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August 21, 2008
Surprisingly, they give no real answers to any of us!
As we watch our friends and comrades get their incomes cut to nothing by a large corporate giant, eBay has chosen to remain behind the iron curtain and once again, avoid telling the rest of us what to do to succeed!
In a post on the ePN forums tonight, Steve, the pink that usually responds was tasked with being the messenger… Obviously, I have shortened the response.
I wanted to address all of the board posts regarding the expiration emails that were sent last night.
… I know there have been a number of requests to provide insight into all of the metrics via which we are evaluating affiliate traffic, but unfortunately there’s an active black hat community that is pretty effective at exploiting these insights so we can’t go into details on them. However, what I can say is that in addition to earnings per click metrics (EPC), we look at a variety of metrics to see how users are behaving when they come to eBay.com – how engaged they are with our site, and whether the affiliate link clicks lead to incremental buying activity. As we’ve done this, we have seen a big discrepancy in how interested and active the traffic is that comes to eBay from different sources.
…
Sincerely,
Steve
I have worked in the corporate world and I have seen these types of replies in the past. They are written this way to protect eBay from any possible repercussion. In a nutshell, eBay has come and told many affiliates… we no longer need your services and we aren’t going to tell anyone why!
So the real question now is this:
How can we be successful in the eBay Partner Network, if we have no Goals? Will we be Next?
17 Responses to “eBay Responds to Hundreds of Virtual Layoffs”
Got something to say?
Definitely quite a few sad tales over on that epn forum.
After reading through the threads about what type of affiliates they are sending the cancellation notices to, I have a theory …
I don’t think they’re targeting epc or click-through rate, or even the “quality” of sales that come from your site.
From eBay’s perspective, if I’m going to pay somebody thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of dollars a month in affiliate commissions, what is the ideal type of customer I want them to bring me?
* Someone who is Not already registered with eBay, but spends a lot of money on the site once they get there.
On the flip side, (again, from eBay’s perspective) what would be the least desirable type of customers to pay commissions on?
- A new eBay registration, that qualifies for an ACRU, but then spends very little money on the site.
- A person who already has a long history of purchasing directly from eBay itself. (without going through an affiliate)
If my theory is even close to accurate, I’d check your stats for two things …
- If you make more money from ACRUs than from commissions, I’d be worried. (this might actually be less of a problem now that they are adding the tiered ACR commissions)
- If you earn high commissions, but have relatively few ACRUs … ie, you sell primarily to established eBay customers, I’d also be worried.
I know this in no way helps those poor people who are seeing their incomes disappear literally overnight. But unfortunately when dealing with a large publicly traded company, many high-level, bottom line focused, decisions often have harsh consequences for the “little guy”.
I think this whole thing is probably analogous to a car company closing a plant and laying off all the workers as a way to save money.
It’s not “fair”, but it is life.
Just my opinion,
Todd
Far out, hope this doesn’t happen to me! Is there any way to appeal a EPN decision or is it just a closed book affair?
Anthony
http://iphoneauctions.com.au
@ Todd -
Great post!
I honestly dont have a clue what they want anymore… I used to think it was visitors and honest affiliates.
Im all out of guesses though.
Mark
I didn’t spend too much time reading those threads but one thread highlighted the EPC of many of the banned accounts and they were all in the sub 5 dollar range.
I wonder if those who were banned were the stumblers and that group that thinks traffic is the answer?
Can anyone who was banned today confirm whether they used things like Stumble Upon that drives impressions and clicks but rarely bids?
Thoughts?
All those pages that were advertising eBay need a new site to point to.
Imagine an auction site where the percentage of traffic you drive to the site represents the percentage of the company that you own…
What I can’t understand is why eBay actually doesn’t even TRY to help their affiliates. I never seen something like this happening on other networks. There you haven an account manager who actually TELLS you how to make more profit out of your campaigns - Again I have no clue why a company like ebay is doesn’t bother. At least its a WIN WIN situation.
Interesting… can’t log in to EPN right now… the server has crashed.
HTTP Status 500 where the log-in should be…
“I know there have been a number of requests to provide insight into all of the metrics via which we are evaluating affiliate traffic, but unfortunately there’s an active black hat community that is pretty effective at exploiting these insights so we can’t go into details on them”
This part of the message says to me that they are aware of a few ways of black-hatting the cookie stuffers and they may be targeting them first and foremost.
I have a single page that gets 300 visitors a day - and it would be pretty easy for me to drop related eBay items into an iFrame that also drops the cookie on them too.
Perhaps it is this kind of thing they are going after? I bet there are plenty of other ways it can be done too.
After all, I bet they have the ability to read who grabs their RSS feeds and how many times compared to how many cookies they drop too. That would show up a black hatter immediately!
I think Todd could be onto something with the ACRU metric. Ebay would have to be quite unhappy if they were paying out big commissions on low-quality new signups. It would also explain why they can’t provide metrics as something is being “exploited”.
Ok…I just logged into my ePN and looked at my clicks per campaign…..and half of my stores weren’t even listed!
Does this mean that they simply didn’t get any clicks this month (which very well could be the case)….or have those sites been “dropped” by ePN?
I speak as being one of the devasted expired account users. I have never used anything but natural organic search engine traffic. This has all been achieved by thorough research into onpage and off page SEO and application. Never used stumble and some of my sites have EPC’s of over 34. The reality is nobody is safe and with EPN it is only a matter of time for all of us that have strived to get out of the 9 to 5 rat race and form an honest internet living for our families
@David I feel for you mate.
I only have 6 sites (and only 2 making any real money) so I am not at deaths door if I do (or when I do) get my EPN account cancelled.
I will be looking to use Wordpress to replace the sites with auto generated content plus Adsense - or a script like http://www.jtpratt.com/free-niche-site-script/ but replace the eBay stuff with another providers items.
But only if I do get kicked from the EPN.
I wonder if it’s worth making any new sites now.
David,
Do you sell on eBay? I was wondering if working eBay from both sides and puting a few of our own ebay store products on Bans would help. Just thinking.
Also they may be blundering around and trying to scare the bad guys. If they were making money from you they may return you to the fold later. I hope so.
Walt
I am a firm believer that this is due to all of the cookie stuffing and other black hat tatics that I have seen advertised on the web. Just like Taoski mentioned, there are actually services that you can buy to get you ACRU signups, totally black ha and I have never used them, but they exist, this could also explain why the ACRU payouts are changing, just a thought. I have MANY sites that would be considered crap but they still exist, maybe it just not my time…yet!
Hi Taoski / Walter,
The EPN expiration of the account could not of come at a worst time, only 3 weeks ago 16 of my BANS sites were delisted off Google with no reason given. My sites all contain content and absolutely no underhand tactics. God its a great world. But I am determined to succeed against all odds and Mark is a great inspiration. I do have an Ebay shop which I have had for 3 years and it still means nothing Ebay, we are all at their beck and call. I will be following Mark’s articles on other ways to monetize our stores. After all the blood sweat and tears I am not stopping now. Lets fight it together.
@Tod
Great post and i feel your insight to this problem is correct.
and how true what you said - “bottom line focused, decisions often have harsh consequences for the “little guy”.