How I Increased ePN Earnings by 160% Overnight!
I got an email from a reader…. after 4 years in the ePN, they canned him. Poof – Your account is closed, and the $X,XXX.xx +/- balance in your account is frozen. He said there was no warning… no “Fix this Now” type message, not even a “Hi Partner” greeting in the email.
With “Partnerships” like that… it REALLY made me consider the time investment I have in ePN sites. I decided to review my ePN sites to find the QUICKEST WAYS to increase EPN earnings… this is what I found.
Tips from eBay Itself
As each of us review our network of websites to find hints of information that will help us deliver the best type of traffic to the ebay partner network, we also keep an ear on the ePN Blog, hoping they will release a nugget of “Solid” information, that will help us out a bit… I DO give them credit for trying, but the info they are sharing is confusing me, more than helping!
As much as I hate to say it… I spend more time measuring the effectiveness of alternatives to eBay Partner Network, versus improving my ePN sites.
eBay Showing Their Hand?
In a post on their blog last week – they gave an example of an EPN affiliate Best Practices scenario, where a marketing firm with 3-4 million unique monthly visitors, has implemented a few small changes and now thrives in the partner network.
Just to put that into perspective, I will take one of my own busiest sites – which gets about 35,000 unique monthly visitors. Using my site as the baseline multiplier – what does 3-4 million unique visitors translate to?
- 3-4 million unique visitors = Approximately 9-12 MILLION visits. (Mine averages 3 visits per visitor, 4.3 pages per visit)
- 9-12 million visits = Approximately 43 MILLION monthly pageviews (10 mill x 4.3 pages per visit avg)
Now I just have to ask… how many of you have an estimated 43 million monthly pageviews? This example they provided is a FAR step from ANYTHING that the majority of ePN affiliates experience! Congrats to the Marketing Company doing this, but my guess is that they are in the “less than 3%” crowd.
This is like walking into your local bank for some financial advice, and they lay out a plan so you can invest just like Donald Trump! Unless YOU have the same backend funding or traffic, you are never going to achieve the same front end results!
Summary – This example was no help at all!
A More Realistic Example of ePN Quality Click Pricing
The next day, another post was published, showing the importance of Geo-Targeting your visitors. I don’t know how many of you picked up on this – but if you look at the example they use:
- Affiliate A – Raised EPC from .04 epc to .06 epc.
- Affiliate B – Raised it from .02 epc to .08 epc.
Just being real here – .06 and .08 epc is BAD. The better thing they could have done for these affiliates, was advise them of a different program! Of course, if you are getting several hundred thousand clicks/month, its OK right?… NO ITS NOT!
Lets Face It – Whether you send 100 clicks or 500,000 clicks, .08 cents per click SUCKS if you can get .15 cents per click by simply changing to a different program!
This was a BAD example to use, but my guess is that its like this for the “Majority of Affiliates”. My own stats range from .16 epc on higher traffic sites to .24 on a lower traffic site. On the few sites I had that were in the -.10 cpc range, I pulled ePN off and replaced them with AdSense or other ads!
Easiest Way To Increase your EPN Earnings
I LITERALLY increased EPC from .11 cpc to .28 cpc, a 160% Increase, by pulling down ePN ads and using Adsense!
That busy site of mine with approximately 450,000 monthly pageviews was earning .11 cpc (Thats “cents per click”) at ePN. Auctions were removed and replaced with adsense, which earns an average of .28 cpc. So – instead of spending weeks and months testing – or guessing – at what kind of traffic ePN wants, I solved it one mouse click!
Adsense is NOT perfect by any means – but at least I know how to increase earnings with them… more traffic=more earnings. With ePN sites, it seems my higher traffic sites earn MUCH less per click than others. Whats worse… if I invest 100 hours into figuring it out, I MIGHT be dropped from the network tomorrow anyway!
Finally – Whats the Point of This Post?
Don’t bang you head on the wall trying to please “The Man” at ePN. Explore your options before you spend 2 weeks optimizing a site for ePN only to find out your target is .08 cents per click!
IF ePN earns you more for YOUR Traffic – keep them! If not, don’t hesitate to break your partnership with them…
</ rant>
Previously Published Articles You May Like to Read:
- Kickstart Earnings from Day 1 – Revenue Domains Exposed
- CJ Earnings have Crashed Since the eBay Announcement!
- ePN is Broken – and I Quit… For Now!
- How I Increased Backlinks from 61 to 337, in Less than 2 Weeks!
- Quality Click Pricing Comes to ePN for eBay Affiliates
- ePN Quality Click Pricing QCP Affiliate Intent Target!
- eBay Acknowledges EPN Tracking Issues!
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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’d like to see ePN link to this on their blog, like they’ve done with some of your other posts!
Mark…I have a site that I converted from EPN to Amazon a few weeks ago. I am on target to finish the month about 400-450% up by converting to Amazon vs Ebay.
Not hard to do that math. Any sites I build going forward will target nothing but Amazon/Adsense or some other affiliate program. Zero EPN for me.
As individuals, we are small potatoes to EPN..it’s obvious they could care less about us. So I have committed to doing the same thing and care less about them. I loved EPN while it lasted but the party is over, someone peed in the pool and it’s time to go.
It’s a shame, as individuals we are small potatoes….but as a group we represent a LOT of traffic. I hope we are not alone in regards to former EPN affiliates who are choosing to take their traffic and go elsewhere.
@ Ryan –
I doubt this one will make the “Must Read” list…
@ Bill –
One of my busier ePN ONLY sites dropped to just 8% of its trended forecast earnings during the transition last month. I pulled down the ads and replaced it with simple and strategically placed adsense ads ONLY, and its up a whopping 220% ABOVE what it would have earned had the trend continued.
This was also a site that pushed $xx,xxx.xx in top line sales to eBay every month for the past 16 months.
Most sellers on eBay also have their own websites in this particular niche – and I am in talks with two of them about sourcing 100% of the products directly through their own affiliate programs now as well. More to come on that very soon…
I am not ANTI-ePN but I am “100% PRO-ME”… it just so happens that I have my own interests to watch out for, and ePN is becoming a much smaller part of that.
M
Well
I am another one of those long term cj to ebay affiliates that just got dropped… I am still kissing ass and emailing support (I have had one answer), because I want my 3K they are holding onto. Of course the minute they let me back in, I will dump all traffic to other programs.. this is horrible how they treat us.
I will continue to use them a bit… but you are right — chikita, amazon, and the rest is the way to go.
@Mark – you’re more gracious than I am….because I cannot help but be very anti-EPN. I belly-ached about it for a few weeks but I am done now….tantrum is over and time to get back to work.
I’m not changing my goals, just changing the tools I use to get there.
How about finding the poor performing block and replacing that with Adsense.
My idea is the same too..I am not into EPN (eBay dislikes Indians trying to partner with them) and so purely on Adsense. And my sidebars perform poorly..So, the idea is once I get much more traffic, I will probably retain Adsense on the better performing block, and replace the sidebar ads with something else, direct ads maybe..
The problem I have is my Click Through Rate for EPN has always been much higher than Adsense. And I’d love to switch to Amazon, but the majority of what I promote is used or “close out” products. I’m not sure where else to promote that.
On the flip side, I have a site that was a constant performer for me. It’s in the industrial tool category and I have the top spot on Yahoo and Bing for the search term. Google of course dropped it as a Bans site. Blah. Anyway, I’ve started researching alternatives and found a merchant that offers a nice affiliate program. I’ve moved 11K in sales for Ebay this month with this site. Surely I can make more through the merchant.
I created a site using the N1Way document plan, I have been trying to integrate Amazon and Shopping.com products into the BANS site but not sure what the best approach is. What does everyone usually do? Within content do you use a keyword to link to Amazon or do you use widgets? I would like it to look as seamless as possible. I have been able to make a couple bucks from Amazon but would like to earn more. Anyone got any tips? Is it mainly about traffic?
Even in a entreprenurial environment “The Man” is still trying to hold me down. LOL.
I keep see people quoting examples of epc and I’m aghast. I have over 80 sites and not one has ever had an epc in the range you describe. If they did I’d earn about $500,000 per annum which I just cannot believe.
It is also interesting to note that my fully developed content sites make less than the plain auction sites! Clearly I am doing something very wrong.
“That busy site of mine with approximately 450,000 monthly pageviews was earning .11 cpc (Thats “cents per click”) at ePN. Auctions were removed and replaced with adsense, which earns an average of .28 cpc. So – instead of spending weeks and months testing – or guessing – at what kind of traffic ePN wants, I solved it one mouse click!”
Are you sure you couldn’t afford to buy Build a Niche Store
:-)
Hey Mark.
There is a reason why I have been reading this site from the start, and I tell you right no, it is due to utterly astounding posts like this.
I reached the same sort of conclusion as you, after doing my own little tests, and figured that this is very much a sinking ship. Not sinking sue to the fact that the bottom has blown out of it, but I just keep finding more and more holes it is bound to go down soon.
Switching to Amazon has paid dividends on some of my sites, and I am testing other options that you listed in your other post. I have never been a big fan of adsense, but I’m with you in the pro-me brigade. Increases of 160% are not to be sniffed at. I’ll come back with more info as and when!
Way to kill off all your affiliates, ePN!
Cheers, mate.
Neal
Do you use phpZon Plugin for Wordpress for the sites you convert to Amazon? Is it just as easy as the phpbya plugin?
@ Bill – I DO feel your pain with ePN – and we arent alone for sure! Anyone looking for a good 2-3 hours of reading, just head to auctionbytes.com and read comments on the last weeks worth of posts. Sellers at eBay are just as PO’d as affiliates! :-)
@ Mike – LOL – No 1/2 million in my fun money account for sure!
@ Solid Namer –
I use quite a mix on sites… testing until I find what works best.
Here is an example page that uses: phpbay, adsense, phpostock, phpozon, to show a group of deals everywhere…
http://www.womensfashionjeans.com/womens-jean-styles/boot-cut-jeans/
The site is just now launching – not even complete yet, so bear with it. I am working on the right display to achieve what I need.
M
I have the same problem like Atomm. Click Through Rate for EPN has always been much higher than Adsense and If I completely replace epn with adsense my ranking would drop for sure.
Well, I will try to replace epn with amazon first. Let see what would it be.
Mark,
I am amazed at the flair you have for this. The Jean’s site is great. Simple, Clean and full of content.
Did you outsource the content?
How much time have you put into it so far?
Have you done a comparison site like this before? If so, how does it fare?
Humm’ I’m late to this show?
So I am with you Mark.
I have been doing the same thing. That is using adsense.
If I’m only getting .28 from ePN why not boot up adsense?
Well I can say it working for me.
I had no idea that some of my site niche’s keywords are at $3+ per click.
But before I would say to change everything, I had a site I switched then it jump up a page (to #1of10) then dropped back down to pg3 .
I also have found that the mere smug from ePN has sent me on a tangent of testing.
There is more money to be made here. I found one small item on eBay people buy. I then used some tricks with Twitter Beast and made $25.00 on 1 link from eBay in 2 hours.
As long as I don’t get marked as spam this will be fine with me!
@ Atomm – Thanks – its QUITE A BIT of custom work to get the “Price Comparison” setup the way I want it. BUT – its very flexible when done… and if I find one offer is converting better than others, its a quick edit to show MORE of the higher converting items, and LESS of those not converting as well.
As far as the content goes – I have a ghost writer who writes 40, 225-250 word articles of choice for $250. I give him the article titles, he does the rest.
As far as the site itself – I have about 16-20 hours into it. NONE of the listings are coded into the articles, I use custom fields and an include file to make it all VERY portable, in case an affiliate drops… I just change that one file, and the update is sitewide.
@ Bill –
I have some of those $3/click ads as well – most are from local companies who don’t know better, but heck, I’ll take it!
.28 epc in ePN is actually pretty good from what I have talked to people about. .21 is considered the HIGH average from my understanding, so .28 would be AWESOME for ePN!
Mark
Mark, as usual, you’ve given us a lot to think about.
It would seem that all my focus on ePN should be redirected, at least in part, to other avenues such as Amazon. My concern has escalated on account of your reader who told you he got dropped like a hot potato.
I figured if I’m just giving ePM SOMETHING that’s bringing them sales, then they’d at least keep me as a partner. So far so good, but it just sounds too unreliable at this point.
It’s funny though that several of my sites are doing better in Adsense than purchases being made on eBay.
Mark,
I’m totally on board with you. I can’t believe that EPN went from basically paying you a commission on sales to some secret, convoluted algorithm that reduces your income to only CPC.
As we all know, not EVERY site that makes sales requires 200 visits/day. I have sites I’ll be switching over with CPC in the .14 range.
How do you go about researching products for Amazon and Adsense in the same way as Terapeak?
Will you be posting on how to edit your arthemia theme include file to use other merchants?
Jeff
I hope the folks over at EPN are still reading your blog.
You have always been one of their biggest advocates.
I’m really disturbed by this new algorithm, because we have no way of understanding the reasoning behind the per click numbers they decide to grant. The old algorithm made sense, and you could do some simple math based on sales and understand where your earnings came from.
I’ve tried to remain hopeful that there will be future benefits in working with EPN, but I lose hope as each week passes. Stories of accounts being cancelled, dis-heartened affiliates, and tales of more money being made through other programs really has me questioning the long term viability of EPN.
I’d love to see a poll about what webmasters plan to do with EPN. Are they leaving things alone, migrating poor click revenue sites to other programs, aggressively migrating all sites off, will they ever build another site that makes use of EPN?
I think that type of data would be helpful to the EPN folks in determining the impact of their program change.
Well, I guess I’d better get back to work now … I have some more affiliate links I need to change…
I recently got canned by EPN, totally without warning or any prior consultation. My only crime, (according to their abrupt impersonal email) was that the traffic I was driving to their site was no longer of the ‘quality’ which they were looking for!.
Several of my sites were focused on niche areas’ – true they were not the types of sites which may drive lots of traffic, but they were steady performers, with the added advantage that from my research they did focus on products which were not diluted by other similar EPN sites and I agree wholeheartedly with Jeff’s comments – that not every site which creates sales has 200+ visits a day, but surely a sale is a sale? – at least it used to be under the ‘old’ system. If my site wasn’t creating sales for Ebay, I didn’t get paid!, what greater incentive was that?.
Either way, I account no longer fitted into Ebay’s new scheme and I was deemed either by somebody or some algorithm to be no longer economically viable!. There email was very abrupt, and the brush off and lack of any opportunity to appeal was pretty much clear in their closing statement.
‘At this time, we are not reconsidering our decision. This is a one way email address. Please do not respond to this e-mail.’
Prior to this email from the Grim Reaper in the ‘Network Quality Team’ I was not made aware of any issues with the traffic that I was driving to them. I also think that my account was unfairly weighted by the non preforming accounts in my network which I had given up on months ago, but could not delete (EPN rules – not mine) not to mention several new sites which were less than a month old and very much a work in progress and only just starting to show in the SERPS.
Either way, I’m not sure what sort of ‘partnership’ results in such a final decision, without any form of warning or even a ‘please do better’ style precursor encouragement nor any hint that something was awry. In my mind, a partnership in its conventional sense relies on full open communication between all parties and working together to make something a success?. I wasn’t even given the courtesy of contacting a human being in relation to the email.
But the decision was now out of my hands – made by persons or algorithms unknown and there was no chance of appeal – the door was firmly and forcefully shut in my face. Tried, convicted and hung all on the same evening!.
I floundered around for a few hours now devoid of EPN and wondering what to do with those domains, sell them?, build something else? move over to Amazon?. Then I did a search on Google and found that for some terms my sites were actually ranking above Ebay’s own listings!. A quick search of my stats and adwords suggestions proved that the majority of these were quite popular keyword terms.
I was also a member of several forums where end customers, retailers and manufacturers of my Niche products often frequented, and hit upon a plan. If I remodeled my site to include some form of affiliate or even a basic pay-to-advertise plan of my own I could still continue earning from both Adsense and my own advertising revenue and it would be better than doing nothing.
So far the initial project is a ongoing and rolled out on a site by site basis, but is getting a lot of interest and going well, especially as some of my potential advertisers have figured out that by cutting Ebay listing and other fees out of the equation, they can sell their products a little more cheaply on external third party sites, than they can on Ebay – even after paying to list on my site. Hopefully if I can also maintain those rankings for certain search terms (and focus on adding others) and keep them all above those leading to Ebay listings then i’m on a winner.
This is similar to the suggestions that Mark has made above, and it is true that there is life after EPN and there are other opportunities out there. Sometimes you just need that kick up the butt to go out and cease those opportunities. EPN gave me that kick.
It seems to me, from reading this blog, that there are affiliates out there (who are also very astute business people) who are currently driving huge, even enviable amounts of traffic to their sites, as a result of their own efforts and hard work.
Why not work towards using your site(s) for something which will earn you 100% of the revenue in return for these efforts, instead of passing all of these visitors away from your site and onto Ebay and only getting whatever % of the share Ebay choose to pay you for this?. It will also rid you of the uncertainty of the ‘Here Today – Canned tomorrow’ possibility because one day you *may* find the same email in your inbox, and like me, probably without any prior warning, communication or second chance.
Chris,
I couldn’t completely agree with you more. I have not been canned but I see the writing on the wall and I’m scrambling to read Joel Comm’s free Adsense Secrets 4 book while looking at Amazon and others.
I noticed yesterday that EPN is now not paying me for clicks? That’s right! Since 10/21. I don’t know if there is some “re-calculation” that needs to be done but Mark assures me it’s happening.
I can’t believe it’s long before I get the same email you did.
I also agree that I’m going to take what I’ve learned on the N1Way system and apply it to building quality sites where I get ALL the commission. I’m probably going to go back through Jeremy Palmer’s Black Ink stuff and start doing PPC again.
The most important thing to get out of this-NOTHING can stop you from being successful. EPN is a bump in the road, nothing more. And I’m not saying this lightly. EPN WAS my largest source of income before October 1st.
I’m going keep building N1Way sites and just using other means to monetize.
Jeff
Mark,
Just a quick question. I would agree with you if the conversion rate was the identical same but isn’t google clicks not as inviting as something to buy and click on? I am interested on your thoughts on this. I really do not know the answer nor have an exact opinion…
Cara…the only way to know is test. Every niche or site layout will be different.
@ All –
Great cpmments on this post – TY to all for coming along and sharing whats going on in your own worlds! :-)
@ Cara – Bill is spot on! Testing is the BEST thing I can suggest with no only Adsense, but ANY ad or page you are running.
On one of my sites in the HVAC arena, I have managed to triple adsense earnings, just by changing the ad formats. Simple things like changing the link color or font size “might” make a difference, but you really don’t know until you test.
With adsense – the TOP or first AD, is usually the guy willing to pay the most for the placement – so try to make your highest placement a SINGLE ad, versus an ad block that shows 2-4 adsense ads. That assures you the highest traffic block ALWAYS has the HIGHEST paying ad.
Link units, 300×250, 200×200 and “125×125 are the best formats for most of my own sites… but placement should be split tested to see which convert best.
M
Mark- I agree so that was what I was asking- saying that adsense is better across the board is what i was wondering about.
I rather have a site paying .10 per click compared to adsense that pays .21 per click but the .10 is clicked on three times more based on visual.
Testing is the key though. Thank you
@ Cara –
Gotcha – Adsense is definitely NOT the best choice for every site – and thats where the testing comes in. I can get $3/click on some sites, and only .05 per click on others…
I focus on a “Single Page” versus a whole Site…. so on some sites, I may find that Adsense is best for pages A, B and C, but ePN is best for D & E. The on F, Amazon or a direct banner may convert best.
Once ad placement is decided – then its just a matter of testing to see which offers convert best.
M
Hey Mark long time since ive been to your site. I had a quick question….what was the name of that firefox plug in that shows you whenever you move you mouse on a page it would show the html or css code of a site…im trying to do some tweaks to my sites.
Thanks,
Desmond
Mark,
How do you fine tune your testing? With Google Analytics? Do you set up multiple channels in Adsense for every site?
I’ve moved all my sites to WP and I’m afraid it’s too easy to just plug some code in a hot spot and wait to see what happens site wide.
Jeff
@ Jeff –
In the early stages of a site, I simply follow the money. I won’t bother setting up detailed tracking or even split testing on a site that doesn’t get enough traffic to make it worth tracking.
The amount of attention (Analytics, ads, research, etc) a site gets, depends 100% on the amount of traffic it generates.
The higher the traffic, the more detailed the analytics need to be.
@Imquittingmyjob.com
“what was the name of that firefox plug in”
It’s called Firebug
Mark,
That makes sense and thank you.
Thought I would ad another comment here.
Does your website render on a smartphone? Make sure it dose. I’m hearing numbers in the 100’s of millions of smartphones coming online before 2012.
Marketing to cell phone users is getting huge. I’m testing a marketing scheme for cell phones and I have made money already. Its the next big thing!
With the end of the first month of QCP approaching I’ve pretty much concluded that the new eBay algorithm is a load of tosh. Why do I say this. Well one of my strategies with niche stores is that if one is very successful I build another.
This means I have quite a few (virtually) duplicate sites . Now over the last month these sites have wildly different EPC. One pair has had roughly the same number of visitors (approx 4,000 each) yet on one site EPC is 1 and on the other it is 9.
Now things are never as simple as that and there are a number of other factors known and unknown that come in to play. Nonetheless I wasn’t expecting such a diverse result as the target visitor is the same.
So I went from .10 cpc on my garbage sites to .40 the next day. Of course I only earned $10 that day as I have removed almost 95% of my links to eBay now. When I checked what I would have earned under the old plan it would have been $82. Thats a big difference.
I don’t know what Tosh is but if it blows then I agree.
…back again!
Some really great comments on this thread, makes for some fantastic reading. Even though my earnings have gone up since the change in EPN payments, I for one am moving away from ebay. The general consensus here seems to be that people are not so much unhappy with the change itself, more the fact that ePN has just become a rather unfriendly set up.
@ Mark – Great work on the Jeans site BTW. Please let us know how you get on with your testing!
@ Bill G – Interesting food for thought on the smart phone! Thanks for sharing ;)
Test, Test and Test some more!
Cheers
It should be noted that Google can track the quality of your traffic now through adsense and will compare it to competitors and your sites will sink in the rankings. That’s just what they do. Without adense, they don’t have as much up to the minute info on your site.
Not really on EPN but to do with Google, do forgive me if you all already know the following but I didn’t. I heard yesterday from one of my account managers who had to do a workshop on Google that the search results you get when using the Google keyword tool are actually the results of people who click on the ad, not however many actually search on the se. Apparently you have to multiply it by 3 to come up with the real answer. And the “no data”? is because no one clicked on the ad. My chap even argued the point because he didn’t believe it!
That’s an interesting conversation you had there, Cherie. I’m not sure I’m onboard with your manager’s thinking though. What does he mean “the results of the people who click on the ad?” In order to get to those ads, people have to search on *something* to generate them. Wouldn’t you agree he’s overlooking a very important part of consumer behavior by ignoring what people are searching for?
Rather than x by 3, I suggest divide by 20 for results comparable to word tracker. Each service lumps traffic differently for similar keywords though.
@Cherie
I’m still mulling this over. I still think the account manager you were speaking to has it wrong, but maybe his confusion is only partial.
Google’s keyword tool is used to help advertisers find words to use in their ads for Google Adwords, so there is some relation to it and PPC. That’s where I think he sees the connection.
But the best way for them to invest in ads that work is to know what people are searching on, hence the results you get from the tool.
I think I have to agree with Mark…that doesn’t seem kosher and I am sure after all this time someone would have publicized this before now. Of all the gurus out there,,,,,,never heard this at all.
@Mark, Bill. Yes, I think you are most likely correct about being partially right. He is an account manager at yahoo (to give some creduality to him) I will ring him again today and ask again. When he told me I did question it and he was adamant that this was the case as he didn’t believe it either. At the time it did seem to make some sense – however!
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