EPN is going to fuck us! QCP Preview Available
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I think you misunderstand what I was trying to say. I wasn't talking about earnings, I was talking about strategy. It's going to be easier for people to analyze what's going on and what ebay wants if they already have alot of different campaigns already. If you only run it on one or two sites then yeah you're going to be left scratching your head.
So in my case most of mine (without acru) were about the same maybe with about a 5% drop. Although there were some that definitely bottomed out (with about a 50% drop). I'm taking those and comparing them to the ones that are doing well and trying to figure out what's the similarities and differences between the sites and campaigns.
I see about a 40% decrease in projected earnings currently. I still don't understand this new system whatsoever. I look forward to you guys explaining it to me.
Any one listening to the webinar on Tuesday? Webinar recording and 9/1 event information | eBay Partner Network Blog | eBay Affiliate Program News
I'm going to try to make it. Luckily, I think they'll record for later access in case anyone can't make it.
this is such a fuck job by epn to its affiliates. in making the decision to promote eBay, we all worked off of this assumption:
1) 7 day cookie
2) anything purchased in that time led to commission
yeah - that's pretty broad, but that's why people were willing to work with ePN over other retail merchant affiliate programs, to buy hundreds of domains, invest hundreds if not thousands of hours developing sites, and ultimately why they were willing to put forth an investment, because the potential ROI based on the assumption above made it reasonable.
Now, however, the two assumptions above are shot - sure a 7 day cookie might still be in place, but the weight is such that actions happening later in the cookie lifespan are valued less, blah blah blah - a bunch of shit we're left to guess at - blah blah blah - and at the end of the day we have no real way of knowing what we're dealing with.
Would I have spent as much time working on sites if this was going to be the equation - absolutely not. I think this is a total screw job by ePN and it's upsetting.
Seriously - would a reasonable person expect the entire model to be completely turned on its head after making a significant investment under the previous terms of the agreement? And if not, is there a means of recourse? I doubt it, but I'll let you know when I finish Contracts II. lol.
1) 7 day cookie
2) anything purchased in that time led to commission
yeah - that's pretty broad, but that's why people were willing to work with ePN over other retail merchant affiliate programs, to buy hundreds of domains, invest hundreds if not thousands of hours developing sites, and ultimately why they were willing to put forth an investment, because the potential ROI based on the assumption above made it reasonable.
Now, however, the two assumptions above are shot - sure a 7 day cookie might still be in place, but the weight is such that actions happening later in the cookie lifespan are valued less, blah blah blah - a bunch of shit we're left to guess at - blah blah blah - and at the end of the day we have no real way of knowing what we're dealing with.
Would I have spent as much time working on sites if this was going to be the equation - absolutely not. I think this is a total screw job by ePN and it's upsetting.
Seriously - would a reasonable person expect the entire model to be completely turned on its head after making a significant investment under the previous terms of the agreement? And if not, is there a means of recourse? I doubt it, but I'll let you know when I finish Contracts II. lol.
Sad thing is that the "user experience" on our sites is such that people are drilling down and finding what they are looking for. If you are in fact expediting the search experience for the user, then the amount of clicks should be representative of the fact that you are doing your job properly. The fact that the clicks convert at all mean that you are also providing qualified leads.
The REAL problem is when the user arrives at eBay - what has the seller done in terms of "user experience" to retain that user and convert? In spite of whatever tweaks you've done to ensure that your traffic is getting to where they would most likely convert, the seller may be unclear with the item description, terms or shipping policy, etc. such that the user is forced to look elsewhere or gets distracted and thinks about something else they want to look for while they are on there. WTF? Do they have an algorithm for human behavior? What more are we supposed to do to our sites to influence the decision making process once they get to eBay?
The REAL problem is when the user arrives at eBay - what has the seller done in terms of "user experience" to retain that user and convert? In spite of whatever tweaks you've done to ensure that your traffic is getting to where they would most likely convert, the seller may be unclear with the item description, terms or shipping policy, etc. such that the user is forced to look elsewhere or gets distracted and thinks about something else they want to look for while they are on there. WTF? Do they have an algorithm for human behavior? What more are we supposed to do to our sites to influence the decision making process once they get to eBay?
i've said for some time that the refining of categories for eBay done on our sites is a real service. they have one category for disc golf for example - through keywords, negative keywords, etc. i have broken that down into a dozen subcategories that assist the user finding what they are looking for - now as jizz points out - once we send them to the page with what they are interested in, we are at the mercy of the seller to write compelling copy that encourages the buyer to make a person to person transaction compared to a person to business transaction (like Amazon) which can be a leap of faith in itself AND we have to believe that the eBay platform is going to be conducive for closing sales (granted that would be a consideration for any retail aff program).
@turbo i always figured acru's as gravy and could live without them - but yeah - that certainly played into people's decisions to join, promote, and how they promoted. the occasional acru certainly made ePN more attractive than other retail affiliate programs.
@turbo i always figured acru's as gravy and could live without them - but yeah - that certainly played into people's decisions to join, promote, and how they promoted. the occasional acru certainly made ePN more attractive than other retail affiliate programs.
ACRU's 'were' a nice bonus. I was making $40 a pop until they decided to chop it down to whatever they felt like. Went to $28, then down to $10. I'm sure after the 1st, they'll stick it to me with $1 each. My traffic stayed consistent, no bullshit traffic whatsoever.
Well, no point in staying pissed about this. Some bad competition will get wiped out, some people will move on, and it will be a little easier to compete.
I'm going to roll out some more niche sites in Sept for the holiday season, and then make a call on how involved I will be with EPN in 2010. Right now, my data is so screwy (made $13 in commission yesterday, value click shows revenue of $1.30 under new scheme) that I can't really ascertain what is going to happen to me.
We have to be honest. While cutting us down may hurt, at the end of the day, EPN might still be the best bang for the buck out of shopping affiliate programs, and so we'll just have to scale bigger and work a little harder to get ahead. It's not ideal, but no one on the internet has a 3 year plan, because no one knows what it will be like in 3 years.
Creative destruction. Sometimes you rickroll the internet, and sometimes the internet dickrolls you.
Back to work.
I'm going to roll out some more niche sites in Sept for the holiday season, and then make a call on how involved I will be with EPN in 2010. Right now, my data is so screwy (made $13 in commission yesterday, value click shows revenue of $1.30 under new scheme) that I can't really ascertain what is going to happen to me.
We have to be honest. While cutting us down may hurt, at the end of the day, EPN might still be the best bang for the buck out of shopping affiliate programs, and so we'll just have to scale bigger and work a little harder to get ahead. It's not ideal, but no one on the internet has a 3 year plan, because no one knows what it will be like in 3 years.
Creative destruction. Sometimes you rickroll the internet, and sometimes the internet dickrolls you.
Back to work.
judging from only 11 days of data, i'm seeing a slight increase in ePC.
there is plenty of weirdness in there and drastic differences between earnings with the two systems from day to day. sometimes it works in my favour and other times it doesn't. despite this, the end results are extremely similar when averaged out in this case.
there is plenty of weirdness in there and drastic differences between earnings with the two systems from day to day. sometimes it works in my favour and other times it doesn't. despite this, the end results are extremely similar when averaged out in this case.
I learned very quickly on the seller side that eBay is all about putting people that make money for them out of business overnight and not giving one flying fuck about it. eBay should never represent more than 5% of your income if you want to plan more than 2 weeks ahead in your life.
Now theres no reason to stay with EPN over Shopzilla 
BTW on my reinclusion request in EPN (aka they re-reviewed my case, where I provided 100% data) they said I'm still banned for life.
As others have said, Fuck eBay.
BTW on my reinclusion request in EPN (aka they re-reviewed my case, where I provided 100% data) they said I'm still banned for life.
As others have said, Fuck eBay.