ePN is Broken – and I Quit… For Now!
I have had quite a few emails asking where I have been over the past few weeks and truth be known, I have just burned out. The situation with ePN has really gotten my panties in a wad after watching one spider-bot after another come through my sites and literally, put a big damper on any hopes of knock-out earnings coming into the busy holiday season. The bad part… is that I know I’m not the Only One!
Just one visit from a bot will seriously damper any hopes of earnings for at least 2 weeks. I went from .28 epc on October 27th, to where I sit now… at .05 cents per click. ALL due to 2 bot visits. Before some keyboard cowboy comes along with a wise remark there is no way to 100% block spider bots 100% of the time. The BEST you can hope for is to catch them in the act, shut them out, and block them until some new script-kiddie comes along and builds a better bot, which will happen before you finish reading this post!
I have spent enough time working to make sure no bot activity occurs on my sites. From htaccess rules, to click limit filtering, you name it. Spambots are like email Spam – you may be able to block it all for several weeks, but eventually, the spammers just find a different way around the filter. Like I said above… it only takes one bad bot to ruin a month worth of earnings, possibly resulting in eBay shutting down your partner account.
I’m just done with that stress… time to focus efforts elsewhere.
ePN is Broken – and I Quit For Now
Yup – I am done sending engaged traffic to the ebay system until they find a way to fix their broken Quality Click Pricing system. For myself, that equates to rebuilding affiliate links on several sites, but I am much more enthusiastic about rebuilding for an affiliate program that actually respects and cares about their partners, than making them guess what they want, penalizing them for things out of their control (that will NEVER end – aka rogue bots) and just having a system that in no way rewards affiliates for sending quality traffic!
Here is an idea – drop the over-complicated QCP program, and base affiliate earnings on a 1-day cookie! IF the referred buyer completes a transaction within 24 hours, you make money. If they bid on an item within 24 hours and win 6 days later, that counts also! If not – you get nothing! At least that is something we can plan and build around.
The current system is just too volitile the way it is and eBay has ALL the control! Look through the ePN forums… One affiliate was running a PPC campaign, generated more than $200k in eBay sales and earned more than $20k in ePC earnings. eBay killed his account and kept his earnings. Who pays his PPC bill now?
I have been around affiliate marketing for MANY years – and never seen a program so quickly run into the ground.
If you stick with eBay Partner Network – best of luck to you. Until they fix it… I’m out of here! There are simply too many other respectable companies out there that actually WANT qualified buyers, and appreciate the efforts of their affiliate “Partners”!
Time to go an replace more content…
< / rant >
Previously Published Articles You May Like to Read:
- I Did it…. I Quit Smoking!
- How I Increased ePN Earnings by 160% Overnight!
- PepperJam Network Responds to ePN Questions
- Quality Click Pricing Comes to ePN for eBay Affiliates
- eBay Acknowledges EPN Tracking Issues!
- ePN and HostGator not Playing Well Today!
- Update Build a Niche Store 3.0 to 3.0 EPN
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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 don’t know much about their quality click thing, but I’m assuming what’s happening is these bots are following your links, so eBay sees a whole load of clickthroughs that result in no bids etc which lowers the quality and therefore your payout.
A solution to this is to not make your links through to eBay links. What? I hear you ask. Instead, make all your links through to eBay forms with submit buttons instead. Post back to a script on your site and then do a redirect to the listing on eBay.
By doing this, the bots are less likely to follow them and end up on eBay. I’m sure some will still submit the forms but they are much less likely too.
The other useful thing is Google and other legitimate bots also won’t follow the “links” so they don’t know your website is posting affiliate links, which can only be a good thing.
I’ve seen Google request my local links that redirect to affiliate sites, even though they are both blocked in robots.txt and have rel nofollow on them. I guess Google likes to know where your links go too even if you tell it to leave them alone. By making them forms G really won’t follow.
@ Chris –
Thanks for the suggestion – I haven’t considered using dynamic form elements to route the links before – but I fear the end result will be the same.
Right now – I am redirecting through a separate file, that masks the urls, of course, nofollows them, then redirects through some htaccess magic over to the actual page with the listing.
The problem is that it only takes one rogue bot to kill a months worth of earnings, when it goes on a 2000 click rampage. So, 29 days of the month, you deliver stellar traffic… then on day 30, that rogue bot comes in and spiders every link on the site…
M
Yeah i’m beginning to think i’ve worked my butt off for 1.5 years for naught! BUT, i have learned so much and I’ll take the positive out of it.. When it switched in October, things went up and I thought COOL! This is going to be a good thing… then November 1st.. down the drain for no apparent reason…
Yup, time to look elsewhere and change things up and hopefully they will pull their head out of there a$$ and start thinking about their affiliates again… someday!
What is a rogue bot.. ?
Where do they come from? Could they be from ebay?
Isn’t there some way you can stop these rogue bots?
Why would someone develop a rogue bot in the first place.. is there something to be gained other than wrecking the hard work you have done on your site..
Why do these spambots exist!? Is there someone who gains out of this?
By the way Mark, why don’t you try Amazon? I’ve heard it is equally good..
Never heard of the bot problem and ePN, sounds nasty.
ebay sent me a survey this week which asked questions about their affiliate program. (Did you get it, too?)
I filled it out and told them that there were a lot of ticked off people because of QPC. I even suggested that they go back to the old model because it was just better and more fair. Wonder if they’re starting to have second thoughts about the way they’ve done things.
I am still building ePN sites at the moment – but I have a massive caveat for each one I buiid:
“I must be able to monetize via another affiliate program”
I am no longer persuing the so obscure niches that I currently have. Apart from Adsense, I have little other places to go with them, so I am building sites were I can easily switch to Amazon, CJ or Chikita and still get money coming in.
Hey Marky Mark…..sorry to hear about your trouble but your experience mimicked mine. I just quit sooner than you did.
I feel like an expat living in Mexico now. Reading about EPN and hearing all the stories from back home but not being as involved as I was before.
I’ve given Amazon a really hard try and while nothing is guaranteed, if you build the right type of site that sends a buying visitor then it converts extremely well.
I think we’ve all realized that the old spray and pray deal we had with EPN for so long was great but it’s gone. Time to build sites differently and use different programs.
@ David & Anand -
Bots, or Rogue Bots as I have worded it, are nothing more than link harvesters, email harvesters, or any other type of automated script that crawls all your site pages.
They usually hit a “Server”, or IP address versus hitting a single site, and they just follow link-to-link on every site page, as they find it.
Most of the spam email you get – is the result of a bot going through websites, forums, etc and finding every reference to an email address, and selling the lists, or using them for their own purposes.
GoogleBot learns what is on your site by sending their own bots – unfortunately, some are not as goodwill as google.
@ Mark Sierra -
No questionaire on 2 of my accounts, but I did get on on a third account. (We have a total of three ePN accounts. personal, personal, business)
I did not bother with it.
@ Tao -
Its been building for awhile, but the system is just too unpredictable to rely on for my own security. Its like playing with explosives…. eventually, you may get burned!
I just worry about investing too much into something that I literally have no control over at all. If you have a stellar month, eBay may not like it and just freeze your account.
Too many horror stories all over the web right now!
@ Bill –
I saw that on your site!! :-) I have an Amazon Account registered to an out of state account (No Amazon for NC residents) but still havent had as good results as with ePN.
I am leaning to working with individual vendors versus a network, but PJN (PepperJam) and ConnectCommerce (Google Affiliate network) have also peaked my interest with their datafeed programs.
I saw your article directory also! Did you get my message on it?
Mark
I’m right there with ya. I had just shelled out about $200 for content on two new “thick” sites I was developing when QCP came down the pipe and all of a sudden thin sites were back in style (at least until ePN tweaks their algo again). Like you say, it’s just too volatile. There are other pastures to graze in.
Sorry to hear about your troubles Mark, I’m nowhere in your league so to be honest at the end of last month I saw very little difference in the end result, however having started quite well at the beginning of this month, I’ve now had a couple of “zero” days – not funny.
I see that Linkshare has a variety of wordpress plugins to help display various links here http://www.linkshare.com/publishers/bentobox/wordpress_plugins/
might be of use to you or someone.
@ Shawn –
Seems it is hitting almost everyone who has steady traffic being fed to them. The GOOD thing about your content purchase, is that its ALWAYS yours and can be monetized in various ways!
@ Cherie –
Thanks for the links! I have been all over the LinkShare program lately – but working with their discount and coupon feeds more than anything else. I am actually trying to get away from WordPress a bit… and build a few static sites, just to confirm some testing I have been doing.
Thanks for the link to the plugin!
@Mark
Are you going to show us when you’ve done the testing?
I also found a plugin for Webgains , Paid on Results and Tradedoubler http://www.wpaffiliateplugins.com/index.php/free-affiliate-plugin-downloads/
@ Cherie -
I will… I have seen some interesting trends with WordPress sites that lead me to believe the popularity and resulting traffic sent from engines like Goog, is directly related to the frequency of site updates. Yes, a footprint… Nothing real solid yet – just testing it still. Even a BANS site that has been stripped of all “footprinting”, seems to be doing better than a “Blog” in WordPress lately, and I started looking into why. Made me wonder if Goog has foot-printed a “Blog” and EXPECTS blogging type steady updates in order to pay attention to it.
M
Hi Mark,
Sorry you’ve been beat up by spambots. That sucks!
Do other affiliate networks have better protections against this type of stuff? Like Amazon? Do they have better filters?
Jeff
Wow – Mark, this is really interesting stuff. I wondered why you’d been so quiet lately!
My eBay affiliate earnings took a nosedive in April and haven’t really blossomed since, although strangely one stupid old “thin” BANS site has perked up again. Seems daft and a bit of a waste of time chasing our tails.
Hats off to you for keeping us in the loop and providing your always excellent suggestions.
Again – you rule!
I had a site recently that sold 4 items in one day that were over $2500 items a piece and my QPC went from $.17 a click to $.03 a click. I am okay if they say hey – we are only now going to pay 40% on a sale or something like that – at least we know where we stand.
We are all working to metrics that we have no idea how they are measured. Just stupid. I am pulling down all the sites on epn shortly. That is about 10K clicks a day they will lose in traffic.
@ Jeff –
It wasn’t a beating – just 2 bot visits across 25-30 sites on 4 different servers. But those separate visits results in thousands of bot-clicks. The bigger the site, the more times it clicked.
The crappy part – is that defending against bots is ONLY as good as the next person who comes along and builds another one – its like Spam. Instead of getting Viagra emails, you will just GraViag emails instead.
As far as other networks fighting against bots – the only real effect at other sites is on reporting, since they don’t pay you unless something is sold, or a specific action is taken by the visitor.
Also – the earnings have not zero’d out – I am just done playing by a set of rules that floats on water, and changes with the financial weather report of the company. Seeing the report from the person who had $20k frozen, and the miriad of emails I have from readers whose accounts were frozen, was enough for me to watch it from the outside, going forward.
eBay itself, has been going downhill for over a year – IMHO – the QCP strategy was just another way for them to keep more money, not reward great affiliates, as they have put it.
Just frequent their message boards… (google: “ebay partner network forum”) the only affiliates they seem to care about are in Europe, or send 100,000 daily clicks @ .05 cents per click.
The little guys like you and I, sending a few thousand clicks a week @ .20-.30 cents/click… we are costing them money, because we develop QUALITY sites that get in front them in search engines, cost them more money, and they don’t like it because they feel THEY should have gotten that traffic anyway!!
< /rant again>
@ Marilla –
I am really hoping to re-energized soon and get back to blogging. I have a large e-commerce project (12 same-niche sites in total) I am in the middle of, but continue working on my other sites at the same time.
M
I hate to agree with you, but I have to … EPN is broken.
I was nervous about this back when they announced the changes, but they painted these pictures of how great everything would still be. That Quality Click Pricing Preview report was a bunch of BS, and set false expectations. It seems to me that they have continued to tweak their payment structure in their own benefit.
They have lost a lot of my business as I continue to migrate sites to other affiliates.
I have been exploring other alternatives.
Mark,
I’m so glad you posted this. I’m an ePN member but only have a few sites that don’t make a lot of money – in fact they make about 0 since QPC. But I can’t say I ever put a lot of effort into them. However, I had an idea for a whole suite of sites targeting one major niche but broken into much smaller niches. I started writing content for the sites and got about 20% of the way done. Then QPC hit. Then I started reading everyone’s comments about how “crappy” their epc was and have also read of many people getting their accounts locked because of bots. So I scapped all thoughts of making those into ePN sites. I’m now working with other affiliates like Amazon who I know are happy to get whatever traffic I can send to them.
eBay thinks that all the traffic us small affiliates send to them is basically worthless and they would have gotten the traffic anyways. I disagree with that. There are lots of niches on eBay that people would not think of looking at eBay first.
You’re right – unless you’re outside the US, or you can drive hundreds of thousands of clicks per week they don’t seem interested.
I’ll bet Amazon and others are loving the fact that eBay is screwing over their affiliates. The more affiliate sites that go up and promote Amazon and others, the more traffic and ultimately revenue they get. And most likely take that revenue away from eBay.
I even went so far as to send an email to John Donahoe the CEO of eBay. Asked him if he knew what a joke the ePN program was turning into and had he even bothered to read any of the posts on his own ePN forum or do a search and see all the negative feedback resulting from QPC. Suprisingly he responded the very next morning and said thanks for the feedback, someone will be in touch. Of course nobody ever got in touch with me. But I said my piece.
I only hope the buffoons running ePN take the time to read this blog and others.
Mark –
This just makes me sick!
This is a timely post as I have been trying to wrap my head around the whole spambot issue the last few days and learning how to protect my sites against them.
I would be interested to hear how you’re protecting your sites from bad bots. Just last night I set up something on a test site to see if I catch any bad bots (tutorial found here: http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum88/3104.htm) I stopped getting paid from this BANS site last month even though it was earning money.
I’m in the same boat as Tao, ‘Apart from Adsense, I have little other places to go with them’ My sites promote niche ebaymotors products so I don’t know what I would do with them without epn.
Chris said A solution to this is to not make your links through to eBay links. Would like to learn more about this too.
You said you’re leaning to working with individual vendors versus a network, that would be something I would be interested in doing too if push comes to shove.
I 100% agree with what you said, ‘That Quality Click Pricing Preview report was a bunch of BS, and set false expectations’ – same thing happened to me.
This whole situation is scary. My income from epn is what’s paying our mortgage and bills right now, without it I don’t know what will happen.
Wow, this is a powerful statement from you Mark, since you’ve been such an advocate of epn for so long. But it is what it is, and its sad to see such a great program end up in the trash heap. As soon as they announced the QPC program I knew I was in trouble, since my sites aren’t the high-volume ones that they seem to want. And I’ve been re-doing my sites to shift to other providers ever since.
To add insult to injury, ebay has decided to hold the payments due to Pepperjam publishers indefinitely, which means that they and/or Pepperjam are going to make some more money at our expense. It’s not a ton of money, since I’d been migrating my PJN sites back over to epn, but it’s a decent amount that I earned, and don’t think ebay or Pepperjam deserves to keep it. PJN will only pay out if commissions (not acru’s) are $25 or more, so unless you’ve got other PJN income you’re going to lose it. What a crappy deal!
Anyway, sorry about your bot troubles, and hope that your new programs work out well. And thanks for all the help you’ve freely given me and others with ebay/bans! Look forward to hearing about your new adventures. :-)
Mark,
I totally agree with you. My epc’s fluctuate weekly and always seem to crash after peaking Sunday or Monday. I never seem to get many clicks on days when my commissions peak. Since eBay has all the sales metrics, it is all to easy for them to fine tune the algorithm which determines our payout in ePN and screw us over. I am going to try to transition my sites to Amazon using The Reviewazon plugin with wordpress. Unique product review data will be added by me to each listing.
I know you are using Terrapeak to do the Rank Spanker reports like you are doing for my niche I emailed to you last night. Terrapeak is great for eBay, but what about Amazon? Is there a separate data source for Amazon usage/sales data?
-Ross-
@Ross
Good question, Ross! I’ve been wondering about research data for Amazon as well. :) I’m just now focusing on Amazon more so I have a lot to catch up on.
Mark
I hope you will start posting on ways to monetize sites without using eBay. Try as I might, despite being very successful with eBay I haven’t done that well with any other program.
I’d love to kick them in to touch. I’m afraid to open my email in the mornings or to try and log on to my EPN account for fear I’ve been suspended/terminated. It is bloody stressful when you depend on them to make a living.
You can’t speak to anyone, hold a sensible conversation or get any help. Google are no better. My adsense account got dumped following review. I’d never really bothered with adsense much but I had one deindexed BANS site that was showing ads on a page with only eBay listings.
Apparently that was a breach and enough to get me canned. No chance to remove it, my appeal was ignored and that was it. Tried and convicted without ever speaking to anyone or being given the opportunity to put things right. What does that remind me of? Communism? Dictatorship?
I then read the eBay forum thread in your post to find requests for server logs and other things I have no concept of. It is really quite terrifying. I honestly think they have no concept of the damage they are wreaking on peoples lives.
At this rate having to work for the man is a better option than working for the machine. It’s just a different take on Judgement Day. I feel a movie coming on.
Mike
There are just to many other ways to make money online now. ePN just isn’t worth putting anymore time into unless we could start from scratch. I mean build sites for high clicks, not like we are all use too. Most around here built high quality content driven sites and ePN just wont pay for that.
Some of my ePN sites would only get 100 hits a day, but half those people would click through and at least 2 or 3 sale would happen. Now its just bunk.
I have have changed every site I can. Some are just built for ePN and cant be changed without lots of effort and I am so done with putting any effort into ePN.
I too had a 28cent QCP and it dropped to .06 after a high traffic day which was not bots. It was people looking for a Oprah coupon I sent. I tried everything I could think of to make it work.
All I can say is it is to depressing to even go look at my account. I started making money the day I started changing my sites over last month. It feels much less stressful and I,m having the best month ever!
Next project for me is Android, Phones people. Everyone needs to think phones
Had a problem with eBay about two months ago where they shut down my affiliate account without any warning. I have been trading on eBay since 2001 and am an eBay Power-seller, Training Education Specialist and Certified Trading Assistant.
Here’s the kicker! I sent then an email stating the above and asking them what the exact issue was that I was violating and I would remedy it immediately.
They never even had the courtesy to reply to my email… what sort of customer service is that! Mine is 100% with my customers and anyone that knows about selling on eBay, knows that is hard to maintain especially at a power-seller level.
What I would like to know is how we remove the eBay affiliate stuff from our store as I am going to fill it with other products from suppliers who have better customer service.
@Chris
I use to use a network that had every autoprt and car you can think of. It was on CJ I think. Look around. They had a store builder that you just cut and paste to your pages.
Mark,
As soon as I hit enter on the question about the other networks it hit me that most only pay if a sale is made. Other than some kind of attack from an affiliate site, they have no reason to care.
Like others here I’m hoping to find a good research tool specifically for Amazon. Or do you think the data from one huge marketplace is still relevant on another?
My next N1Way site will be an Amazon site and I’m going to use some of their principles to set up a few straight affiliate sites. Their suggestions about content and titles I think will translate well into other kinds of affiliate sites.
So far I’m below the radar with EPN but I’m taking steps to be able to convert those sites at a moment’s notice should they drop me.
Jeff
@ Bill G,
Thanks, I’ve promoted auto parts in the past but my niches are for specific types of cars or trucks, i.e. autos not parts so not sure what to do.
I was thinking, ebay headquarters is only about an hours drive for me, maybe I should drive over there and have a chat with them, ha! I’m sure they wouldn’t let me in the door. I wonder how many disgruntled sellers/affiliates they’ve had over the years come knocking on their doors…
@Mark……I did get your note. I have the plugin installed but I am getting an error. I have a file permission issue I need to resolve I think. I am going to work it out tonight.
As for Amazon….it’s a different site than Ebay. Some markets do really well on amazon and poorly on Ebay and then vice versa. So far I am headed back to pre QPC income levels but it’s taking EPN, Adsense and Amazon to do what just EPN used to do.
@ Bill –
I get the same error every time I install it, regardless of which version I use. WP just goes to a blank page, saying I don’t have permission.
Instead of fiddling with it now – I just go to their site and use the auto-install feature.
Works every time!
M
I was actually getting a 404 error. The permissions were wrong on the directory. It’s up and running now so my first batch should come through tonight.
What’s your experience with their “uniqueness” and being able to draw traffic?
@ Bill –
Glad its running!
Uniqueness = B+
I usually check about once a week to see what kind of content is coming through. The MOST I have ever found on my random selection, is 2 copies elsewhere.
I just now checked one article from today (1 copy elsewhere) and 1 article from 45 days ago (no copies elsewhere).
I would give it an A, if it werent for the occasional copy.
As far as driving traffic – I have it loaded on **Many** sites, but still review each one manually, and only approve roughly 1 out of 3-4 articles, sometimes much less. It truly depends on the niche, and the demand for the topics of course.
On the site that is built on 99% content from their network, I get roughly 120 uniques a day. The site is 4 months old in its current form.
I will take this offline to an email and tell you a few other things about it also.
M
You came late, but came right, Mark… Now!
@Bill I think at this point I would have to make sure a product was offered on Amazon and just test to see how it converts without any Amazon data to work with.
@Mark I’ve scoured these comments and don’t see what plugin you and Bill are talking about. Is it the free one that @Cherie mentioned?
I’m confused because you seem to be talking about a plugin that generates content and the other seems like a datafeed.
@ Jeff –
We aren’t talking about niche product sites at all… but instead, article directories.
M
Which directories and how are you getting the content to your site for review?
@ Jeff –
Talking about BUILDING article directories… instead of focusing on a niche product, building an article directory within a niche.
The content comes from reader submissions and article resource sites that connect and distribute through the site.
Its WAY more than can be covered in a comment.
Mark
I agree totally.
Here is what I am doing go to the http://www.goldencan.com affiliate site lots of great companies there that appreciate your efforts and pay about 6 to 9 % commissions. Start building sites there and use the EPN feeds to help you get ranked better until they get rid of us all. As you know the feeds from Epn do help ranking. Use it like a price comparison between the new companies and EPN search engines like price comparison. If you make a sale on Ebay just consider it extra income. This is a repeat of when Ebay pissed all the power sellers off and most left. Ebay reminds me of the arrogant Google. When you get big you forget where you came from. Ebay is doomed and they know it . The new management team does not have a clue! Ebay stinks. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it. But you know as well as I it was done out of greed.
Why don’t we send letters to the shareholders? Let’s start a petition to remove the moron that is running that program. What his name? Traffic is declining at Feebay. That’s what happens when you put people without any affiliate network management experience in charge. Only a moron could come up with that QCP. Maybe they did to impress the shareholders with their own proprietary system LOL! Now they can put on their resume they implemented the QPC program back at ebay. What a joke! I’m making now $0.00/click with ebay and over $1/click with adsense.
Demand the old commission system back! Let’s start that petition TNSB. CJ should be running that program not these jokes! They have no clue how nor care about their affiliates.
Hi Mark, I couldn’t believe what I saw earlier this month – I sold an item for over £2000 – and my reward for the single click : 2p, yes £0.02 !! After all my hard work I’m getting out of epn also. Amazon suddenly looks appealing
@Dean
LOL seriously!!! I’m starting to feel happy that eBay rejected my affiliate membership application..
I don’t know…my EPC has been creeping up all month. Its finally double digit again from a low of .04 cents. I’ve removed a LOT of sites from Ebay and turned them into either Amazon or Adsense sites so I am sure that has helped.
I can live with double digit EPC, that makes me some decent money each day, but that .04 cent BS was for the birds.
Yep, too many folks are telling horror stories about being banned for the sole crime of having a spike in earnings!
Based on my recent experience, I really think the N1Way method is the way to go, but one does not need to use eBay to make that model work. With services like Datafeedr, Popshops, phpZon, and ReviewAzon around, who needs EPN?
I’m with Tao. I’m still building up some N1Way-based eBay sites since they do convert well, but I will ONLY build up sites based on products where I could easily switch to another affiliate program.
Not that LinkShare and CJ don’t have their problems, too, but I’ve never heard of someone being dropped without warning or for actually EARNING the company some dough. I’ve never heard of Amazon ditching someone because of a low EPC>
I have my eye on building a handful more of eBay based sites, but then I’m switching to Linkshare/CJ based Popshops sites. Clickbank is another good option if you pick the right products.
Overstock and Buy.com are good alternatives, since they offer a wide variety of products, have an excellent cookie life, and don’t have some dumb-ass metric that no one really understands!
If Mark can bid goodbye to EPN, that might be a sign for the rest of us. Life as an EPN is too precarious.
Thanks for the candid comments, Mark!
Oh poop, now to compound things one of my better sites has been deindexed. Don’t know why, – any ideas?
@ Cherie –
May have something to do with Google and its new search algo getting ready to roll out. They announced late last week that they are bringing on only one datacenter right now and the rest after the holidays.
Aside from that though – it might just be that someone reported it as a spam site.
Do you have it listed within Google Webmaster Tools? If so, you could try a reinclusion request, but I have never had any luck with that.
M
@Mark
Weirdly it’s back!, definitely not there yesterday, now it is.
Welcome to my world! Went from $0.15 to $0.08. Not as bad as yours, but still bad. :(
I wish it’s easy like that. I have tons of links buried deep inside individual posts (to make it more targeted). Going though all those posts will take me tons of time. I guess if I decide to dump EPN, I just remove all those links all together from the database.
Hopefully, they understand that until it’s too late.
Great post by the way!
have found another plugin, this time for CJ and it’s free. here’s the link http://wpnicheground.com/
There’s really no point in beating yourself up trying to figure out “why” the bot clicks are happening with ePN links. It’s good enough to just know they are, and they ruin your EPC despite ePN’s rethoric about “smoothing” and other such nonsense.
Maybe ePN should ask CJ or Amazon for help. When’s the last time you signed on to your Amazon dashboard and seen 1200 clicks where 200 should be? You never have and never will.
Unless you’re living in some alternate universe, it should be clear by now that ever since April 2008, the eBay Partner Network has been managed by idiots.
I say “amen, my brothers” amen! So many posts mirroring MY Epn thoughts………….
I have been in a total out of control tailspin since the announcement and roll out of the QCP. I have been an affiliate with EB since 2003, I “lost” my full time job a year ago and I was caught in the middle of a major expansion of my sites, all based loosely on a fairly successful (formerly) format that I had been using with EPN over the years.
When the QCP program was announced, I put on the brakes for developing any more sites, to see what the fallout would be….and so far it’s been 8 weeks of steady “fallout”, a decline in earnings that was averaging $600-$800/mo has turned into $100- $125/mo.
Like many others, I have tried to “second guess” what EPN now wants, and have been left with no clear thoughts nor honest direction from Ebay. And then its the ‘bots” issue, which they claim is not an issue, IT all just seems to me to be a losing battle.
Like other posters here, my sites have been mostly built around traffic going into Ebaymotors, so it’s been difficult to find a viable alternative, without a total re-work of the sites that are now active, and those that were in development stages.
The optimistic side of my nature has tried to convince me NOT to make any major site changes, AS perhaps someone at EPN would see the error of their ways, and come up with a viable solution….but the pessimistic side is now winning out and think I’m going shoppin for a new strategy. They have lost my trust, way TOO many horror stories for me to ever put my full faith in them
again, no matter what they end up doing.
I have been trying to figure out what Ebay’s angle is since the QCP announcement, as well as the motivation for screwing over the Ebay Store Owners at the same time. My first thought was that they might be trying to reduce their 100,000+ affiliate number to a more “manageable” number, as a cost reduction effort. But none of it makes any sense to me, and I only end up with an Excedrin Headache #42 when I spend too much valuable time thinking about it all…… SO I have decided to quit wasting time thinking about EPN, and spend more time looking for an viable alternative.
I reconfigured all my sites like explained on the Mililtant Affiliate site and now my AdSense earnings are more than making up for my loss of ePN income. I know that many of the people on the phpBay forums have done the same.with their sites and almost all of them are reporting the same results.
I didn’t follow along at the site you mentioned – but have found similar results with Adsense, especially right now at the busy shopping season.
Some of the product based sites that were paying .50 last week, have quadrupled to $2+ per click this week with the shopping season in full swing.
I have found the best methods to be in moderation… 1-2 ad-blocks per post maximum, with the hotspot ad being a single 125×125 text adsense ad (Large fonts, oddball colors) and then near the bottom of the post, a large 300×250 box, left aligned next to the related posts, or some other text section.
Put the highest bidder all by themselves at the top – and the next 2 highest bidders in the closing box.
Experiment – experiment – experiment for sure!
Nice to see you here Dan…
What do you mean, “until they fix it”. You got your head in the sand? eBay has it just the way they want it. They pay as little as possible and often nothing, and terminate accounts they owe legit big paychecks to, and know there are half a dozen more new suckers ready to fall for their farce of a program. It amazes me to find in ebay’s qpc forum, all the newbies earnestly trying to please ebay, somehow falling for the propaganda there is something wrong with their sites that reflects the ridiculous payments. ebay deserves to be sued in court for fraud on this program. Maybe I’ll read about it one day, as I did years before about Google being sued and losing backwhen with their adwords fraud stuff.
I just want to add on the bots issue: suckers. I do believe the ebay executives are laughing hilariously how they have pulled the wool over all affiliates eyes to use this bot excuse for paying crap! C’mon, people, wake up! eBay has the technology to filter out bot clicks, and quess what? A lot of people also browse like bots, click click click. It can take some people months or more to finally buy after just mindless clicking. But that aside, I am totally convinced ebay is delighted at how everyone is buying hook line and sinker the bot angle to accept no money at all, or such a severe drop as to negate any pathetic little profit made for that month. That is the biggest scam angle yet from any affiliate program. Bots to withhold payments on clicks! What BS! Gee, how come Adsense hasn’t pulled the same crap…let’s not give google any ideas! LOL
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