Quality Click Pricing Comes to ePN for eBay Affiliates
I’m sure most of you got this email today – but since mine ended up in a spam folder, I feel its worth a reprint!
First and foremost – There is a VERY ACTIVE thread at the eBay Partner network forum, and just about ALL questions from affiliates are being answered by the ePN admins. Many of our questions are being addressed, officially…
eBay Affiliates Have a New Payout Model
Today we’re announcing Quality Click Pricing, a new payout structure designed to further reward the affiliates who drive incremental transactions on eBay and who send valued buyers to our sites.
What’s Quality Click Pricing?
Until now, eBay Partner Network has paid for sales and leads. With Quality Click Pricing, we will now instead pay affiliates for each click sent to an eBay site. The price paid per click will still depend on the short-term and long-term revenue of the traffic that the publisher drives to eBay, but will now also take into account the incremental value of that traffic to eBay, i.e., whether a sale happened as a direct result of the publisher’s actions. The greater the incremental revenue and the higher the expected lifetime value of the customers an affiliate sends, the higher the EPC and total earnings the affiliate will receive. Earnings Per Click (EPC) will be set daily for the previous day’s traffic.
When will this change take place?
We plan to phase the introduction of Quality Click Pricing to ensure existing publishers have enough time to understand how this affects them.
- New publishers that join the eBay Partner Network as of September 1st will be paid out under the new system. This includes all publishers joining as they transition from TradeDoubler and affilinet.
- Publishers that joined eBay Partner Network prior to September 1st will remain on the current pricing system until October 1st, when they will begin to be paid under the new Quality Click Pricing payment structure. Before October 1st, and starting the last week in August, existing publishers will have access to a preview report to see how their new payouts compare with the existing payment structure for them.
How can I find out more about this change?
We know that you may have questions about Quality Click Pricing, so we have put together several resources to give you more information about it:
- Read more about this change and some of the reasons behind it on our blog, including a FAQs document.
- A new set of pages on the eBay Partner Network site that explain how Quality Click Pricing works in more detail will be available later today.
- Two new videos that explain the concept of Quality Click Pricing (one available today and a second that will explain new reports on September 1st).
- In addition, we will hold two live webinars to explain the change and give publishers the opportunity to ask questions. Find out more about the webinars.
We will also be on the boards more frequently over the next few days to answer publishers’ questions.
We are very excited about the launch of Quality Click Pricing, as it will allow us to reward publishers who are driving high quality, engaged and incremental traffic to eBay. We are also committed to continuing to invest in helping our publishers succeed with eBay Partner Network, and to ensuring that everyone is rewarded fairly for the value they generate for eBay.
We look forward to working with you on this new endeavor. Thanks for your continued support!
Sounds Similar to the Shopping.com Platform
In my post about dealing with the eBay Changes yesterday – I had mentioned that may be similar to the shopping.com program. I have been a member of that program for quite a while now, and although I wasn’t fond of it at first – that was simply due to the whole “change” thing…
Before anyone jumps to negative conclusions on this – I think it will be a GOOD thing… if its not, we really have no other choice but to take our toys to another playground! :-)
Previously Published Articles You May Like to Read:
- ePN Quality Click Pricing Webinar Q&A
- 3 Tips To Understand and Succeed with ePN Quality Click Pricing!
- ePN Quality Click Pricing QCP Affiliate Intent Target!
- eBay Partner Network $20k Affiliates Contest
- eBay Partner Network Kicking Affiliates in the Face!
- 10 Alternatives to eBay Partner Network for Affiliates
- eBay Abandoning its Roots – Might be Great for Affiliates!
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I have been doing my part to "Build the Internet" since 1994, when I built my first website! Since then, I have built hundreds of niche websites for myself and many others, focused on design, applications, ecommerce, search optimization and internet marketing.
“I think it will be a GOOD thing”
you say that but don’t say WHY?
sounds like they are going from an honest straight forward model where if you do x you get y to some model that is hocus pocus and will leave us guessing why/what we are making
Ok, I just got the email about the Quality Click Pricing system. Thats sucks but not for us SEO experts! lol, Driving targeted audiences is our forte mr. :D
Tony
Mark – I just knew you would write about this. I’m glad to see that your take is the same as mine regarding this change. I have no doubt that this is part of the reason that eBay is no longer allowing us to use eBay affiliate links unless they are from our own sites.
If nothing else, this just shows that we shouldn’t rely 100% on eBay for an income. Diversify.
I echo everything here … I think it will be a good thing for those of us who have already been successful with EPN and hopefully weed out the spammers/crooks who ruin it for the rest of us. I don’t plan to change much of anything … about to put up some new stores and I’m still just as excited about them. I also have always always always suggested you diversify your income and EPN is no different. I’m actually excited to see what it will bring. *SmiLes* Suzanne
What is Pogo Sticking? Can’t any affiliate site be considered Pogo Sticking.
“factors other than quality which could affect individual publishers’ EPCs, like if the interaction on your site tends to produce a lot of “pogo-sticking” between your site and eBay listings. These will be factored in when we review these publisher accounts.”
@ All –
There is a ,a href=”http://forums.ebay.com/db2/topic/Ebay-Partner-Network/Quality-Click-Pricing/520144740″>great discussion full of answers going on at the ePN message board on this. Steve and other ePN admins are answering just about question they can.
I would also consider holding off on new sites until every question has been answered. There is mention in the FAQ that impression pixels are not required “At This Time” which leads me to think they may be someday…
Sean – in ref to Pogo Sticking…
I assume its clicking back and forth from my site to eBay, clicking the back button, repeat over and over. This would tend to mean the visitor was not engaged… and instead of showing a specific product to specific visitor type, i was sending an indecisive visitor.
On the BANS forum – shutting down the open in new window was suggested – its a good one!
M
I’m not sure if this is a bad thing or not. I understand the benefits to Ebay, maximising revenue without expanding their infrastructure makes perfect sense. However as a BANS user I was concerned with the statement…
“Although we do not require an impression pixel with every ad at this time, impression pixels are
the best way to track your impressions and determine your overall click through rate.”
Does anyone know how will this impact BANS and PHPbay when they introduce impression pixels to all ads?
Dumb question: what is considered a good daily EPC number? Mine jumps around (which I assume is normal). Sometimes it is 0.16, sometimes 0.27. Are those pretty sucky numbers? :)
Caro
Is this like quality click pricing like google adsense?
Thanks
David
@ Carolina –
Only the shadow knows… :-)
I have sites that range all the way from .04 epc to $5.28 epc
.04 epc is my highest total dollar amount of earning site – 45.28 is my crappiest site, thinnest content, etc… BUT still sends clicks and buyers.
I think we will have to wait this one out and see what happens.
Fortunately in a week or so, (Sept 1) we will have side by side reports to look t and compare.
@ Affiliate Marketer -
Is that Mark? Good to see you again… Just to clarify, the main reason I think these changes will be good, really depends on the site building model… and how the sites are built. The way we have building them for the past few months, it should be a benefit, since they already fall into the way eBay suggests in their new FAQ.
For myself – I have been building nothing but review type sites showing very limited products from the eBay system… so the visitor will come > learn > and have a buy it now item to purchase. This will reduce the amount of lower quality clicks and ultimately (hopefully) increase the quality score.
For anyone who has built browse type sites, where the traffic is non specific or too wide of a topic, I expect they may see a reduced quality in theri site traffic.
My take on the entire thing is that we need to have the train of thought of a sniper when it comes to our actual sales landing pages.
Targeted Buyers (Not tire kickers) > One Click > One Purchase
Mark
hey mark, yeah it’s that mark, still reading ;)
I reckon I get where you are coming from but…
I don’t like guessing, i like knowing when I make a company X dollars then I earn Y amount. Anything else is just hocus pocus in my opinion and I’ll spend my time and energy elsewhere and will suggest others do also.
seriously, there proposition is send us your traffic and we’ll make some magic formula that pays you but we will never tell you how it works, just trust us. No thanks.
I am with Rochelle & Mark. Diversification & significantly looking for newer opportunities is the key! Leme know if you find any…….& so will I. Sharing is good.
Quality Click Pricing is designed to do one thing only – allow ebay to pay affiliates less and make more for themselves. Why? Because they can and there is nothing you can do about it as an affiliate. Example, I earned 92.00 for sept. Quality Click Pricing predicts my payment would be 32.00 for the same traffic. What is wrong with that? The 92.00 is based on actual earnings for auctions won by people who come to ebay through my links. Why is it ok for ebay to now claim that traffic is worth only 32.00? I will be removing every ebay auction link I have and replacing them with something else. Probably aff links from a source who sells something from my site’s niche but anything is better then dealing with a company who just wants me to be happy being screwed. ebay, you suck!
If you think you can convince me this new payout system is a good thing for affiliates, let me get a fan to remove the smoke from my butt. eBay does nothing anymore to improve their affiliates revenue. They do it to improve their own. It started when they left CJ. They saved money. Then they changed the ACRU payouts, based on the “quality” of the new member – and I won’t even go into the formula that involved – and they saved money. Now, they pay us for click quality on an algo that they won’t reveal and that changes daily. No way to verify the numbers other than to “trust” them. They’ll save money again by using us all as a cheaper form than Adsense advertising. Trying to convince us that because it took 100 clicks to make a sale, our clicks are worth less than someone who needed only 1. BS. They still made the sale and got the fees. I get less because I didn’t sell the damn thing for them with less clicks? An affiliates job is to get them in the door, not hold their hand to the cash register.
eBay was good while it lasted. I’ll be driving traffic, but it will be to websites that offer the same products I niche and who pay me a set percentage of every sale they make from the traffic I send them, without diluting the numbers to their benefit.
More companies are providing product feeds. It isn’t that difficult to convert from eBay to those others.
If anyone thinks they are going to do better now, good luck. If you do, eBay will surely notice and change that imaginary algo to ensure you don’t continue.
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