EPN Value Based Pricing for ACRUs - Aug 1st 2008

Status
Not open for further replies.
audax

audax

New member
Oct 13, 2007
807
9
0
As part of our ongoing effort to reward our best marketing partners and promote trusted commerce on eBay, we are implementing a new pricing structure for Active Confirmed Registered User (ACRU) compensation. The new pricing scheme is based on quality, instead of just volume, and will reward top publishers with up to $50 per ACRU driven to eBay.

Starting today, August 1st, new publishers that join the eBay Partner Network will be placed in this new quality-based pricing structure for the US program.

All publishers that joined eBay Partner Network before August 1st will remain in the existing pricing tiers for a few more months so you can have time to look at the data and see how the change will affect you. As of November 1st, all publishers will be placed in the value based pricing structure for ACRUs.

Here's how it will work. Each publisher will be placed in a quality tier at the end of each month based on that month's and historical traffic. The tiers will range from $1 to $50, and the higher the expected lifetime value of the customers a publisher sends, the higher the tier the publisher will receive. We expect that most affiliates with a history of driving good, consistent traffic won't see a lot of variability from month to month.

Publishers that join after August 1st will be able to see what tier they fall in by going to the programs tab and selecting payments structure for the US program. This tier will be updated on the 9th of each month and will reflect the score for the previous month. The tier will be 0 for the first month while we calculate your first score. Note that your ACRU earnings in your reports will reflect this tier.

If you joined before August 1st, you will continue to only see the same volume-based tiers for now. In September we will release a new separate report that will allow all publishers to break down, by campaign, the quality of the ACRUs you are driving to eBay. We will send more details about this report in a few weeks.

Please note that this change only affects compensation for new user registrations (ACRUs). Payouts for revenue share will continue on the same volume-based tiers for both new and old users. While the current change only affects the US eBay program on eBay Partner Network, we are evaluating this system on a country by country basis and will provide additional updates as they become available.

For more details on how the new pricing structure will work in the US please log into eBay Partner Network and visit the eBay US terms and conditions in the "Programs" tab on eBay Partner Network. There are also FAQs in the Help section of eBay Partner Network https://www.ebaypartnernetwork.com/files/hub/en-US/help.html and in the user guide in the advertisers and programs tab under "value-based pricing".

We want to continue to reward quality publishers and seek to continuously improve your experience in the program. This change will allow us to match payouts to the value of users and ensure we pay out our best affiliates the highest amounts. Thank you for your service and continued commitment to our relationship.
Click to expand...

https://www.ebaypartnernetwork.com/files/hub/en-US/help.html#h3.2

It will be interesting to see what tiers everyone starts falling into. Existing publishers will have to wait until Sept to see how it affects them.

Will this be the death of BANS/phpBay?
 


I was just going to post this.

It's a silly and subjective way of paying affiliates. Oh your visitors lifetime value is bad we are paying you less. Affiliate marketing should be paid on quantifyable actions. An acru should = set dollar amount. It just seems like a way to rip off affiliates.
 
Is it Ebay's corporate mission to be the biggest asshole ever? First they fuck over sellers with a crazy feedback system. They should remove the fucking system all together.

Next, they fuck power sellers over by joining with buy.com.

Now, they're using this silly new model and expecting those of us who have a few dozen ebay affiliate sites to jump for joy?

Policies like this one would kill a normal company.
 
bb_wolfe said:
Is it Ebay's corporate mission to be the biggest asshole ever? First they fuck over sellers with a crazy feedback system. They should remove the fucking system all together.

Next, they fuck power sellers over by joining with buy.com.

Now, they're using this silly new model and expecting those of us who have a few dozen ebay affiliate sites to jump for joy?

Policies like this one would kill a normal company.
Click to expand...

seriously. My first online business was on ebay many years ago. They made such stupid decisions I started my own ecommerce site because i didnt want to deal with their bullshit and PROSPERED. They don't realize that its not 1999 and people don't NEED them anymore.
 
I think its fucking bullshit. If you have bad "quality" by there standards you can get a $1 for a ACRU. So basicly its quality score, i'm sure to get a $50 for 1 ACRU your users have to buy something on ebay for 30 days or some crazy shit like that. I'm fine if im at $25 per ACRU but if that shit goes to $5 im out of EPN. I already think they fuck you over with there tracking and not paying for sales or ACRUs.
 
I think it wouldn't be so bad if the range was $15-50, I know I would still turn a profit at $15. But fuck me $1??? How do they know what the value of the sign up is? They might only bid on 1 item in the first few months then 6 months later start buying shit like mad, is ebay going to come back and pay me extra for that, I doubt it.
 
at the same time assuming they aren't trying to screw *good* affiliates perhaps this will combat incentivized/sketchy signups (ie those who signup and suspiciously place one bid on a $0.99 item never to return to ebay again) and will reward those of us driving them supremely qualified traffic.

I remember when they switchd the rev share model and we were concerned as at that time were doing $XXXX/day in bid/bin $0.10 actions alone. Quickly we realized this was a VERY good thing as it so happened a bunch of luxury good terms were ranked and driving a lot of traffic (epc nearly doubled and never dropped back down as low as it was pre-rev share).

So I'm optimistic this is at worst the same.
 
my guess is they got scammed by lots of acru signups. It will be interesting to see how this shakes out over time, hopefully for the positive but I'm not holding my breath.
 
This also means people who were aggregating affiliates to get into higher tiers will have issues. So much for Shoe Money's idea/old company.

Although I hate any metric you can't measure. Feels like AdSense. You can't tell if Google decides it wants to take another 5% of revenue or that somehow your numbers fell. With Ebay, they can just raise the quality bar or calculation for lifetime value at any time and suddenly you make less money and can't tell why.
 
They're mainly do it to cut down on incentivized ACRU's, cookie stuffing and a few other things that they believe hurt their bottom line. They're also hyper concerned these days about buyer experience so anything that they think hurts this, be it a bad seller or a bad affiliate, they'll make it unprofitable for them.
 
Crap. I just realized this happened at the same time as my Account closure drama. Feedack probably had a stream of emails related to this. Now I'm never going to get this thing resolved.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom
Back