ePN Changes Partner Terms – Play in Your Own Damn Sandbox!
eBay, still struggling to find its place in the world of eCommerce, made another change to how it works with its affiliates this morning, with what looks like a way to combat spam traffic that has become quite popular at eBay.
Even though there are two separate posts about the changes on the eBay Partner network Blog, just about all of it can be summed up in one sentence… I suggest everyone bookmark and follow the forum post asking for clarification on these new terms.
“If You Want to Earn Commission on Your Traffic, Make Sure they Come from Your OWN Websites, absolutely nowhere else!”
Reminder: Don’t forget to enter to Win a Niche Website!
What Does This Mean to Partners Like Us?
Overall, this is not going to have a big affect on many of us, as long as we aren’t going post happy, outside our own registered domains. In other words:
- You Cannot Post Links to Craigslist
- You Cannot Create Squidoo Pages
- You Cannot post Links from within Facebook
- No More Toolbars.. (Without express written approval of ePN)
If I were a guessing man… I would assume that eBay is saying one simple thing, Build your own network, your own traffic, and your own websites and quit using other traffic to plant your cookie with visitors that would usually end up on eBay anyway!
Excerpt from the Post:
Important updates to the Network Code of Conduct include the following:
• eBay Partner Network does not compensate for sales that come from invalid click activity, which includes, but is not limited to the following:
- clicks generated by a publisher clicking on their own ads
- automated clicking tools/traffic sources/robots
- activity generated by other deceptive software• Publishers may only place links and/or promotional content on sites they own. Affiliate links on third party sites such as Craigslist, MySpace, etc. are not allowed.
• You will not redirect any traffic to middle servers for the sole purpose of masking your referring source of traffic. This includes the use of URL shortening services (including but not limited to tinyurl. com, short.to and cloakedlink. com).
No More Direct Paid Links
Many people use PPC on different search engines and social networks to drive paid traffic to ePN. From July 20th, you can no longer direct that traffic directly to eBay! What this means to you and I, is that IF we want to use PPC or paid advertisements to get traffic, we must first direct those paid clicks to OUR OWN websites, engage the visitors, and only then, direct them to the eBay system!
1:00 pm et: edited for more info…
Company or Trademarks in URL’s
I almost completely forgot to talk about this, but ePN has also expanded on the URL trademarks.
partners may not use promotional methods that violate intellectual property or proprietary rights of third party trademarks. This includes, but is not limited to, using a third party trademark (or a term confusingly similar to it) in your URLs.”
While this MAY seem like a normal thing to say, there is ALOT of gray area in the statement! We KNOW that “cheapcanoncameras.com” is a bad thing, but what about:
- camerareviews. com/slr/canon
- mynewcamera. com/category/cameras/accessories/canon/
ALL of the above are technically URL’s, so at what point do they consider the infrigement cleared?
On eBays own URL’s, they usea nme e Canon ater the 2nd hash, is it safe to assume we can do the same?
http://photography.shop.ebay.com/items/Digital-Cameras_?Brand=Canon&_dmpt=Digital_Cameras&_sacat=31388
The Email Subscriber Gotcha!
This is somewhat of a gray area I picked up on over the past week… Did you know:
- If you Maintain a Mailing List, OR If you have Blog Subscribers that Choose to Recieve Updates Via EMAIL
- If you use ANY Method of email marketing with links that go directly to eBay with your CAMPID in place.
You are in Violation of the Partner Agreement!
So here is the scenario… Assume you have a blog about XYZ widgets, and you have a loyal subscriber base in a mix of both RSS and eMail subscribers. One day, you find this FANTASTIC deal on these XYZ widgets and you post on your site about it… many of your readers come in, recognize the bargain and go and buy it! That’s good right?!
Well, a certain percentage of your readers who get the email, well, they click the link within the email feed and go directly to eBay to buy the same item… except.. unknown to them (and you) You just violated the eBay Partner Network Agreement …
Make Sure your Blog Posts that get sent via email, do NOT contain ePN Links!
A Recent forum post talks about this, and the network agreement covers it in Section F.
Domain Validation
While this is something that has readily been discussed at ebay, now they are requiring NEW affiliates to validate at least one domain, and strongly recommend all affiliates validate their domains in the campaign tools area!
Change in Payment Terms
Guess what? Got at least $5 in earnings? Now you get a check! On another note… if you are reading at this website, I truly hope you generate more than $5/month in ePN earnings! If not, you really need to go to the Build a Niche Store Guide website, grab the new guide, and give yourself a Do-Over!
What do You think of the New Terms?
PRO -
In my opinion, these new terms are only going to HELP honest affiliates! I am not drinking the ePN Kool-Air in any way, but if you are an honest affiliate who uses no practices that could be considered sketchy… it will have no affect on your earnings.
CON -
If you use outside linking systems like tinyurl, if you cloak your own links through a tracking mechanism off your domain, if you do anything to hide the referrer id of your site, its time to rebuild!
Your Opinion?
Previously Published Articles You May Like to Read:
- Alternatives to the ePN – eBay Partner Network
- All is not Lost when Dropped by eBay Partner Network
- Steve Hartman Says Farewell to eBay Partner Network
- eBay Partner Network Kicking Affiliates in the Face!
- Get Ready for Another Slap by Ebay Partner Network!
- Use variations of search terms
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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 think it SUX in a way, what’s the difference in dropping an ad on my facebook, or using twitter or USfreeads, than having an article on a 3rd party site article directory?
To me there’s WAY too much gray area here and I hope the pinks chime in on the discussion at the EPN forum…
I can understand not linking directly to Ebay from Twitter, Facebook, USfreeads etc etc… but what’s the big deal with sending them to your site where the content is?
@ Jake –
You may misunderstand it a little… or maybe I confused things.
You can use articles, facebook, craigslist, basically ANY means in the world to get traffic to YOUR site… as long as you dont direct that traffic from those third party sources, DIRECTLY to eBay.
Links from ANYWHERE to YOU = GOOD!
Links from ANYWHERE direct to eBay = BAD
Mark
What about a plugin like auction2post? Does this qualify as “automated traffic”?
>>In my opinion, these new terms are only going to HELP honest affiliates!
I agree with this 100%! Not to mention it will reduce the competition from the affiliates who just try to spam the low hanging fruit.
Chuck
@ Scott –
As long as the traffic and click originates from YOUR domain (verified would be best) and sends your domain in the referrer header, no issue I wouldnt think.
Mark, thanks for the post and email. I think I feel better now. The key is to ensure that visitors land on your site before going to epn.
One thing that concerns me about this is the potential for foul play.
What’s to stop me from visiting a competitor’s site, grabbing their direct links to epn, and dropping them all over Craigslist, sqidoo, usfreeads, etc and getting them popped by epn.
Should I still be worried?
@ Greg –
Very good question, but probably solved by the verified domains method.
I also assume that once you verify a domain and assign the campid to it, any clicks from that campid that do not include your referrer domain, wl not count.
@ All –
At the top of this post is a link to the forum post fropm affiliates asking questions, make sure you all monitor it!!
Some of the things not considered in this post…
Blogger.com, article directories, just about EVERYWHERE people have marketed eBay stuff for years, will no longer count, so it seems.
What if you have links from those that are years old? Will you now face penalties or elimination from the program?
EPN will be answering questions posted to that forum.
I agree that for the most part this is good for honest affiliates and may eliminate some competition for a short while until they figure out some work-around. But I also agree some of the language is vague and must be clarified like the url restrictions. Thanks for the update, I got out of the habit of checking the ebay blog & discussion forums and totally ignored the email that came in today.
On the payment terms, since I am just starting out, I don’t always make $25 per month. Does the money roll over to the next month or do I lose it to the state? At least other affiliate programs will let you roll over to the next month.
@Angelo
I think you’ll find that they will roll over to the next month, as stated here …
“If your balance is 25 (USD, CAD, EUR, GBP or AUD) or more, and your eBay Partner Network account is in good standing, you will receive a payment from us as scheduled. If your balance is lower than this amount, we will hold it until you either surpass this threshold or until our November period, where we will pay out your accumulated outstanding earnings regardless of the size of your balance. ”
Q. Mark
You mentioned cloaking links and tracking off your domain – do you think it’s ok to use something like Max Blog Press Ninja Affiliate to cloak links? It is, of course, done on the site to make the links search engine friendly.
Well everytime I think I got this thing sort of figured out then…
Do you have a suggestion for how to make blog posts with links or phpbay listings that goes out to email subscribers compliant without changing the site itself?? and removing all the products from the site post?? Thanks as always… some of the jargon from the letter and notices from epn are somewhat lawyer jargon and hard to determine the meaning that they intend…
Forgot….
As I read this post ..we can still send traffic to our sites from any backlink that we create or get as long as there is no Aff link or epn link in the place that sends the traffic to our OWN site..then our site can send to Ebay…. I hope that is right .. since backlinking from hubs and squidoo and even articles would be a thing of the past…. thanks
It’s just one thing after another isn’t it? I don’t use social networks and I believe the only linking I have is through my own web sites.
I think people are just going to have to direct any of their links back through one of their web sites and to eBay from there.
@ All –
A Pink has answered some of the questions on the forum link above.
100% of ANY third party promotion that leads DIRECT to ebay is out! This means… Squidoo, blogger-blogs, etc, are all useless to direct traffic direct to eBay. They are however good to direct to your main site, then from your main site, to eBay.
In a nutshell – you MUST OWN the domain that directs traffic to eBay.
@ Angelo & Polly –
From what I understand, beginning Aug 1, the new payment terms will now pay a minimum of $5 / month.
@ Polly –
I cloak with Maxblogpress… As long as you dont use it for rover ePN links, all is good! I also use a homegrown cloaker in a php file… but it only masks the links versus fully cloaking them.
@ Otis –
In ref to excluding ePN links in email – just deliver the summary, versus the full feed. Its one of the settings within wordpress.
WP-Admin > Settings > Reading > choose “Summary” versus Full Text.
@ James –
Exactly!
ALL Ebay wants to do is have the ability, AT THE PAGE LEVEL, to know EXACTLY who is sending traffic and EXACTLY hich page on their sites they are sending it from.
Mark
As I read that email yesterday I did a mental list of the Squidoo lenses I have that contain eBay epn links and now need to go remove them. Glad you wrote about this because I forgot to do it and probably wouldn’t have remembered until the eBay police came knocking on my door for the violation.
I’m also laughing. As of this writing, my eBay epn balance for the month is $5.48. No, wait, I just refreshed it and it jumped to $15.48. Seems I got an ACRU yesterday. But, in my defense, I only have one eBay epn site currently live and Google tanked it big time. Not deindexed, but pretty damn hard to find unless someone takes the time to go through MANY search results pages. Seems I need to go read the BANS guide ; )
Thanks, Mark, for keeping us up on the newest goings-on at eBay.
Rochelle
Mark,
I re-read the email just to see if I had gotten it wrong. What I see is that this month’s payment will be paid no matter what you have but from now on the minimum threshold is going to be 25 bucks.
“As mentioned in this previous post, we are adjusting our minimum payment threshold from 5 to 25 (USD, CAD, EUR, GBP, or AUD), depending on your country’s currency. This month’s payment disbursement, occurring Monday, July 27th, will have no payment threshold.”
Jeff
Thanks for clarifying all the mumbo jumbo. I take it that means i can’t utlise the ebay rss feed that I put in a squidoo lens either!
I think on the whole it’s a good thing but they will have to clarify the tradenames in urls, as you said, they have those in their own urls.
Is the PHPbay plugin still going to be ok?
Do we now have to troll through all of our sites/places with links and remove/edit them or will they just not count?
The Trademark in the url thing really has me worried, as I don’t completely understand what is allowed and what isn’t at this point.
I think it is a common practice if you have a site focusing on a nice to have brands as categories, and so those could potentially be in the URLs.
For example, If I created niche site selling washing machines or washing machine parts, I may have categories for Maytag, Whirlpool, Frigidaire, etc. I would assume that those type of names could potentially be Trademarks or Servicemarks.
I’ve understood the importance of not having core domain names with trademarks or servicemarks, but I’ve never thought that having these names in the URLs (past the core domain name) was a bad practice.
Do I need to look back at these type of URLs for category names and start making modifications, i.e. abbreviating them or altering?
Changing those would concern me for already indexed pages. Should I 301 or 302 the pages to the new names?
Totally confused – Greg
@ Jeff – Senjo
You are correct, I was wrong… the $5 payment is a one time only thing, I assume, to clear out the payment database and start over! (On their accounting end)
@ Cherie –
From the reply posted ont he forum, it looks like they are more concerned about domain names than anything else when it comes to the infringements.
I have MANY sites that have a brand name in the third category slash: ex: domain .com/brands/mikita/
From reading their forum post, they are MORE concerned about things like: cheapmikitadrills .com, than the trailing url.
(Where the domain have the trademark in it)
@ Greg –
I wouldn’t change anything without first – letting them provide a clear explanation, and two – sending them an email asking if its OK.
It really doesnt read like they are against using a trademark AFTER the trailing slash… but moreso in the domain itself.
One thing I DID read this morning… everyone who has built on Squidoo, blogger.blogs, etc etc… they have alot of work to do!
One of the forum posters asked about a time frame for getting into compliance, since they have blogger blogs and squidoo pages that use an eBay sidebar widget… ALL will apparently need to be rebuilt or junked.
Mark
My Squidoo lenses totalled five and took me about fifteen minutes to clear up. I really feel for the people who have massive amounts of hub sites with ebay links.
Looks like it may be time to officially retire the BANS Toolbar. I haven’t been able to upgrade it to be compatible with Firefox v3, so I was just going to let the URL expire in a few months and not renew it. But, it does have eBay links, so I should probably pull the plug now and let everyone who may have it installed know that they should uninstall it.
Rochelle
Hi
I was wondering about the the link cloaking
“if you cloak your own links through a tracking mechanism off your domain”
Does this mean that the BANS option to cloak our links is going to be a violation?
Kim
@ Kim –
Not from my understanding…
IF you cloaked from facebook > eBay, that would be bad and prohibited.
Since your link within BANS (which is really just an URL rewrite versus a cloak) is going direct from your domain to eBay, its fine.
Mark
My 2 main areas of concern were using seo urls and the brand names in the url.
So is the consensus that seo urls like what phpbay has is ok since the link is not hidden or cloaked when it goes through to ebay?
Secondly, I have many urls which are for example; http: // vintagecars . com/ford. So is that ok? It’s technically after the 3rd slash. They’ve been that way well over a year with no problems thus far.
I think It has it’s good points for instance if you can’t use adwords to drive traffic to ebay then your eBay Niche Store site would no longer be in competition with Google as you mentioned in your post the other day.
If this is the case then Google would have no further reason to penalize an eBay Niche store site as they appear to have done in the past.
Considering that all ePN affiliates have already agreed to hold eBay harmless for any wrong doing with their personal Web sites, many people suspect the latest modifications and additions to their TOS and COC are merely “power grabs” in a never ending attempt to micro-manage the content on affiliate sites. I expect ePN will be introducing even more radical changes to their program in the near future.
[...] as Mark mentions here at The Niche Store Builder, this has some grey areas which will need further [...]
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