ePN - One month later

[Dude-Dastic]

Well, it's been exactly one month to the day since I made the "mandatory" switch from CJ to the ePN. So how did things go with me, you ask?

After averaging almost $250/month for the past two years, this month's earnings are a whopping $37 :o . That's certainly nothing to shout about.

I'd like to know how your first month with ePN went. Surely it couldn't have gone worse than mine did.

[webwork]

I think it's been pretty much the same. Are your clicks coming in on average about the same as well? Have you doublechecked everything to make sure you got installation done correctly?

[Dude-Dastic]

Clicks are coming in better than average. I've checked to make sure that all is working correctly. Still, commissions and ACRUs have tanked. :(

[hanji]

I made $1800 in March (CJ). I made a combined total of $700 for April.. that's CJ and ePN combined, since cookies overlapped, etc. So I'm more than half down overall. Interesting points to consider.
- Google Adsense was down as well (worst month I've had in almost a year)
- Yahoo (YSM) PPC clicks were down. This was my cheapest month in a long time.
- No ACRUs in CJ or ePN.. which is extremely unusual

I have a feeling it was a really bad month with taxes, etc. Combined with the fact that I think ACRU reporting is borked. I have a feeling that ePN will come around and we'll get a "make good" on ACRUs... and possibly on winning bids.. not sure.

With the extension, I'm not going to migrate back to CJ, since I think that's part of the problem (cookie transition). I will be pushing the remainder of my sites to ePN this week, and I'll be fully migrated.

It sucks.. but it has to get better.. right? Maybe I'm dreaming.

hanji

[decodethis]

I switched sites over in phases starting April 1. All told when I added up the residual CJ and new EPN for April it came up to be about the same as March for me. My ACRUs dropped by 80%, but my daily sales rose to match the loss. We'll see how things go for May without eBay chipping in 5%, and hopefully a return of ACRUs.

[Crazace2006]

I cannot give an accurate report since I gave my whole site a major facelift. However it seems that everything is down across the board. I another thing besides taxes that you may want to take into mind is almost everyone with a Xbox 360 or PS3 are spending all their free time playing Grand Theft Auto 4. I noticed traffic was a little bit weaker this week than normal.

[squeezeplaycards]

When I combine CJ and EPN I end up with April being down just under 50% for me. All of my other programs except for two were down as well.

Sad to say I am hoping it was more the economy than issues with EPN that effected earnings.

[potentmix]

I switched sites over in phases starting April 1. All told when I added up the residual CJ and new EPN for April it came up to be about the same as March for me. My ACRUs dropped by 80%, but my daily sales rose to match the loss. We'll see how things go for May without eBay chipping in 5%, and hopefully a return of ACRUs.

I had sort of the opposite for April with EPN. My ACRUs rose significantly, but sales fell somewhat so that I also roughly matched March.

Regarding the economy, could there be any substance to the notion that cash strapped consumers may start examining eBay more closely looking for bargains?

[DonMecca]

I had sort of the opposite for April with EPN. My ACRUs rose significantly, but sales fell somewhat so that I also roughly matched March.

Regarding the economy, could there be any substance to the notion that cash strapped consumers may start examining eBay more closely looking for bargains?

ALso in the U.S. those cheques from the government have just started hitting peoples bank accounts and they should start to spend them soon. So we'll see what happens.

[squeezeplaycards]

Regarding the economy, could there be any substance to the notion that cash strapped consumers may start examining eBay more closely looking for bargains?

I think the effect could be mixed. Yes, people will turn to Ebay to try and save some money. One of the news channels did a piece on this a few days ago. Also, you will have more people trying to sell things on Ebay in an effort to make money. Great for Ebay in revenue but more sellers brings down the prices so you could have some effect on final value fees on some items.

Anyway, I think it will be better for Ebay affiliates as people try to shop online to save money. Long tail search will be good for those affiliates offering items that people are looking for.

[mberman84]

I was making about $600/month with CJ...i have now made $5 in the past two weeks with EPN but my clicks are actually UP!!! I HATE ebay...ive emailed them so many times with no response. time to drop them

[potentmix]

Hmm... Looks like eBay hates you too. In my case, most merchants hate me. But eBay, for some reason, has shown me a lot of love, and continues doing so even after the change over.

[quaffapint]

There seems to be (at least) two problems with EPN from what the forums say...

1. The search engine clicks aren't filtered out, so thats why peoples clicks are going up.
2. The ACRU cookie is getting cleared by many end-users when they close there browser and not tracked the same way CJ tracked them.

...So far there hasn't been a lot of sympathy from ebay, which is quite concerning, as it makes one wonder how much they care and how much interest they having in fixing these 'issues'.

[mcmuney]

Overall, I'm also noticing a big drop in my numbers with EPN. I've converted most of my sites over to EPN, but have my main earners still with CJ. I'll probably convert those around the 20th of May. In April, I earned $1818 with CJ and $70 with EPN. On CJ, the sites that I converted to EPN would've earned at least $300. $300 vs $70, that's a 77% drop. That's very concerning.

[Dude-Dastic]

A big thanks to all who responded to this post. You all have given me lots to think about.

Is the economy responsible for the decline in earnings? Maybe. Is eBay's new program the culprit in that it has some serious flaws? That could be it. It may be a combination of the two.

Like someone mentioned earlier, I won't be migrating my sites back to CJ during the month of May. I'm gonna stick with ePN for now and hope for the best. But if things don't go well with me, I just might fork over that $200 and get a couple feeds from alternative merchants. That might boost my earnings.

[nosleepno]

I made around $600 in march on CJ, and $989 in april on EPN.

Yay!

For some reason I didn't get a single ACRU the whole time I have promoted eBay via CJ (about 3 months), but in april with EPN I got 5 acru and 8 CRU.

[baygrafix]

My sites showed about a 50 % drop in april for ebay,including CJ. I moved them about the first week . Clicks were up,ACRUS were up.
In fairness, I was G-slapped on some of my sites so traffic was down.
i feel ok with the change, but waiting to see how they handle problems when they arise,and how responsive they are to our suggestions to improve things-such as log-in.(Or log-in stay-in....lol)

[webwork]

My sites have been earning normally. For this month of may I have 12 sales, 3 ACRUs. Average about 200-300 clicks a day.

[Trisha]

My earnings have gone up with CJ but they are well down with ebay. The ACRUS are not being tracked either. There appears to be a flaw somewhere but ebay doesn't seem to want to fix it.

[mcmuney]

I've successfully transfered over all of my sites. My daily average for all of my sites was about $65 on CJ. My May YTD earnings as of right now is $17 (I didn't have a single day in April with on CJ that earned less than $20). I've also noticed a significant drop with the number of clicks as well. I guess not much we can do at this point.

[GunJunkie]

My earnings went down in total, I added more sites and it bought the levels back up again.

Previously I was earning more under cj per site. I am not sure what changed.

[Trisha]

I've emailed ebay about one specific case that didn't track. The user registered with ebay through my website and confirmed registration. A few days later he bought an item through my website. None of this has tracked. The only response I've had from ebay is a definition of an ACRU. I suspect they won't reply to any further emails.
Update: They have now replied but they've passed my email on to a different team.

[dan208]

My sales for March was $125, and then April was about $100 which about half of it was through EPN. I started epn April 14th, so it seemed about right, but my problem is I had over 10 ACRU leads which usually convert to sales at a good percentage. I usually have 2-3 ACRUs/month. Last month only 1, and all the ACRU's from CJ never converted, hmmm...

And then, how do you track ACRU's on epn. I haven't seen any and all the sudden, nearly 20 days later, not one conversion.

I've also noticed this month I've only made $6 with the same amount of clicks as usual. Less than $1/day compared to $3-5/day seems to show me problems. Can we still do the eBay affiliate program with someone else besides CJ or epn?

[markn26]

And then, how do you track ACRU's on epn. I haven't seen any and all the sudden, nearly 20 days later, not one conversion.

same here..and we're not the only ones. They f'ed up somewhere. And I cringe at how many hundreds of dollars I've lost because of it.