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September 3, 2008
Guest Post by: Josh Bohling
When Mark asked me to write a post about my account being expired and reinstated by ePN, my first thought was… What is there to say? I have very little insight into exactly why my account was expired … or what they saw in the manual review to explain why it was reinstated.
So with that disclaimer, I’m sure you can’t wait read the rest of this. =)
My Domains and Traffic Methods
A couple things I can verify: I don’t buy traffic and I don’t advertise my eBay sites with Pay-Per-Click (though I do dabble in PPC with other types of offers). I DO buy domains at auction from time to time, but I’m very careful to check their link quality and site histories. Could this be the source of this? I guess it is possible. The vast majority of my sites, though, are brand new domains.
Here’s the quick timeline rundown
Aug. 20
I get an email from the ePN network quality team with the ominous subject: Your eBay Partner Network Account. The upshot was that my account would be expired in 7 days.
Key quote from the email:
“we determined that the traffic generated from your account is significantly less engaged with the eBay site as compared to the standards set by our other affiliates.”
Perhaps most bothersome is there is no email address to reply to (the email came from a noreply address). Thanks guys. A little shocked and in need of a sympathetic ear, I drop Mark a note. He gives me an email address to try.
Aug. 21
I send ebay a note asking for a manual review. OK, it was more like a sob story. At any rate, I hope it will find the right people. I include links to several of my top performing sites.
Aug. 23
Hallelujah! A reply comes, verifying that my account will be re-reviewed. They thank me for the sites in my initial email but ask for the URLs from ALL sites I am sending traffic from along with the approx. percentage of traffic that comes from each.
Of course, it comes on a Saturday when I’m out and about (did I mention my girlfriend’s brother is in town for the weekend? Like I have time for this heartburn…)
Aug. 24
I download my Year-To-Date campaign reports and send a reply, trying my best to give them what they are looking for. I have 70+ sites, all BANS.
Aug. 27
I get what looks like an automated note from ePN reminding me that my account will be deleted at the end of the day. Verify payment information so I can get my last check, etc. etc.
Aug. 28
Hallelujah, part 2! I get this reply, a day after my account was to be expired:
“After re-reviewing the websites you sent and account statistics at length, we have made the decision to re-instate you to eBay Partner Network.”
This email was the key one and I’ll offer a couple excerpts from it.
“We do want to see you work in next few months to see if there are ways to further improve your visitors’ interest level in engaging with eBay (i.e., spending more time on our site) and buying on eBay when they come from your sites. We are working on ways to expose more of these metrics to you, and hope to have those up in the next few months.”
This is as much information as I have explaining the problem.
Next, they reference Steve’s posts (which Mark has already highlighted - might want to link to that post here, Mark)
Here is the second critical piece, which I think very much reinforces what Mark is doing going forward with http://www.thenichestorebuilder.com.
“We realize you already keep several of these tips in mind on your sites given the large amount of targeted content on your websites, but think about which others may be applicable to you. Among other things, it is going to be very important going forward for you to work on building out unique content on your sites.”
So there you go. Here are the two key points I get out of it.
1. Have more “engaged” users. Well, that’s tough to do much with. Mark has mentioned being more clear about where you are sending users. Beyond that, beats me.
2. Create more unique content. That is pretty clear and what Mark is emphasizing (even more) going forward.
So there ya go.
Josh
9 Responses to “All is not Lost when Dropped by eBay Partner Network”
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I have been slapped around by big companies before and it’s no fun when they are very vague about why they are slapping you.
They don’t seem to care whether they are really right or not and if your business goes down the drain. I think they just like the power of being able to do it and get away with it.
Google pegged my garden site as a bad place and gave a warning in all my listing. Why? Because I had Kontera ads on my site.
Stuff like that almost puts me over the edge.
It took me more than a month to get them to take that notice off my listing and I even had to remove Kontera from my site before they would do it.
I’ve temporarily given up on EPN until further notice… Can’t deal with their crap in any way, shape, or form…
I’m convinced that people sit around these big companies all day and draw numbers to see who their slapping today.
To be fair, there has been a lot of alleged abuse of the program. Note this I saw this the other day on Nicky Cakes site.
Warning: I think this guy is pretty funny, but he can be dirty and many people will be offended. If you think that includes you, just read the excerpt below.
Here’s the link: nickycakes. com/recent-industry-drama/
Here’s the lawsuit: courthousenews. com/2008/08/26/eBay.pdf
(take out the space in “. com” to go to the links. I didn’t want to trip Mark’s filter while he is on vacation)
Here’s the gist:
Shawn Hogan, owner of Digital Point, and cohorts are being sued by eEay. The ebay lawsuit document details a lot of very interesting methods for cookie stuffing that shawn + friends were [allegedly] using. Basically how cookie stuffing works is, if you are part of the ebay affiliate program, and you run a high traffic website, you can leave ebay cookies on visitors computers which will give you a cut of any transactions they do on ebay within the next 30 days or so. Stuff enough peoples computers with said cookies and you stand to make a signficant amount of cash based on sheer volume.
Shawn + friends [allegedly] had a system set up that would record each individual computer they had stuffed in order to not attempt to stuff cookies on that same computer again and make things look more legit on ebay’s side in the logs. Also, they attempted to geotarget the traffic and prevent any computers located in Santa Barbara, CA (headquarters of Commission Junction, who hosted ebay’s affiliate program at the time) and San Jose, CA (ebay’s headquarters). This was done to hide the cookie stuffing from ebay and CJ employees.
Its hard to tell what they (epn) want. Engaging users is what we all try to do by adding relevant content. All I know is I am growing tired of watching my email for the dreaded notice.
As far as the DP guys they bragged about what they were doing. Asking to get bagged. Stay away from the dark side.
Like all of you I don’t know if I am doing anything right, but I have noticed that a lot of bids won have nothing to do with the original site of mine they were on. For example, a visitor to my bigmowers site ended up buying a treadmill. So I am assuming that my visitors are engaged well enough for ebay.
I will stay with ebay because it creates a nice increment to my internet income. But it is only one of a dozen ways that I make money. All of the people who consistantly make money on the web tell you to diversify, diversify, diversify. I feel that is the key.
Hi Josh,
here is the email I got from them, I use only SEO and viral marketing to advertise my sites, I give away books in the market my sites are about with links to that bans site. I don’t have a clue what a non bona fide transaction is.
We have identified your account to be generating non-bona fide transactions. This violates our Code of Conduct and breaches the agreement between us. Your account will be terminated immediately, and your payment will be placed on hold. Please reply to eBayPartnerNetwork-Quality@ebay.com within 72 hours with a detailed explanation of how you are driving traffic to eBay, including information on any third party agents that you are currently employing. Following the completion of our investigation, any payment will be made as per the Network Agreement. You are not allowed to rejoin the eBay Partner Network.
I sent them a reply and 7 days later I got this from them.
Thank you for contacting us. Your account was put on hold as it was recently linked to some suspicious bidding activity. After reviewing your case and the information you have provided below, we have reinstated your publisher account, and you will receive your July commissions as a credit during the next payment cycle. We value your participation in the program, and apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. Please let us know if you have any other questions.
Regards,
The eBay Partner Network Quality Team
How would I have anything to do with suspicious bidding activity.
I don’t have a warm and fuzzy feeling for ebay anymore.
@ scubaman
Glad you were reinstated … but sorry you had to go through that. The folks at ePN clearly have a hair trigger these days. They are catching plenty of innocents in these massive actions. Everyone should assume they will get a manual review at any moment.
@ Bill
Agreed. Beware the dark side.
@ Elijah
I hate for me to be the catalyst of anyone dropping ePN. Keep in mind I was reinstated. Diversification is the key, as always. All the eggs in one basket and all that…
I just got reinstated and got the same form letter about what to do in order to try and engage visitors more. Such a canned response. They did say they saw how much effort I put into my sites from the URLs I sent them, but how much more engaging they want my sites to be I’m not sure.
I have relevant content. I just added blurbs on the home page about being “teamed up with ebay” so they will hopefully know they will be clicking over to ebay. Plus I added the ebay logo on my auction pages.
I hope this cuts down on the tire kickers that click on a link by just bounce off ebay as soon as they get there.
What would be great is if there was a way for BANS to display the auction description details so people would have more info than just a link title which many time is just bad by the seller.
This way if they had more info on our site, they would be clicking over with the intention to buy. In theory anyway.
Man I had no idea that EPN could just can your account like that, having over 50 sites and stuff, maybe they are just sending out these emails randomly to try and scare the users ??
I have no idea, I have been using BANS for less than 2 months, I have 13 stores that are generating peanuts but I know they will make more, but I am having second thoughts about launching another 10-20 BANS sites in the next couple months now…