Fuck EPN - It's not an affiliate program, it's a fucking bingo game.

bb_wolfe

bb_wolfe

Medicinal KFC
Jan 1, 2008
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Last month a site that I hadn't touched since June 08 dropped from $400/month (every single month since inception) to $13/month. Same traffic. Comparing the logs of May/June/July were like looking at mirrors. Other sites in the 'collection' dropped too. Not a single one rose in income. Their new quality score bullshit is just awful and I'm not going to go back to dozens of sites and spend hours redoing each simply because Steve Hartman is on his fucking period. I invited the guy to answer some very fair and objective questions last month and he declined by simply not reponding, or at least the 'assistant' who I sent the email to did not reply.

I'm at the point where I COULD go in an figure out just what the fuck EPN's problem is, but the reality is even if I DID know, they wouldn't fix it NOR would they entertain any sort of negotiation for improving the payouts.

I'm just gonna say this once, if you're presently making money from EPN, do yourself a favor and jump into something else. Abandon EPN completely. If you gamble on this one, you will get uberfucked within the next 6 months.

My final EPN transaction will be driving traffic to my own fucking auction: the soapbox I just stepped off of.


If you have no idea what I'm talking about, just enjoy this photo of a bitch riding hammer!

fishing_babe13.jpg
 


I had a similiar experience, in aug 08 I started a site with bans and got it to 300 a month. After about 4 months if dropped to single digits with the same traffic, so I let it slide. I have recently been able to somewhat bring it back to life with radios new plugin so we will have to see what the changes with epn will do. It just feels like rolling dice with them....
 
mediaaff said:
$400/month ballin'
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A single site. I don't think that's BB_wolfe's only site. Just saying.

Yeah, with the new click pricing structure everybody is going to get fucked. The only ones to benefit will be eBay and a couple select affiliates (read: eBay mouthpieces) to quell the uprising that shall soon ensue.
 
I had my EPN account canned because of "low quality" traffic. It was all organic SEO traffic, and 98% of the products purchased were in the same niche that the site was focused on...

EPN = fail.
 
EPN has always been a black box to me. i've accepted that long ago. whether my sites do well or not, I know that I have little control over how well they profit (ultimately), so I don't invest very much time or emotion in them at all. at the end of the day, they're a decent hedge in the website arsenal, at least for the time being.
 
Can someone explain what they just changed with the new quality click pricing thing? I don't really get it. With adsense if you have low converting traffic, you get paid less. That makes sense to me. But with eBay you only get paid when the traffic converts...so why in the world do they need to change your earnings based on quality? I don't get it!
 
r3p1v said:
Can someone explain what they just changed with the new quality click pricing thing? I don't really get it. With adsense if you have low converting traffic, you get paid less. That makes sense to me. But with eBay you only get paid when the traffic converts...so why in the world do they need to change your earnings based on quality? I don't get it!
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because they have metrics in place to judge the quality of the conversions. specifically, how many recurring purchases do your referred conversions make afterwards? are they new to ebay? do they continue to bid and win after the initial conversion? they're looking at the LTV of the traffic you're sending on a consistent basis and adjusting EPCs accordingly.
 
Time to switch to Amazon and Overstock.

Ebay is under financial duress, and they are doing the exact OPPOSITE of what you do in that situation. They need to be raising payouts and paying for it by cutting fraud.

If their volumes were falling before, antagonizing affiliates is going to bury them.
 
I'm not sure I agree^ (as much as I'd like to being an affiliate)

I get the feeling they are doing the exact same thing as google, taking out the trash. The question really is are they actually throwing the baby out with the bathwater? It's a risk, certainly. Only time will tell if it will pay off.

EDIT: Ew. sorry for all the proverbs and cliches. blak. How many cliches can you throw in one paragraph and still make sense? We should have a contest.
 
bb_wolfe said:
Last month a site that I hadn't touched since June 08 dropped from $400/month (every single month since inception) to $13/month. Same traffic.
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I only got my first ePN site up about 2 months ago, and in my first month I was able to bring in about $150, and I expect more this month. For sake of discussion, would you consider your sites as being "thin?" Meaning, do you add more than just eBay listings. I always try and add a paragraph or two of text for each category I promote. I also make it clear to my visitors that they will be directed to eBay for the purchase. For that I like to add the 88x31 "Right Now on eBay" logo on the top of all my pages.

I think by doing that you can control the types of visitors that click on your eBay links, and if someone doesn't like shopping at eBay then they probably will not click through, thus raising your "QS" by sending people who do shop at eBay.

Just some things to try, and if you use Wordpress, the eBay logo and text for the categories should be easy to implement. Consider using this bit of code in your template:

PHP: 
<?php echo category_description(); ?>
Which echoes the description text you can set when editing a category.
 
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guerilla said:
Time to switch to Amazon and Overstock.

Ebay is under financial duress, and they are doing the exact OPPOSITE of what you do in that situation. They need to be raising payouts and paying for it by cutting fraud.

If their volumes were falling before, antagonizing affiliates is going to bury them.
Click to expand...


haha, enjoy that.

one you start ballin with amazon, they refuse to pay you

and even if you stay just under balla status..Net 60 will keep you down.


never tried overstock
 
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