I Got a Registered Letter from eBay and ePN
I woke this morning to find an email from eBay in my inbox… Since most of you are part of the ePN, you got it too! I was so bothered by “the writing on the wall”, that I decided to write this versus taking a shower… My Wife May Need a Helmet but at least she doesn’t stink!
I Didn’t have to Sign for it, But you Better Believe it was Just As Important!
Lets take a quick look at the email and try reading between the lines, to see what they are actually telling us! Right at the top of the email (It wasn’t really a registered letter) in big bold letters, it states:
New Value Pricing for US Program!
Like everything that changes with eBay, they always target the US market first as it is the largest base of users and affiliates. If you have been around for any period of time and used AdWords to drive traffic to your sites, you are familiar with Google “Smart Pricing”, notice the resemblance? Smart Pricing… Value Pricing… were getting closer to the meaning of the email!
Darren Rowse over at ProBlogger wrote a very good article on Google Smart Pricing a few years ago and if you read between the lines, this change for eBay Affiliates has the same meaning. Take the text in this paragraph, replace “Smart Pricing” with “Value Pricing” and ”Advertisers” with “eBay” (since they are ultimately the advertiser for affiliates) then convert a few words to reflect eBay ePN.
Darren’s Version:
Smart Pricingis an attempt by Google to give Advertisers value for money and to guard against click fraud. One of the dangers of Adsense is that publishers set up temporary, trashy and/or un-authoritative pages of content on topics that they know attract high paying ads. Clicks on such pages (whether fraudulent or not) are not really good value for advertisers.
My Version, converted for eBay
Value Pricing is an attempt
by Googleto giveAdvertiserseBay value for money and to guard against click fraud. One of the dangers ofAdsenseeBay Affiliate Networkis that publishers set up temporary, trashy and/or un-authoritative pages of content on topics that they know attracthigh paying adsBuyers. Clicks on such pages (whether fraudulent or not) are not really good value for advertisers.
As you can see, eBay is taking a page right from the book of one of the most successful internet advertising companies we will ever know, Google!
Now Lets look at What Google Suggests
From the Adsense Blog, they clarified in a post about the Facts about Smart Pricing. I paid particular attention to #4, again, change the terms to reflect eBay ePN:
4. Remember the old chestnut: “Content is King”
The best way to ensure you benefit fromAdSenseePN is to create compelling content for interested users. This also means driving targeted traffic to your site —advertiserseBay don’t gain as much ROI when paying for generic clicks as they do for quality clicks that come from interest in your content. Good content usually equals a good experience for user plus advertiser, which can be much more valuable than CTR.
hmmm… this all sounds WAY too familiar and falls directly in line with what I have been talking about lately!
Is Value Pricing just the Beginning?
Right now, they are only making the change to affect ACRU’s but we would be both naive and foolish to think it won’t go further! eBay and ePN have metrics on all of our sites in the program! Once they realize just how much money they can save by tweaking the “Value Score” of a specific website, they can then discount the ENTIRE commission structure to reflect the quality of your site traffic!
Take it one step farther to the way Google handles it, and even if you have 5 top-shelf websites in your ePN account, and only 1 rotten site delivering low quality traffic, the entire account is hit with the Value Pricing model! You will have another very good read over at a post JenSense wrote on the subject, One poorly converting site can Smart Price an entire account!
What do we Do Now?
Well… this is really a personal choice you have to make for yourself! I have said since day 1 of starting the Kids College Fund blog, if you get into affiliate marketing, be prepared for change! Over the past 6-8 weeks, we have seen that change is happening, whether we want it to or not! Again, the nature of the beast!
Several months ago, I wrote a posts titled Shifting your BANS Site into High Gear and as you can read in the post, this has been coming for awhile! The main difference now is that instead of just turning a performing store into a much better resource, it now needs to have an edit that says “Get Rid of the Others!”
That’s right… its time for me to do another Niche Site Dump! Evaluating ALL of my niche store sites and determining which are most likely to put me into that $1 per ACRU “Value Pricing” model… eventually, they will affect and reduce earnings, not just ACRU, from the ePN!
Whats your Take on the new change? I’m going to Shower!
Previously Published Articles You May Like to Read:
- Quality Click Pricing Comes to ePN for eBay Affiliates
- eBay Acknowledges EPN Tracking Issues!
- 7 Tips for Getting Accepted into ePN – eBay Affiliate Network
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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’m not sure it’s time to start dumping poor sites now, but certainly time to start evaluating your sites and putting them into one of the following categories:
1. Quality web site. Continue to build links and traffic, but no major worries about Google or eBay not liking the site.
2. Money making, poor quality web site. I’m making decent commissions from the site, but a hand review by Google would probably result in deindexing. Start building quality content and move this site into category #1.
3. New web site without much content and not earning commissions yet. Consider removing all of the affiliate links and instead focus on building up the content, backlinks, and authority/reputation of the site first. After it becomes a quality web site, add the affiliate links back in and monetize.
4. Poor quality, existing site, earning little to no commissions. Need to determine if it is a bad niche, or a good niche on a site that has just been neglected. If it is a good niche, move into category #3, removing the affiliate links and building the content. If it’s a bad niche or you know you’ll never have the proper time to devote to the site, remove all of your content and either sell or drop the domain.
Any categories I missed?
Mark
I am wondering if this is to target the pixel dumpers and take them out of the equation.
I am not sure what this means at this stage or even if eBay knows what they are planning yet.
One thing I am noticing is that eBay is floundering a bit since Meg left. They are chasing revenue as opposed to growing the eBay experience. This is typically an indicator of a company on the decline and affiliates will take a big hit incrimental hits to their payout can mean lots of money dropping to the bottom line in a hurry.
Tom,
It does reinforce the concept of “not putting all your eggs in one basket.” Regardless of what’s really happening or how it will play out, if a person depends solely on ePN to pay the rent and buy groceries, that’s a bad strategy. :D
Diversification is key.
These changes appear to move EPN into a less transparent relationship with their affiliates. We will have no idea when we get priced until after the fact. 3 weeks ago EPN logged a one day spike of 5000 clicks on a campaign and no subsequent earnings (not even the usual average). EPN does not log impressions but my server logged no above average hits. Requests for an explanation of the discrepancy have been ignored. As a result the EPC for that campaign looks dismal, and could be a candidate for ‘value pricing’. Prior months have had good CTR and earnings but a one day anomaly could write down not only that site but my whole account. After the move from CJ I allowed EPN a grace period to get its reporting up to speed. Now I have no trust in them at all.
When I read the email I was thinking exactly what you’ve said. Ebay doesn’t pay unless they make money already. I think they will end up losing money with this new pricing. But in the long run the quality of referring sites will improve. But it’s bad news for those of us just starting out.
Since the suits took over ePay it’s like a bull in a china store. Makes me wonder how many are smoking crack pipes when they come up with idiotic new policies such as 1 poor performing store s***cans your entire sites. Just another way to suck more money into the ebay bank account is all this is. Go Harvard! Go Yale!
I think this may be a bit of an overreaction.
Even my thinnest sites get traffic from long tail organic searches. These people aren’t looking for info, they’re looking for the product by it’s name and model #, etc. This is exactly the kind of traffic I, and eBay, wants.
I don’t think the average BANS affiliate is sending crappy traffic to eBay. This change is for affiliates using shadier methods.
It would be good to know what the criteria for poor traffic is. Maybe a target EPC or something.
Hmmmm. I never got one of those.
Getting rid of affiliates who just put up a raw BANS store and let them go is more than fair in my opinion.I put more than 12h into my store’s until they’re template wise customized, filled with unique content, videos and photos, SEO optimized and so on. This store’s are longtime terms for me and I am building up a solid income for the future (at least I hope so *gg*).
As long as you do weekly work, optimizing your shops, getting new backlinks its fine rather then just let the shops go and work for themselfs.
I don’t understand the Chicken Little mentality going on around the BANS platform and ebay affiliates in general lately. I am an adsense niche site builder from way back and I have only been building BANS sites for a few months so I wonder if it has always been like this or is this a recent phenomenom?
Ebay is doing what it needs to do to eliminate the dirtbags from profiting. The cookie stuffers, pixel dumpers etc. As long as you aren’t one of those then I think you have nothing to worry about.
My 2 cents.
I’m with Bill 100% on this one. Ebay is doing what they need to because there are tons of crappy people with crappy attitudes avoiding hard work and putting up crappy sites. Little do they realize that in the attempt to cut a few hours of work they’ve just added to an ongoing issue since day one – and all the big wigs like Google and Ebay are cutting down.
What’s a pixel dumper? Haven’t heard that one before.
I have to say that I’ve been guilty of slapping up a BANS site with minimal info except for titles and ebay listings and not immediately building them out. Sometimes I just get too busy with my other ventures and so they sit for a while. I don’t intend to leave them that way, but stuff happens and sometimes they just have to sit until I get around to them. I.e., letting them age a bit…
While I’m obviously not worried about getting indexed or ranked on these sites yet, I can’t think why ebay would care if some of these sites generated revenue anyway. I’ve had people stumble onto one of my skimpy sites and buy something because I’ve put in most of my target keywords into the BANS template.
I guess I don’t understand what exactly ebay is doing and what it means for my sites…
Tthe people at EB, Google and every other business all over the world or just people. If a customer wanders into a backwater one room gas station in the middle of nowhere and spends a $1000 bucks every 28th of the month, they will gladly cash take the cash.
Most of the time 80/20 people are just doing make work, killing time, and massaging their egos. This is what keeps the world turning, the more the world tries to create a perfect money making machine, the more imperfect it becomes and the less real profit is generated.
Humans, always mess things up…this too shall pass, Do your best, enjoy life as much as you can.. this is the best of time..this is the worst if times.. I think that cover all of my cliches..
I have one BANS site and several EZAWB sites and they all do OK, depending on the amount of work I put in.. Most Ebay shoppers I know, are as described by GBPackers.
Ebay could care less about crappy BANS sites. Google might but Ebay doesn’t.
Ebay cares about reducing fraud….period.
Alot of great comments on this post… Thank you all for joining in the discussion!
The topic itself may be quite a bit forward looking, or “sky is falling” in nature, but I truly don’t think it is too far fetched! After all, eBay may not care about MFE (Made for eBay) sites as it drives their traffic… but the one thing they do care about are their investors and maintaining the corporate machine they have built over the years.
There are likely two reasons for the ACRU change, one is to combat fraud, but somewhere deep in the CEO talking head meetings, someone said… and we can SAVE MONEY, which bolsters the bottom line.
Looking 3-6-12 months or more into the future, its not hard to think that they may deem MFE sites lower quality than those of affiliates who spend time building a content rich site or network of sites. Heck, they could base it off something as simple as pagerank!
They are now planting the seed that lower quality sites, who deliver lower quality traffic, (by their own secret definition) deserve less compensation for those visitors resulting in ACRU.
The sky is not falling… but the thought that they would reduce compensation to a different level for affiliates falling into an eBay defined category, is now on the table.
5 years ago… nobody thought Google would care about MFA sites, because after all, they made money on every one of those clicks also.
Thanks again for the great discussion…
I think ebay is trying to ramp up new memberships and using the affiliates to do the work for them. Work that they apparently have failed to do with all their expensive ads and PR campaigns. What they don’t seem to realize is that there is some natural limit to how many potential members are out there.
eBay has been around for quite a while, and the bloom is off the rose, so to speak. They can’t expect to find a whole lot of people who don’t already know about them and/or are not already members. The membership growth rates of the past are just that – in the past.
Maybe they just want to line up the scapegoats (us) so that can point the finger our way when earnings are disappointing and shareholders are calling for Donahoe’s nuts on a golden platter (purchased on ebay and made in China…).
Google and Ebay are wildly different business models. Google relies on advertisers signing up to use the program in the first place in order to make any money and only once they have a base of advertisers can they make any money from the clicks.
When Google’s advertisers started to look elsewhere, Google tightened up on the MFA sites. Can’t blame em, because if the advertisers defected…then they made no money.
Ebay only has to please itself and it’s shareholders. So if the affiliate program isn’t proving to be fruitful then they need to change it. If you are sending quality traffic then you will be fine, if you are cheating the system then they are not getting their money’s worth out of you.
I can’t imagine a scenario at all that they would give two shakes of a rats tail where the traffic comes from, ONLY that it converts into a profitable customer or transaction.
I am all for quality, content, useful sites all that stuff so don’t get me wrong…..I agree with you there. I just don’t subscribe to the sky is falling, EPN is evil mentality that exists in the BANS forum so much. I am not saying that is your message but you see it everyday too.
I DO agree with almost everything you are saying. I only worry about the possibility of a second phase of cost savings. Like I said earlier, its not that the sky is falling at all… its just changing focus again!
They have however left the door wide open to adjust other payout structures at the same time.
Like we have seen, read, and said ourselves, if you deliver quality traffic… you should not even notice a change!
The definition of quality, is yet to be determined.
Mark
“If you are sending quality traffic then you will be fine, if you are cheating the system then they are not getting their money’s worth out of you.”
I don’t understand this comment. What money? It doesn’t cost ebay anything (or much) to have us building affiliate sites, paying for hosting, templates, keyword tools, other research tools, PPC, BANS/etc, plus all the hours and hours of our time in setting up and managing these sites. They don’t even have to pay for support staff because of their “do it yourselves” support model.
Why should they care about the crappy sites, as long as there are plenty of good ones bringing in money? Attrition will take care of the dogs, as they will give up due to lack of reward ($$).
It’s just more frantic running around and around in an effort to look like they’re being “proactive” in revitalizing ebay.
@ Alice -
I think the bigger issue they are up against are the slightly shady affiliates that put up a site today, drive 10,000 paid visitors tomorrow and give each of those $5.00 to sign up for the ACRU.
Listen folks… how many of you out there have ever heard the saying; “cull the herd” well… guess what? there are so many websites out there trying to make a fast buck and really clogging up the system tha ebay is joining up with google and are systematicly “culling the herd” Hang on folks, were about to see who is the best rider or surviver! And might i add… us poor beginners out there are really gona get trampled! OH wait! maybe that is what it is all about?
John
That email left me a bit worried and paranoid. I’ve only been building eBay niche stores since June and now I have to re-think my strategy. I never put up content poor, out of the box with the same old template sites as many of these sites so I hope I can ride this out.
But I would hate to invest time and money on these sites if one site can impact my entire eBay niche store network.
Well, your all right and your all wrong.
eBay’s earnings have declined – so has Google’s, Microsoft’s and Yahoo’s. Did you know that Google reported lower than expected earnings 2 weeks ago to it’s shareholders? Nonetheless, all are the top dogs of the past when the DOT COM’s were hot. Trends will change, business models will change – our way of doing business will change – we have to change to become profitable.
Affiliates are like Remoras or Suckerfish attached to the Sea Turtles, Sharks and Sea Rays.
This new structure is about eBay’s attempt to focus on it’s memerships and end user experience with it’s own website and brands.
As affiliates, we are partners. Our goal is to drive revenue and traffic. But what eBay has been finding out is that there are affiliates that are driving fraudulent and low quality traffic by having third parties signup with incentives and other measures. This is an attempt to derail these manifestations.
It is probably something that is hard to “police”. Have you been to there forum to see some folks post and ask, ‘why did i get removed from the program’.
One of eBay’s goals with the smart-value pricing structure is to convey to it’s partners, they are willing to pay more for a great member that will continue to come back and buy more from eBay’s sellers/site than a member that only makes one purchase after the signup and is gone and never buys again. They want active members, good members – this will benefit eBay in the long run. More active members = more active auctions and bidders. Better earnings to show it’s shareholders. More bidders, you get higher commissions on your sales referrals.
Thus, if you have a quality website or are not paying for low quality traffic, you should continue to thrive.
It’s a model that will either reward you or tell you that you need to improve upon what you are currently doing to promote your business.
I am sure that most readers here are on the quality side. This will help the beginners and the veterans that drive good traffic. Stay the course to success.
I can only stay positive and change with the times. The sky isn’t falling – it’s getting better. I’ve been a fulltime eBay affiliate for over a year now.
[...] I Got a Registered Letter from eBay and ePN This post had quite a few comments in regard to my opinion of the future of the ePN and its similarities to how Google enacted very similar principles a few years ago. [...]
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