May 14, 2008
How much time have YOU lost since the April 1st changeover from CJ to the new eBay EPN affiliate program? I guess a better question would be: How Much Money has the EPN COST You?
Image courtesy of: www.yamakai.org
We are now 6 weeks into the new eBay Partner Network and there is no question on my end that something is very wrong! Like many others, I want to give this new program time to work out any bumps and issues that eBay may not have planned on, but the general consensus on the EPN forum is that the new program is not tracking correctly. My own site performance metrics tell me the same story…
Do you think it is only BANS sites affected by the change… think again! After only 30 minutes of reading over at the forum, you will soon see that this is affecting everyone from Build a Niche Store users to long time affiliates with active sites several years old!
I read one post where a user showed historical data from CJ where one of his sites earned an average of 15-20 ACRU’s every day for the past 16 months, since April 1st, his click volume has remained constant, yet his ACRU’s have declined to less than 1-2 a day! eBays answer… “Nothing is Wrong”(Kick in the Face!) This is the one area that eBay really needs to improve… the communication to its so called “Partners” in the affiliate program is non-existent! Aside from the canned, point and click answer’s you get when asking them a question, they have no communication plan to address the concerns of the affiliates. This alone will cause people to leave for greener pastures… I mean, if something is wrong, at least address the issue and let us know you are working on it! If nothing is wrong, provide an explanation for the differences we are all seeing in our metrics! Ignoring the forum posts is just another kick…
In my own case, I have one specific site that steadily earns and I could always count on 2-4 ACRU’s from this site every week! The site has earned more than $400 every month since last October and I was very excited about the new EPN swap, so I could grab that extra 5% at the end of April! Since switching… the opposite has occurred.
CJ Stats, March 2008 for One Auto Based Site:(AWStats showed 4045 Visitors / 20,175 PageViews)
EPN Stats, April 2008, Same Site: (AWStats showed 4403 Visitors / 29,334 PageViews)
After seeing these metrics, I am not giving up on the EPN and neither should you! The difference in the two stats above is strictly on the ACRU side and in the month of May, the site HAS registered one new ACRU so far. Not what I have historically seen, but still a move in the right direction, and worth the time to let run for a few more months before making any drastic changes! I am trending for more bids and clicks on the same site which is in line with the traffic seen in the logs.
So, how do you know if EPN is working right for you?
If the first two of these measurable stats have moved in the same direction, up or down, it is nothing to do with the EPN changeover! If traffic was down, chances are that earnings will be down as well! The same holds true for the clicks… fewer clicks = fewer bids = less affiliate commission!
The third metric concerning ACRU conversions is one I do not have the answer to! Just like everyone else who has seen the issue of ACRU’s not being recorded… I too, have received the canned email response and a big old eBay Affiliate Kick in the Face!
I think I already know the answer… but how have your eBay Affiliate sites been performing?
Popularity: 8% [?]
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20 Responses to “eBay Partner Network Kicking Affiliates in the Face!”
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Just when things started to look up WHAM!
I’m earning pennies at a time.. not dollars..
I’ts fraud..
Plus with category changes and no easy BANS fix in sight?
Now what?
I’m looking at converting 50% of my stores to data/product feeds ala shareasale and other networks
Mark, what do you think about the “FEW” folks over at the forum that claim it’s user error and that their sites are doing as well if not better since the switch? There are soo many theories going around about adsense ads causing problems, BANS updates not done correctly.. i hate to hear your sites are doing bad and i hate to say this but i am glad to know that someone with your background and knowledge is also having problems. It at least lets me know that there is something to this besides user error. Someone like me that is new at this, when someone says user error and you really have no where to turn for answers, it gets really frustrating! Hopefully someone will come through for all of us SOON!
@ Jeff -
I doubt that much of this is user error… I think the error is in the ACRU cookie itself. From everything I can see, it is only my ACRU earnings that are noticably affected. Earnings from sales have remained constant across almost all of my sites.
As I say in the post… I wont give up on the ACRU issue as eBay has a way fo making things right in the longrun. I have read that they have settled a few of the ACRU issues on the forum, but it may just be talk from EPN’s like us.
I also need to stress that if you have a site more than 6-8 months old and that site has a history of doing well, it should continue to do well! If not, then there is a problem!!
If, on the other hand, your site is less than 3-6 months old… it may not be ebay related at all!! Compare site traffic to EPN traffic…. If you went from 200 visitors a day when earnings were good, down to 25 visitors a day now, and earnings are bad… it is not eBay, but a different factor associated with domain age and trustrank.
Mark
I had 15 stores on 4/1 when I made the switch. Up to that point I had made @$100 on CJ from 9/15/07 - 3/31/08. I never had an ACRU on CJ.
March 2008 CJ I made $25 in commissions on 621 clicks.
April 2008 on EPN I made $77 in commish and $50 from ACRU’s. Clicks are maybe 1200ish. Hard to say with all the bot clicks. I did have 1 CRU that I think should be an ACRU so there is that.
May 2008 I have $29 in commish and $25 in ACRU’s.
The transition was positive for me but I did not have a long track record on CJ and I am still building sites. I’m not saying the EPN is perfect but it’s delivered more ACRU’s in 6 weeks than CJ did in 6 months.
My dataset is small…but growing :)
Some of the loudest complainers on the BANS board found out they screwed up their installs of the EPN upgrade which is why new installs worked and upgraded sites weren’t tracking right.
Hi, i really like your site layout. I will continue reading here, so i subscribed! Maybe you could check out my site, and even subscribe if you like. Thanks, Zach.
Ironically for me, my ACRUs have gone up since switching to EPN. As to the other metrics, they are on par with CJ’s metrics. So, for me, there hasn’t been much change one way or the other (except for the increase in ACRUs).
Rochelle
My EPN experience as been good as well. My ACRU are slightly up from CJ. Commissions are running about the same.
THANK YOU for this blog post! I was beginning to feel alone and it is glad to see others discussing this.
I honestly think at this point we need to start a MASSIVE blogging campaign directed at the eBay Partner Network as they are NOT LISTENING TO US!
Without a doubt, earnings are down and I simply DO NOT TRUST EBAY! Especially after reading how Craigslist is suing them:
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2008/05/14/craigslist-clicks-ebays-quotsue-it-nowquot-button.aspx
eBay is showing a pattern/character flaw and it probably stems from Meg Whitman (or whoever is in charge). If they are willing to backstab Craigslist, you can be assured they will backstab their affiliates.
This is pretty shocking to see how they have simply dissappearred and are in hiding from their affiliates. Sooo unprofessional.
Anyway, here’s what I, we or someone needs to do:
1 - Start a centralized web site protesting EPN’s treatments of its affiliates
2 - Everyone blog about this and keep putting pressure on eBay
3 - Insert other ideas here…
I have had one ACRU with EPN but I never had a site under CJ so I can’t comment further. What I will mention though is the EPN tracking system. I have had a couple of stores with no traffic reported via EPN as having hundreds of clicks in one day! That’s just not right.
For May I am showing 6822 clicks and sales of only $40. I’m not actually sure how I check how many bids and winning bids I’ve had :-).
Oh and I meant to add that I completely agree with you Mark. Ebay’s lack of official comment is a disgrace. Why that don’t want to communicate is beyond me it always gives me an uneasy feeling. I’m inclined to focus some energy in another direction as I feel too dependent on a silent corporate giant right now.
[…] eBay Partner Network Kicking Affiliates in the Face! […]
Sometime It seams like Ebay is being run by a bunch of kids. You know what I mean. You confront them and the say WHAT EVER.
As a ebey seller I have been blackmail for FB 6 times in the last month. They say they will investigate and remove it and suspend accounts abusing FB. NOT
Broken promises
I’m still waiting to see what comes out in the wash
My earnings on CJ during April were the highest ever. My earnings from ebay were the lowest. I didn’t even make enough from ebay to get paid. I haven’t made any ebay sales for a week now and I find this very hard to believe. I think that what is needed is a survey to determine just how many people this issue is affecting. It’s easy to get skewed impression from forums as the ones whose sales are down will make the most noise. We could do with some hard figures.
I have been an ebay powerseller for 5 years and they have always been very very poor with customer care. I have rarely received a reply that hasn’t been a cut and paste job in all these years.
Ebay is notorious for treating buyers and sellers alike with disdain. In recent years they have made disastrous changes in the rules affecting countless sellers. a UK change earlier this year put many out of business and even bankrupted some sellers in the UK. My income went down by approx 65% and is still at that level today. The forums were inundated with threads complaining, and when ebay reps (rarely) responded there were no answers forthcoming.
I’m also glad that it’s not “just me” on this….although it’s never good when honest people like us get the shaft.
I really haven’t taken a hard look at my metrics/stats from Aweber to EPN…but I can say this:
1. I shouldn’t have gone from my BEST month so far (March) to my ABSOLUTE WORST month to date (April)….and not think that it’s EPN related.
2. While with CJ, I would get 5, 6 maybe 7 signup commissions per month…I’ve gotten 1 ACRU so far with EPN.
3. According to CJ stats, I received commission EVERY SINGLE day (except 2 days) in the month of March. With EPN, all of April and up until today I’ve had about 10-12 sales total. …and there’s nothing wrong?
4. I understand that lower traffic translates to lower clicks/commissions…but c’mon! I have my BEST earning sight at position #1…yes, #1 on page 1 in google for my main search term….and it’s only registered 17 clicks according to EPN this month. It was doing WAY better when it was sandboxed around page 4!
5. I hate EPN
6. I am extremely busy this time of year…work, grad school, new baby….and I haven’t had much time to devote to BANS….but I’m almost glad. I’m not sure I want to do much more BANS work if they continue to screw us over.
Like many people, I’m just really frustrated because after about a year of trying to make money on the internet…I was finally succeeding and seeing some REAL dollars, and it was growing and getting better each month…only to be kicked in the face!
Eric
One of the difficulties I’m having is that it’s hard to assess the metrics, since I had probably some 20,000 clicks registered in April from bots. This is something they say they’re addressing, although I can’t see how that could impact the revenue bottom line.
That said, I have seen an increase in ACRUs, as well, but the number of winning bids has fallen dramatically vis a vis the actualy number of clicks I’m seeing in May. Before the changeover, I was seeing one winning bid per 30-40 clicks (in March). Now I’m seeing a winning bid for every 100-125 clicks here in May (the bot clicks seem to have stopped). I guess I can’t complain, since my actual revenues this month (May) so far are slightly ahead of my previous highest month. I only got started with BANS at the first of the year, so I don’t have a lot of history to go by.
I think we need to give it six months to see how things are performing over the longer haul.
I received around 1000 impressions and 500 clicks my first month with less than $1 revenue. This may be more a poor selection of niches and keywords than anything else. I am trying to exercise patience and wait it out.
I started with EPN so have no experience good or bad with CJ.
I can’t believe ShoeMoney is ignoring this all important topic. It looks like no matter what happens, eBay for sure cannot be trusted and you might as well take any income you make with them with a grain of salt as it could be gone at any time.
In short, it’s probably a safe bet to focus on a different income stream. :(
http://www.shoemoney.com/2008/05/15/my-definition-of-seo-and-how-the-death-will-play-out/
Perhaps an investigation is in order.
Should all affiliate programs be monitored by an independent or (heaven forbid) government agency? That couldn’t be good and will cost both sides money but that is exactly what will happen if enough people start screaming to lawmakers.
Walt
[…] week, I posted about eBay not paying attention to its Affiliates and the problems they are having with the new EPN changeover. Browsing the eBay EPN forum shows […]