The eBay Partner Network forums are buzzing with angry affiliates following the latest wave of expiration notices that were sent to members last night. It seems eBay has terminated a large number of affiliates from their program and this has caused a great deal of controversy amongst some of the upper echelon who have been earning in upwards of thousands of dollars per month using eBay’s lucrative affiliate program. An semi-formal announcement was made by eBay representative SteveH regarding the mass terminations which has not been very well received by the majority of affiliates and promoters who are voicing their opinions regarding this statement :
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I wanted to address all of the board posts regarding the expiration emails that were sent last night.
These actions were part of our continued effort to focus on delivering the highest quality buyer traffic to eBay via affiliate marketing. To that end, we’ve been analyzing our program closely over the last few months. I know there have been a number of requests to provide insight into all of the metrics via which we are evaluating affiliate traffic, but unfortunately there’s an active black hat community that is pretty effective at exploiting these insights so we can’t go into details on them. However, what I can say is that in addition to earnings per click metrics (EPC), we look at a variety of metrics to see how users are behaving when they come to eBay.com – how engaged they are with our site, and whether the affiliate link clicks lead to incremental buying activity. As we’ve done this, we have seen a big discrepancy in how interested and active the traffic is that comes to eBay from different sources. Our responsibility in the affiliate marketing channel is to allocate our resources to best drive incremental demand to our sellers. To that end, we need to focus on partners who have had the most success in engaging users who become some of our best buyers on eBay. I understand that these actions do have a very real impact on some of our affiliates who have been working with us over the years. For that, I sincerely apologize, but these decisions are made in the best interest of eBay’s sellers and the overall health of our affiliate program. We want to be very clear. Affiliates who received these messages of expiration last night are not being asked to stop sending traffic to us due to fraudulent activity or violations of the terms of service. For those of you who received the message, commissions are not being reversed, and you will be paid for all valid traffic you have sent to us to date, and for the next 7 days. Sincerely, |
I have a guess as to what SteveH is alluding to by the statement “we look at a variety of metrics to see how users are behaving when they come to eBay.com – how engaged they are with our site, and whether the affiliate link clicks lead to incremental buying activity”
Actually, it’s not a guess, what he’s saying is that there is rampant cookie stuffing going on and that EPN has devised some algorithm (metrics) to mass detect apparent black hat sites which game eBay’s tracking cookies. While I personally applaud EPN for taking action against black hatters who make a living by cheating, my concern is with sincere, white hat publishers who may come under scrutiny due to false positives revealed by EPN’s untested metrics and fraud detection algorithms.
Undertandably, the portion of SteveH’s statement in regards to how engaged visitors are when they land on eBay from an affilaite link shows that EPN’s staff must be thinking anybody who clicks an affiliate link and lands on eBay should stay there for a certain amount of time before “bouncing”. In reality, high bounce rates are not indicative of an affiliate site engaging in cookie stuffing or tricking visitors to visit eBay. Quite possibly, a high bounce rate could be indicative of a visitor’s lack of interest in eBay itself and never had the intention of engaging with eBay for any reason other than to see the item listing they clicked on.
One such case that causes alarm for me as an affiliate - I have routinely used high priced items in a particular collectible niche as a lure to entice my website visitors to click on the eBay affiliate links to see these expensive items. While my thinking is that someone might click through to see the $500K Lambroughini and end up bidding on a pair of fuzzy dice, it nonetheless discredits my use of human nature to transfer visitors from my site to eBays. I routinely click on eBay auction listings from third party sites if my interest is peaked but in my case, after being ripped off several times on eBay years ago, I would never consider bidding or buying anything on eBay ever again. So I am a chronic eBay “bouncer” who has no interest in “engaging” with eBay and I’m sure I’m not alone.
Another scenario I’ve seen successfully used to lead visitors to eBay through affiliate links is by linking to strange, bizzare auctions or controversial items that might resolve a click out of curiosity. This technique has served many bloggers and forum owners well to generate eBay affilaite commissions. However, there is a guaranteed high bounce rate when leading people to eBay to see something shocking.
Regardless of whatever EPN is doing to limit cookie stuffing and other fraudulent commission generation, I do not believe their method of handling affiliates in such an unprofessional manner is making EPN a trustworthy program for most affiliates to spend their time and money promoting. In the end, handling affiliates (even the black hat ones) en masse and making giant waves in the community has made EPN one of the most unprofessionally managed affiliate programs available to publishers and the biggest bomb I’ve ever seen in my 10+ years of affiliate marketing.
In my humble opinion, cheaters should be handled one by one in private. Light should not be shed on the termination of affiliates in such a wide scope because the overall effect is disconcerting to honest promoters who become filled with fear over having their accounts terminated. Perhaps EPN is taking a page from the Google Adsense playbook and using scare tactics in a vain attempt to keep affiliates in line? Either way, it’s their loss at the end of the day because the migration from programs such as EPN and Adsense is already coming full circle.
What do you think? Are you happy with eBay/EPN and their decisions to do mass affiliate slapping in front of everybody ??
EPN must have consulted with the Google Adsense team…. totally un-professional…..
It just goes to show that if you are going to play the EPN game now… (and I’m talking about regular affiliate practice…not black-hat) you better spread out your efforts on different accounts to limit your liability……
Too bad eBay. Shame on you.
A significant amount of my income is from the eBay Partner Network. I never heard of this issue till dropping by here. It hasn’t affected me so far (crossing fingers).
The way I do business on my eBay sites is above board. I should do well with the new changes in the commission structure as well.
Great article. Thanks for the info.
…added to Delicious :)
When people said they were getting booted from EPN I always assumed they were pulling some “tricky” stuff so I was kind of glad they were getting booted. That would make it better for folks that were doing things on the “up and up”.
Boy was I wrong. I do everything “by the book” and yet the rug has been pulled without warning.
Total devastation.
I have had great success with affiliate networks like CJ, Shareasale, Neverblueads as they have tons of offers to choose from. Lots of great affiliate networks to choose from and RELIABLE ones at that.
Not like eBay or Google who scam affiliates.
I just finished reading through the thread at ebay’s forum you linked to and it suprises me that they are offering the banned affiliates no real info on why they were banned.
I can understand a pay per click network like adsense wanting to save adwords buyers money from losses on invalid clicks but for a cpa network it makes no sense at all?
Lots of people have been banned today according to the BANS forum. Not sure why yet??
Now we know why they call it BANS :-)
I’ve been unhappy with EPN ever since the CJ jump anyway. My revenue compared to the same time frame over 3 years has shown that while my traffic has continued to climb, the revenue drop from the switch lost us over 50% of our earnings from the previous two years. Every month as my traffic grew on my NON-BANS!!! sites, so did my revenue on CJ. As soon as we did the switch I proceded to have the worst income I’ve ever had, even when we FIRST signed up on CJ. So, we’ve known the glory days were over. Me, the optomistic, proclaimed that ePN was just fixing everything, while my wife said it was DEAD. I hate the fact that dickweed Steve has just made my pessimistic wife the correct party.
what a crock of $*!+. I got the axe from EPN and I didn’t ever stuff cookies or do any black hat stuff.
WTF ??
Thats hugely bad considering there are a ton of people out there making their living off ebays affiliate program. I just had a buddy of mine that got me into the ebay buisness and he has around 300 ebay sites that makes him a huge amount of money and he got the letter yesterday. At first he though it was some spam stuff and I didnt know to believe it or not.
I knew this was going to happen once eBay took the affiliate program in-house which is why I dragged my feet on changing my links until after the move was finalized. Even with PepperJam, my earnings are seriously down as compared to when the affiliate program was through CJ.
One thing I did see as a warning sign was the rise in popularity of BANS software after Shoemoney’s Auction Ads tanked and he ditched it off on Patrick Gavin.
Prior to that, eBay affiliate was a secret tool for most of us who knew how to code for the API and RSS feed implementations but once BANS came into focus, all of a sudden there were hundreds or thousands of crappy, no-content sites being put out by the noobs at DigitalPoint who follow anything to make a buck but they’re usually a day late and a dollar short.
I’ve always used eBay to monetize my content driven sites and I have to admit most of the BANS sites make me wonder why most of these people think they deserve search engine traffic, pagerank and monetization for putting a script on a domain and spamming blogs for backlinks.
I get the impression that EPN is targeting BANS sites and cookie stuffers but as I said in the article, if they do it using an automated algorithm without a human eyeing the sites, it’s a recipe for disaster.
totally un-professional…..Too bad eBay. Shame on you!!!!!
Looks like EPN is having second thoughts about their actions and allowing some publishers to be re-instated.
Check this thread..
http://www.code4gold.com/forums/index.php?topic=16059.0
Are publishers that have been expired able to get back on via pepperjam?
I’m pretty sure they can use PepperJam but don’t quote me on that. I think it depends on if EPN banned domains or if they banned accounts.
However, I am certain that somebody using a different domain that wasn’t in the EPN system could use PepperJam.
This is all a bit confusing. E-bay is trying to protect its integrity by forsing out affiliates?
Sounds a little Cuukoo
eBay has been making alot of waves recently and not just with affiliates. They’re imposing new rules on sellers and I know those new rules have a lot of sellers seriously pissed off.
If some other company could offer a good challenge to eBay, the opportunity is golden at the moment.
These American companies are so stupid. They treat their customers like dirt then treat affiliates like dirt.
I know here in Europe, we hate Ebay becaue it is a junkyard or flea market.
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and now they have caught a big fish to fry for cookie stuffing.
This ebay stuff is getting out of hand. I think it’s about time they either gave the program back to CJ or just close it all together.
yea, they ban my account in epn but thats ok — I will use amazon from now on.
It has since been implemented in most other blogging tools.. but spam is big deal from blogger
A European here…
Please don’t stereotype Europeans…
I am an active E bay buyer and pissed off affiliate who got the termination email today.
But have never heard ebay described as a junkyard or flea market by everyone in Europe…lol
Sorry to hear you were banned but in regards to your reply to Giovnni’s comment, it’s not just Europeans that see eBay as an online flea market, most Americans see it as a flea market as well.
btw, I’m first generation American of European descent and nobody in my family would ever buy or sell on eBay.
btw, Zen Archery, have you tried signing up to PepperJam? They also have the eBay affiliate program. It’s just an alternative.
I was wiped out also, is the post 13 for real, do some users really get the ir accounts back, I was not banned, my account was closed.
Speaking of amazon, amazon sucks, they have 1 day cookie, i never earned any money from them
@seola, I think only a few people actually were able to recover their accounts from EPN. It’s wortha try if you’re earning well with it.
Of course, there’s alway PepperJam as an alternative to use the eBay affiliate program. However, even the PJN side has been getting ugly with PJN rep Mandy Foley sending a generic warning email (in a gif not text so it can’t easily be copy/pasted) to all PJN publishers.
Honestly, I’m a little sick and tired of eBay and EPN harping on all us legitimate publishers because of a few bad apples. They’ve lost my traffic.
Also, Amazon doesn’t suck. I used to think that but my Amazon earnings are 10x my eBay earnings since I started pulling eBay links off my sites.
Don’t want to be the one who told you so here, but when ebay left CJ, I told everyone that they are gonna get your commissions from you and you won’t even know it.
If you google “Skip McGrath,” he has a blog that’s targeted toward eBay sellers and his online newsletter has a “niche of the month” section. I often use his blog as a starting point to research new niches.
Oh dear, I was going to start using BANS to make a few sites but now I see this and I’m not going to touch anything affiliated with eBay.
Hi,
I am Steve Hartman and I am in charge of the eBay Partner Network. I understand that there have been many people that feel they were unjustly expired but rest assured that I am willing to discuss any issues with any affiliate, current or former. My door is always open and I am always willing to entertain new ideas.
You can contact me directly at 408-623-0195 or I can also be reached at 408-250-8402. If you prefer to communicate your thoughts and ideas about how to make ePN a better program you can email me at: shartman@ebay.com and please CC to: csme@ebay.com
I believe in the free and open exchange of ideas so with that said, I am willing to entertain both positive and negative comments.
Thanks
Steve Hartman