The Truth About ePN

About Me: I've been in the field of marketing management and graphic design since 1998, as well as search engine optimization and search engine marketing since 2004.

In the realm of affiliate marketing - I have approximately two years of experience (beginning with Amazon Associates), but began my ePN career in the late summer of 2007. My interest in ePN came purely from Build A Niche Store, a software package that assists in building eBay affiliate stores. Since that time, I've created and maintained 10 niche ePN affiliate websites, each with a wealth of personally-written content, optimized to their fullest extent. The sites were pulling in a combined $1,100 - $1,500/mo., and I spent at least 20 hours a week working on content, keyword research, page enhancement and legitimate link and article building.

SEO is my full time job, and I applied it to the fullest extent for my affiliate ventures. I was able to achieve several major two and three word keywords on Google organic search, and have achieved several page 1, position 1 & 2 rankings on Yahoo for the same terms, bringing in hundreds of targeted visitors per day to certain sites.

I've always been a practitioner of white hat behavior on the web - when it came to all of my sites, I've never bought, sold or traded links, used trademarked entities or did anything even the slightest bit shady. Little did I know, it wouldn't ensure my security in the least bit as an ePN affiliate.

eBay Partner Network is an affiliate program in which webmasters can earn commission based on a percentage of an eBay seller's fee, for products sold through click-throughs on their site, via a cookie. The program gained popularity through its heyday on CJ.com, an affiliate marketing network. eBay ended their relationship with CJ.com in early April 2008, prompting a series of negative changes yet to come, as their program became self-hosted and all statistics were tracked on their new website.

Initially, the inconvenience of affiliates (some of which had years of seniority under their belt) underwent the process of having to convert all of their soon-to-expire CJ.com links over to the new ePN format.

Suddenly, traffic inconsistencies followed, as Googlebot et. all registered as valid click-throughs, skewing data. ACRUs (active confirmed registered users), a measurement statistic typically paying the affiliate a cool $20 for each new user who registers with eBay and makes a transaction for the first time through their affiliate links, were no longer being reported (in some affiliates' cases, they ceased entirely).

Frustration set in as ePN representatives failed to address various concerning issues on the message board, fostering feelings of ePN's indifference amongst affiliates. Seemingly, months passed without acknowledgment from eBay about the blaring errors within the program, spanning from mis-reported commissions, the complete bastardization of the ACRU payment program, inflated clicks from bots and overall horrible tracking compared to the previous CJ.com tool. Although system fixes were performed, problems continued to persist.

It became obvious that the "quick fix" solution for each discrepancy was to provide public relations damage control - a frustrating, infuriating trait that ePN affiliates would continue to endure to the present day.

In another unicorn and rainbow filled newsletter, ePN announced a major change to its ACRU payoff scale, where the visitors of whom find their way to eBay via your website will be rated based on how many times they keep coming back and buying things. Rather than handing out the typical $20 per new registrant through your affiliate links, the system now changed to pay $1 to $50 depending on "quality," a word that would later go down in infamy (don't worry, we're almost near the good part).

The confusing mish-mosh of changes to the ACRU (Active Confirmed Registered User) program was explained with a candy-coated shell. Based on an enigma of unseen data and statistics - another magical attribute that would soon haunt affiliates, your ACRU payoff was calculated behind closed door. In other words, expect the $1, don't hold your breath for the $50. Or, perhaps, you were simply part of the crowd who still hadn't gotten a single ACRU since the in-house change back in April 2008.

With no warning came a nuclear attack from the ePN team: a wave of permanent mass bannings prompted with no notice, rhyme or reason. To add insult to injury, it was delivered with generic legalese through an e-mail template that eBay has used to ban black hatters, TOS violators, and now - those who have truly done nothing wrong.

CPC statistics were no longer presented over a multi-day spread, but were then shown as a daily figure, making affiliates' CPCs plummet. CPC would later become an important metric in ePN's closed-door decisions of who would be next in line to get hit with the inevitable ban-stick.

The bannings were also repeated in the summer of 2009, particularly from July to mid August.

Never a dull moment: ePN now introduces a new "Quality Click Pricing" metric which allegedly rewards those for sending well-funneled traffic to eBay, based on a per-click basis. While no concrete information or mathematics were ever given to truly explain what the hell this means, there's no doubt that the blood pressure of many an affiliate rose to monumental levels on that day. From the earliest reports, some affiliates reported slight gains in earnings, while others cried over immediate 60-70% drops in revenue.

Dear [Chump/Loser/Nobody] (Take your pick!),

During a recent review of eBay Partner Network publisher accounts and site metrics data for clicks your account drives to eBay.com, we determined that the traffic generated from your account is significantly less engaged with the eBay site as compared to the standards set by our other affiliates. While we appreciate your efforts to drive traffic to our Advertiser sites, we do not think that it is mutually beneficial to further our business relationship at this time. As a result, we will be expiring your eBay Partner Network account in 7 days and we request that you remove all of your eBay Partner Network affiliate links by that time. Payment will take place as per the Network Agreement for any traffic driven to eBay Advertiser sites prior to the expiration date of August 27, 2008.

One of our account managers will contact you if a more appropriate business opportunity arises to work together again in the future.

Regards,

The eBay Partner Network

You have received this administrative communication because you are registered on the eBay Partner Network. If you have any questions, please visit the ePN Network Agreement, Code of Conduct, Privacy Policy, and the eBay Advertiser Terms and Conditions.

Copyright (c) 2008 eBay Partner Network Inc. All Rights Reserved. Designated trademarks and brands are the property of their respective owners. eBay and the eBay Logo are trademarks of eBay Inc.

As stated in the ePN Network Agreement Section (L)(3)(i):

(3) Termination by ePN or an Advertiser

i. ePN may terminate this Agreement and your account, one of your websites, your use of a Promotional Method or your participation in a certain Program at any time for convenience in its sole discretion upon 7 days notice. An Advertiser may terminate your participation in its Program or your use of a Promotional Method at any time for convenience in its sole discretion upon 7 days notice.

It didn't matter if you were young or old, experienced or new, earning 6-figures or 2...the bannings covered a wide radius of honest, hard working ePN users. It doesn't even matter if one out of 50 of your sites was the trigger for your banning - your entire account is banned. Some relied on ePN as their primary income. Some advertised their ePN sites on local television or by magazine. All had to cope with the loss - as a ban from ePN is permanent.

Think "AdSense Ban," without even the possibility of an appeal, or even a courtesy follow-up or "fix it" request from the staff.

The purpose of the bannings was later described by an ePN representative with extreme tact and opacity as being due to a lack of quality from "less engaging" traffic.

As usual, this is not further defined as it is covered up for the sake of protecting eBay's internal algorithm - a convenient excuse masking wide-scale, unwarranted discrimination that has led to the loss of many valuable affiliates.

After all, how is an affiliate supposed to control the free will of human beings around the world, and their purchasing habits? As an SEO professional, I know the answer to be "through a highly targeted, clear and concise website that is of value to the customer." What will stop a consumer from visiting a "product A" website and buying 2 "product B"s? That should be eBay's problem - I just drove them to the site like I was supposed to do.

Perhaps eBay should do some research -- here you go.

A major rift in upper management. Bizarre plans to re-manufacture the auction, fee, payment plans and business structure. Banning sellers from leaving negative feedback on transactions. Adjusting the seller's fee in the corporation's greedy favor. Rumors of a shift away from auctions and toward direct sales. And then, there's this:



Source: Quantcast results for eBay.com



Source: Alexa.com



Source: Google Finance/eBay 10 yr data



Source: Just a little joke :) come on guys, you can cut the tension with a knife in here!

Well, if you were lucky enough to not get banned, you're probably wondering what you can do to shelter your account. Here are two juicy tidbits of info for you:

• Drop all ePN banner ads: As you may have realized, ePN banner ads SUCK. They don't convert - period...and they are the only thing that makes your "impressions" statistic on your ePN front page increase. Simply remove every single one of them, and never use it again. This is not a rumor! It's been admitted that high "impressions" vs. overall clickthroughs and sales contributes to the ban!



• Drop all poorly performing sites: Yet another tidbit of classified info for you...if you have any sites getting a handful of hits per day, or just not getting sales at all - pull the plug on them! What you'll want to do is make your top performing eBay affiliate sites be the only statistic-producing variables in your account. Everything else gets the cut! In the meantime, turn those sites into parking pages (I recommend Parked)


• "Can I avoid the ePN ban by joining Pepperjam?" If you didn't know, Pepperjam is another affiliate marketing portal, just like Commission Junction. ePN is one of its affiliate programs, and you can join ePN through Pepperjam. It is possible to rejoin ePN if you've been banned, however, you might have to be a little crafty. Join Pepperjam, search for eBay and join their affiliate program. You'll have to be manually approved by ePN. Try using one of your blogs as an example site when prompted.

Quite simply put, spread the word: don't join ePN. Was the context of this page bitter? No. Well, if you though so, you've missed the big picture: it is a true account from an ex-affiliate who has done nothing more than follow the Terms of Service of ePN (and I even had the poor judgment to advocate their rules to other affiliate marketers to help promote them), provide high quality sites both in graphic design and contextual merit, only to be stricken by a mass-banning for unknown reasons, through a vague e-mail blast.

For your consideration: if you should so choose to join ePN, do so under the knowledge that the sites you create may trigger a banning at any point - even if you follow the rules. Many people have suffered this fate, and most likely, many more will. It could be next week, or next year. Or five years from now. I don't know about you - but I prefer not to build 100 page websites with unique content and high SE rankings that have the constant possibility of being banned at any point, only to become utter shells worthy of resale or simply being reverted to a parking page. Remember - as an eBay affiliate, you may be selling items that simply are not available on any other affiliate program on the internet but eBay (for instance: antiques, industrial machine parts or autographs). Once your ePN account is banned, all possibilities for your site's future are gone, as well.

Let others know on affiliate marketing forums across the net. If you've been banned, express your disgust on ePN Forums. Blog about it - and advertise it in your forum signatures on DigitalPoint, or any other place where affiliates hang out.

Lastly, think about the hard working individuals who have dedicated hours, months, and YEARS to their affiliate success through eBay who have depended on the income to provide for their families, pay off their bills or edge off their tuition expenses. These are YOUR colleagues, and we're all in the same boat, as fellow marketers. Spread the word about what ePN has done to them, so that it can't happen again to anyone else.