Is It Just Me – Or is ePN Now Boring?
Remember a few months ago – you would login to your ePN account and find that one of your referred visitors bought like $5000.00 worth of stuff, related or not, and you got a fat single-transaction commission? I miss those days… and now I find that ePN, which used to be an exciting place to send traffic – well… ePN is boring!
I mean – its really a catch-22 now with ePN – on one hand, you have to send a lot of traffic to make good money, and on the other… the more traffic you send, the lower your EPC value. Yawn…. b-o-r-i-n-g!
The Good Old Days of a GREAT Affiliate Network
I know – I’m posting that title like it was years ago… in effect, with the speed that eBay has made changes over the past 18 months, it was!
“Back in the Day” – I had this great site that focused (still does) on teaching consumers the ins and outs of a specific, highly targeted, high paying niche. Once I had their attention and had them ready to buy exactly what they needed, I sent them over to eBay to buy that EXACT item, which usually cost $900-$6000! There was nothing better than logging into my ePN account to find that 2-3 referrals bought exactly what I suggested and see that fat commission of $200-$300 for that single campaign on that single day! Wow… have the times changed…
Someone Wake Me Up When eBay Comes Back Around…
Its just Boring now… and heck, I’m in the 30% crowd that is earning MORE in the new system!
Previously Published Articles You May Like to Read:
- A Few Ways to Protect Yourself from ePN Termination
- Spring Cleaning your ePN Campaign Account List
- Thoughts on the EPN…so far…
- ePN Quality Click Pricing QCP Affiliate Intent Target!
- eBay Acknowledges EPN Tracking Issues!
- 3 Tips To Understand and Succeed with ePN Quality Click Pricing!
- ePN and HostGator not Playing Well Today!
Rate This Post
(No Ratings Yet)
Loading ...
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.
Mark,
I too am totally fed up with ePN, I need a break away from them.
Quite honestly none of it makes sense, we can sit and analyse the reports for as long as we want but eBay will pay us what they WANT to pay us.
My new sites bring down my overall EPC, my old sites are getting sales in the exact category/items I sent them to (with a related click timestamp) and EPC is lower than it should be.
The whole thing sucks.
eBay need to sort themselves out, period!
P.S I’m up around 5-10% on last month, I doubt it’s the new system.
I guess I wouldn’t mind boring if it was making me doo-doo loads of cash. I’m trying to stay positive and do what I need to do to raise my EPC. It has started to rise over the last week for no apparent reason, but I won’t complain (until is goes back down of course ;)).
But I sure am open to some new, exciting, caffeinated, exhilarating, eye-popping, non-boring things so please do share!
I am in the middle of converting what sites I can convert…entirely to Amazon/Adsense where it makes sense. The only thing EPN is going to get out of me is my garbage traffic from my sites that I consider to have been my “mistake” sites.
It’s too bad…I loved EPN and was really starting to make some great money with it but I am NOT in the same 30% as you. My earnings have cut in half even though during the trial period they were very consistent to the old system.
Weird how quickly and violently it changed….on October 1st. Imagine that.
Mark,
I understand what you mean as I can say “been there done that” kinda thing. But right plan of action in such a circumstances is to move on……
Find something new & exciting, just fresh stream of fun, exploration & money for you.
I feel your pain Bill. Same thing happened to me. September and October clicks method demo reports showed me I was going to be significantly better off on the new system … and I started thinking that it may not be too bad.
Come October 1 .. wham. Down 60%+ for this month.
I cant help thinking though that the guys that stick around and eventually crack this nut are going to be in the pound seats. Kinda like why you keep putting your money into the one-arm-bandit, because all the flashing lights and the sounds of winners around you compel you too :-)
The other problem of course is that’s its tough to just write off the countless hours that have been spent on developing sites.
If these were sites that were built for “the latest fad”, ride the wave and then move on, then it would be ok. But, all of my sites (and I suspect most other guys sites as well) have been built in niches that do not have a life expectancy, and were built for the long haul.
Oh well. Time to join everyone else on the diversification train.
Hey Mark,
You wrote my exact thoughts into this post. I could not agree more!
I’m also in the 30% club that is earning more, but it’s just not the same now is it?!
What I was thinking to do is change out a lot of my sites and leave only my top 1-2 performers on ePN. They need no work doing to them to perform well and I cannot be bothered to check in my ePN account anymore. Set it and forget all about it, perhaps?!
Cheers,
Neal
Couldn’t agree more, I’ve watched my EPC drop and drop day by day inspite of using ppc and everything else I can think of, as Ben says, the new sites are bringing the EPC down and there’s not much else I can do, I just hope the letter closing my account doesn’t come before I’m ready! A real pain especially since I’d found some rather tasty niches also in the $1000’s.
I notice that ShoppingAds/AuctionAds is closing it’s doors as of Oct 23rd because it doesn’t support ebay’s new rubbish – wonder if/how much ebay paid the twits who suggested it – if it was a lot then there’s no way they’ll do an about face, they wouldn”t want to admit they were wrong.
I too have watched my earnings go in the toilet… One of my best earning sites was doing very well for its age and even in the comparison last month was OK, has went south.
It would be great if after a couple of months Ebay decided that this bad leap to PPC has cost them and decided to change back. (wishful thinking)
I agree with you, Mark. It was always an exciting thing to log into the EPN dashboard and see if I made big money that day or not.
Now, I log in and see that it is consistent. Down of course, but consistent. Yawwwwnnnnn
Agreed. I removed all of my sites that are still in Google from EPN and left the “mistake” ones with EPN. What still makes me unhappy is I check my earnings from my garbage sites and it would have been near $75 for the day under the old terms but ended up being $1.75.
I still plan on building niche sites but will use plugins that insert banners across the whole site instead of particular items for each post. This way I can change between Adsense or Amazon quickly.
The first week of the months I was doing pretty good.
The second week only Pennies
I, personally, feel they would have been better off just dropping payment for ACRUs, paying us a revenue share for actual sales, and then adding some sort of voodoo, secret sauce bonus according to their arbitrary opinion of the quality of our traffic. That would give us the greater clarity we long for, and gratify their cultural predilection toward magical thinking.
Mark,
I’ve been reading your experience with EPN for months.
If I have never used EPN before on my niche sites, would you recommend staying away, or would it be different for someone that doesn’t have a history with EPN ?
In other words, does someone just starting out with EPN have an advantage over someone that has several sites that use EPN?
Thanks,
Steve
First week profits down 60-70% from average, This week epc’s are way up and I am making at east 30% more than before (knock on wood). Somebody even bought the BANS script throgh one of my Squidoo Lenses this week (Cha-Ching)
-Ross-
Mark,
You certainly know how to get a conversation started ; )
I wish I could say my EPN stats are now boring compared to how they used to be. Truth be told, my stats are now pretty much dead. I’m focusing my efforts on Amazon and AdSense for revenue right now. eBay will get my hard work when they remember that I AM worth being paid more than peanuts for sending paying customers to them.
Rochelle
I miss the days of logging in to see how many $40 ACRUs got posted that day. That was like Christmas every day.
What drives me crazy now is looking at stats and calculating what I would have made under the old payment model. ACRUs + 55% of the winning bid revenue was a formula I could understand. Who understands this new revenue model? You just send in your clicks and hope for a high QCP, and that number is constantly in flux. I almost feel like they can pay you whatever rate they want to pay so they can optimize their own earnings numbers.
Since I average $0.40 per click on AdSense, I’m saturating my eBay targeted sites, and there are a lot of them, with much more Adsense and some Chitika. I seldom see $0.40 per click with EPN. Already, I’m seeing a very nice boost in my AdSense revenues. I had previously refrained from including AdSense, etc. on my eBay product pages.
Now, it’s really a no-brainer to feature AdSense. Makes you wonder whether they figured increased AdSense, etc. leakage into their projections for QCP.
I would love to just get back into the EPN program! i’ve started a new blog now and will develop that big time and just stick with that for a while, as it will be built on my development of learning spanish and i will advertise products related to that specific niche
aww i’d love to get back into EPN and be as frustrated as you are right now.
I hope it hasn’t changed all that much as i was apart of EPN when it started and they were good days, i was actually earning money online! – something i’ve not been able to do much and i’ve been online since i was 12 developing websites :(
I agree with you Mark there is no anticipation when you log in to EPN now and no hope of making sense of any of it. I also object to being given an EPC of 0 on sites that are making sales. That’s just wrong.
I also think there has been a traffic issue over the first 10 days as my numbers just don’t add up. It is only in the last 2 days that my numbers resemble my long term trends. What was happening between 1-10 October I really don’t know.
Yeah.. all I’m reading is a bunch of complaints.. and eBay should really be paying attention to the negative buzz that’s going through the web regarding their affiliate program.
The second EPN switched to in-house from CJ, I stopped wasting my time and money – because it’s never been as good as it used to.
My opinion – eBay’s skimming off the top. Plain and simple. Skimming numbers, data and money.
Hi Mark
I could not agree with you more! EPN has been a downhill travel the last 12 months. Hope EPN will come to their senses in the end and find a payment system that their affiliates will anderstand. What’s the point in working more and more for less payment?
Hi Mark,
So far I like EPN, but for I’m in the 30% group. What I don’t like is worrying about when things will will change and start to go south.
I hear about so many people with reduced earnings. I figure my time is coming.
I dislike loosing out on sales my sites have created but don’t fall into their payment criteria.
Well, I never experienced the thrill of seeing thousands of dollars on my ePN dashboard, but there were a few times when it jumped 10s of dollars overnight. That was big for me. That was BEFORE they made the change to their pricing structure, of course.
Now I have a dark outlook for my existing sites and even darker look for the sites I was thinking of creating that were going to be based on eBay’s inventory. I don’t know, I’m still tossing around the idea of whether I should proceed.
Darn shame for them to do this right before the holiday shopping season, too. Who knows, maybe they’ll figure out that this year’s shopping season didn’t turn out so well for them and change back. ???
Jury’s still out for me. On the one hand, my first week indicated that I was making considerably more money than usual. Since then, I’ve made considerably less. And what really, really peeves me off is that at least one of my sites is getting $0 a click- when that’s always been my best earning site. True, it’s usually only one or two people who click a hundred or more auctions at a time, but they do actually buy eventually. It just happens to be a niche that encourages browsing.
On top of this, I started a brand new site that isn’t conducive to high adsense earnings but IS eBay friendly… a mere 2 weeks before this new change was introduced. I’m more than a little irritated, and would probably rip the auctions off most of my sites if I didn’t expect them to change their program yet again within a few weeks.
So yes, while I often wouldn’t make much on a day to day basis, I would at least be compensated for the sales I did make. Now, they’ll compensate me for clicks made the day AFTER a sale- even if I get no clicks that following day. It’s a highly unfair system if they won’t at least set a minimum per click (even a penny per click is SOMETHING when you get 300 clicks on one site in a day), and it doesn’t make sense for them to be paying for traffic that may be useless when they could get away with only paying you for sales you actually made.
Then again, they wasted no time in screwing over their sellers, why not screw over the affiliates as well? If my niche was friendly to ANY other program, I’d pull ePN until it straightens itself out.
I have made $0.00 in the last 8 days on EPN the first first few days of the month were great!
While Google AdSense make efforts everyday to benefit their AdSense Affiliate, eBay is doing the opporsity.
I don’t understand neither how works the new payments system. This october, one week is was OK like old good times, next week, $1 or $3 of revenue, at the end, my benefits this month with QPC are %45 down and I’m now here just thinking in all the hours I spent adjusting my sites to EPN. =|
I don’t really get it either to be honest. I thought you got paid a higher commission the closer to the “click” the winning bid was but obviously not. I’ve had winning bids which have a 3 day gap between the 1st click and the end where I get 5% of the price and others where there’s a 5 day gap and I get 10%. All my click thrus appear to be highly targetted to the correct category and yet my qpc goes down on the sites which have more clicks than the sites that are thin and rubbish. I give up!
@ Cherie –
I have some newer campaigns in the .30 cents EPC range – with NO SALES at all (I would assume this is LOW quality), and others with a 3 to 1, click to bid/bin ratio (I would assume HIGH quality) getting only .14 cents EPC.
Makes ABSOLUTELY no sense at all to me either…. youdathunk that sending 1 buyer out of every three clicks into eBay would result in a MUCH higher EPC than a site sending 50 clicks a day with NO sales at all!
64 clicks – 21 BID/BIN – .14 epc
48 clicks – 0 BIN/BIN – .30 epc
Hmmmm… sounds like one of the Six Sigma Miyagi’s needs a refresher.
I got an email from ebay today outlining their commission again, saying the following
Specifically, we have made four changes to how we calculate the value of traffic sent by an affiliate to eBay:
Although we still have a 7 day cookie for sales, we no longer value all sales in a 7 day period equally. In general, sales that come toward the beginning of that period, close to the click, are judged more incremental and therefore valued higher than sales that come towards the end of that period. Please note an adjustment is made for auction listings and certain categories, e.g. motors, which may take longer to convert.
Certain health metrics are also taken into account in pricing. If the
amount of credit card fraud, unpaid items, extremely low-value ACRUs, and a number of other variables resulting from traffic you send to the site is significantly higher than average, you will be notified and your EPC may be reduced.
Finally, although an EPC amount is posted the day after your clicks are delivered to eBay, when setting that EPC the algorithm takes into account historical data, such as the lifetime value of ACRUs and sales within the 7 day cookie lifetime, as well as the quality of yesterday’s traffic. This means that you will see fewer fluctuations in your EPC on a day to day basis than on CPA. For example, if you have a large sale on one day, your EPC may not be as high as on CPA; if you have a day with low sales, your EPC might be higher than under CPA. Overall, however, publishers who drive more incremental sales and long-term value will
earn more under the Quality Click Pricing system.
I don’t see how we can stop credit card fraud and stuff like that – any answers to that?
Also, I don’t get the incremental sales thing – but that might just be my fuddled brain – that last paragraph is complete gobbledygook
I did find it interesting that on my 2 highest commission items I got paid half the percentage of what I got on the low priced items – coincidence?? mmm?
Cherie,
I suspect that there are some markets that tend to have higher credit card fraud. I’m guessing here, but probably some of the electronic markets, perhaps? So, it would be a matter of choosing your niches wisely.
For example, baby diapers probably has a low incidence of credit card fraud.
Rochelle
So I asked them some more about how they calculate the commission and this is what they said
“It is still possible that you earn less for a transaction which occurred within less time than another one as besides
the duration between the click on your link and the purchase, other
factors likePayPal and advertising revenue also count”
I give up!
In other words what they are saying is we can pay you what the hell we like when we feel like it.
I’m sorry but their algorithm makes absolutely no sense what so ever. When I first saw it it was completely clear what you had to do:
1) Reduce the amount of clicking back and forth between eBay and your site by getting the user more engaged.
2) Sell an item as close to the click as possible.
3) Make sure the item you sold was as close if not the actual item they clicked on.
I’m achieving all of the above and the only thing that actually seems to make a difference to the EPC by raising it is the number of clicks you have. The higher the clicks the more I am earning regardless of click time stamp, items sold etc.
I don’t think their algo even does what it’s mean to.
Once again, another right royal cock up by eBay.
EPN is getting crappy. Earning less, way less with the new system!
Down from $0.15/click to $0.08/click today. When you get over 1000 clicks/day it makes huge difference.
I guess it’s time to find new affiliate programs.
Anyone get a survey about the epn programme? I did and now having completed it I hope I don’t get binned because of my comments!
Hopefully judging by the questions in that survey they are having second thoughts. fingers crossed
Its plain and simple…
eBay keeps ALL the money from sales that are deemed as not “quality” referred sales.
They save so much fkin’ money from not having to pay affiliates for any of the traffic thats not of ‘quality’
Just think of how much they are saving with this new system.
It’s beyond ridiculous.
They will continue to win all of these awards for their QPC system.
The people who refer all of their sales will continue to loose more money, and eBay will continue to profit.
Large conglomerate companies will continue to be rewarded as the little guys who put in hard earned money, continue to loose money and time.
Leave your response!
On My YouTube Playlist
Latest Twitter Updates
Posting tweet...
Site Categories
Monthly Archive
My Favorite Places
Blogging Sites
Blogroll
Places I Write
Technology Sites
Site Credits
Niche Store Builder is powered by WordPress, using a modified theme originally inspired by Arthemia.
Home | About | Contact | Mark Hansen @ Google | Terms & Privacy