffic methods. If you rely on organic search driven traffic, say so.
2 – Treat eBay Reps as you want to be treated Yourself!
Remember the old saying that you get more bees with honey? The folks you are going to be in contact with are just people like you and I. Sure, they have a job to do at the command of their employer, but at the end of the day… they are just people. When you contact them, treat them with respect and form your inquiry as an appeal, not a demand.
Many people have been successful in getting their accounts reinstated after a manual review.
3 – It Takes Time – Be Patient
After you send eBay an email, it may take several days before you receive a reply. Give them time to answer and don’t email them every day. Remember, they are managing 10′s of thousands of affiliates and need time to fully review your situation. If you send an email every day, you are likely to get a canned response denying a review.
If a week goes by and you have heard nithing, it would be good to send another email at that time.
4 – Sign up to the PepperJam Network now!
Even though this is not a be-all, end-all answer. It does give you an option during the appeal process. Just remember that the ePN program through PepperJam is not really any different than the ePN itself. It has the same rules and guidelines and may just delay the inevitable. After you have signed onto the PJN, make sure you also apply to the eBay program from the advertisers list!
The most important part of this post is that if you are doing the right things to build and drive traffic to your sites, you should have no problem getting your account reinstated. Don’t give up just because a computer generated algorithm sent an email…
What else should we do to protect our ePN Account?
Previously Published Articles You May Like to Read:
- 5 Ways to Make Your Site Sticky and Increase Your ePN ACRU Quality
- ePN Changes that Many Have Requested for More than a Year!
- Spring Cleaning your ePN Campaign Account List
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I have been doing my part to "Build the Internet" since 1994, when I built my first website! Since then, I have built hundreds of niche websites for myself and many others, focused on design, applications, ecommerce, search optimization and internet marketing.
I never even realized the Archive option.. so if you archive it takes it “out of site” so to speak and EPN won’t recognize it? I have a couple of sites that aren’t doing to well and had wondered if i needed to dump those sites, take them down or what?
Thanks for the tip…
I am having a hard time with all these terminations. If I am going to spend the time building sites / content / links / traffic to drive traffic to ebay through my sites I don’t want to constantly feel like I am teetering on the edge of termination.
@ Jeff -
After further clarification, archiving does nothing but move them into a folder for easier management.
I am going to have to revisit this post. I have always deleted campaigns I did not want listed, but that option is now gone. I assumed they replaced it with archive.
@ Kip –
Your ‘e not alone!
Mark
Good article Mark. I got the dreaded expiring notice last night, and must say I was devasted and concerned about the repercussions that this will have for my family and also other Bans users. Since October 2007 I have developed 24 Bans sites, working 8 hour shifts in heavy industry then working on my Bans sites for further 8 hours most days, 7 days a week. Never used any dubious traffic generation programs just purely organic natural search engine traffic. I will of course send an email for a manual review and state my case and full details.
David
Mark if you have any influence with Adam & Kelvin, please have them rush thru a fix on the Pepperjam BANS templates to add the SID category. Pepperjam now has that available, and its the only way to be able to separate out our stores since we can only have one # at PJ.
I want to move my sites off of ePN like yesterday, but I really need to be able to see what site is doing what, so please pick up the red phone and ask them. ;-)
Inquiring minds want to know…
So what if we all rush to set up our current ePN sites onto PJ, then ePN swings the axe again and chops off our now-not-primary ePNaccounts? I don’t see that there’s a mechanism for switching from ePN to PJ, even if you didn’t get terminated by ePN??
How long do you think it would take ePN to figure out they were paying us TWICE, if we can’t shut off the ePN account? What a lame-ass system.
Mark,
Thanks for the calm assessment and advice.
I guess we’re all waiting with bated breath to see if ePN-banned affiliates can continue trading thru PJ.
Fingers crossed!
James
I tried to find a way to delete campaigns when ePN first started and there wasnt a way.
http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?messageID=1012656315&forumID=1000000047&x#1012656315
Hmm… This is confusing. I’m beginning to convert sites over the PJN, having taken the precaution some time back of getting approved there for eBay. It then occurred to me that, if I archive the corresponding EPN campain, wouldn’t that necessarily remove it from affecting the “metric” relied upon by EPN in assessing quality? From what you’re saying, Mark, that’s in doubt.
Lastly, I can’t imagine that there would be a risk of double commissions, since tracking by EPN would be eliminated in the switch to PJN.
@ Alice –
Please… explain how you would be getting paid twice? Essentially, you are just killing the campaign by no longer sending traffic. There is no risk of double-payment, or even double-clicks, nothing.
@ Robert – essentially, as soon as you remove the tracking code from the campid, the site becomes dead.
zero clicks, zero visitors, zero metrics for them to measure it on.
It could be a risk though… not sure.
Honestly, as everyone can tell by the edits in the pst today, I am at a loss of what to say. eBay has shot itself in the foot in more ways than one this week and I truly dont know if they will recover from it.
Mark
I wonder if Pepperjam is going to be able to handle to massive influx of transferees… hate to bring the thing to its knees too, then we might as well shoot ourselves in the head (just kidding!!)
From the EPN Help Manual
“Do archived campaigns stop working?
No. Archived campaigns will continue to work for any tools that you may have on your sites and eBay Partner Network will continue to report on both Archived and Active campaigns in the available reports.”
It would seem that to truly “archive” your site you must remove the eBay EPN ad from your site.
With all the changes that EPN is making none of which seem to be a benefit for those of us trying generate and send traffic to eBay it makes you wonder is this the beginning of the end of eBay.
Their move from an auction site to a listing site seems to be moving them to just another mall type store.
I believe that eBay generated so much traffic originally because people were in search of that once in a life time offer. Everyone was in search of the deal of a life time and now it seems that before long eBay is just going to be a super mall for eBay store owners.
Can those of us just starting out afford to spend our time building sites and figuring out all the SEO and traffic building only to have eBay pull the plug on us?
Maybe we need to find a way of using the bans format with affiliates like Amazon or some other major contender?
DON’T USE THE ePN-to-PJN BANS converter tool yet!!!
There may be a problem with compability between the update script and the BANS/WP templates. I just converted about a dozen sites. I checked it after I did the first one and everything looked OK, but when I went back a second time those sites (the BANS sides, not WP) were trashed. I’m getting a pageful of errors so until this can get fixed, or the cause identified please don’t change over all your sites yet!!
@ Alice –
I converted several of my own sites over today with not one issue. I followed the exact directions in both the instructions from A&K, but also the method described on this post.
Uploaded files, changed ID, done. On sites that I had custom code on, there were additional steps to add that code back tot he new frontcontrol file though.
The changeover has NOTHING to do with BANS or WordPress being combined into one site. Both programs run independantly of each other completely.
The issues you are experiencing are due to modifications to your older frontcontrol.php file, which had calls from your original templates, that no longer exist.
Mark
I have only a little idea of what you mean. I haven’t made any modifications other than changing the templates to the bans/wp ones. The only changes I’d made from the original BANS templates when I set them up were cosmetic changes – custom header.jpg and color changes.
I do have a couple of sites that had custom templates built by someone else, and I know those had more files changed. But I haven’t gotten to those yet – for that reason.
The sites I updated only had out-of-the-box templates with color and logo changes. That’s it. So WTF do I do now?? The reason I moved away from having custom templates done was exactly for this reason, that upgrading/updating would be a problem. Seems like its a problem anyway…
OK, something is definitely weird here. I checked several sites THAT I HAVEN’T EVEN TOUCHED YET and here’s what I get. Looks like every single one of my BANS sites is down.
@ Alice -
This generally happens when there is a password change to your MySQL username, in this case, greatest_greates.
Have you changed the PW lately?
Mark
Do any of the Banned sites owners sell their own products on eBay?
Or perhaps some of our own products set up in an eBay store or on auction and placed on the front page of our Bans site would help protect us?
That’s if ebay keeps track of such things. For all we know they may even look at out feedback if they are using eggheads like Google does!
Just thinking,
Walt
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