This forum used to be full of eBay affiliates, but it seems like everyone has either given up, or disappeared. Just wondering if there's anyone still (successfully) using EPN/eBay?
YES. still here. epn working very well on my one good site. I had around 12 bans sites but g deindexed all of them so they have all slowly died. my one good site (original one and also my hobby/passion) despite loads of good and unique content was also taken out of google, as it used to be pr4 I get a lot of good traffic from inbound links and also a LOT of traffic from yahoo. successful is relative but I am happy with high xxx per month and now slowly, slowly increasing with msn traffic. gud ernets I think google killed off a LOT of bans sites, certainly judging by my experience and also comments in other forums. PS I love your T shirts
I made around $65 from ebay back in Dec 08 from one of my sites but since then the traffic slowed down to that site. They paid me fine.
Yeah, I do OK from EPN, but as someone else pointed out you have to be a bit more imaginative these days, you can't just rinse and repeat BANS sites, Google deindexes most of them, though strangely I have a couple which continue to get traffic. Yahoo still likes some of them though. The other issue is that EPN seems to have been pretty fickle - cancelling a lot of people from the program, which doesn't do much for our confidence. However, at the moment I am still very much promoting eBay products using my WordBay plugin, as are a great number of other people. Right know I would say it IS worth it - there are people out there selling some very high-ticket items and making good money.
I make a few bucks every month from EPN. I too had a site deindexed for no apparent reason. It was a reverse search ebay type site. I notice now that Google puts affiliate links in the middle of many search results. Looks like they are trying to grab attention away from the organic search in order to get everyone to pay for those hot spots on search returns. What happened to their do no harm thing.
Does anybody observers lowering of winning bids from about last 10 days? I have a little problem. From March 6 I lost ALL winning bids from my 2 most earning sites. I see clicks, I see that traffic is not changed essentially but.. there are no earnings Base traffic goes from Yahoo.
I think most EPN affiliates get these kinds of weird fluctuation - sceptics will say that there is still something wrong with EPN tracking. I dunno - there are all sorts of things that could influence this, from complete randomness to the weather - really can't be sure. I guess I still look at my overall earnings from EPN and think, OK, this is still worth doing.
I read about Cookie Stuffing.. I start to think that my visitors (CRU) will influented by some bad people with their cookies.. so I see clicks on lots in my log.. but I didn't see any winning bid... It is strange.
I dunno, I really can't figure it out - I had a period of very low clicks about a week ago and now that is being reflected in a complete sales flat-line. Last couple of days I had a big spike (400% increase!) in clicks and expect some sort of corresponding increase in sales in a few days more when bids start coming in. But I can't make any sense of it - the clicks are coming from a wide range of sites, so how they can be fluctuating so much I don't know... I don't think cookie-stuffing is SO widespread that it would affect sales this much.
Still alive and kicking with eBay/EPN I don't have a BANS site - just designed it from scratch... Nick
A friend of mine has a site that would have been great for the EPN promoting iPod Touch, but he was declined membership by eBay. This surprised us both. I read recently somewhere that eBay isn't taking on new affiliates. Is it a fact? I'm in the network, and trying to ramp it up now because so many people have been saying it's so great. We'll see.
I do well with EPN, my wife recently applied, but got knocked back - with my sites etc. No reason given.
Yes, looks like they are trying to reduce the number of affiliates and increase the quality of traffic. So they are axing some existing affiliates and refusing new ones by the looks of it. Probably cost-cutting, trying to get a better return on all those affiliate commissions... Unfortunate if you want to get in on EPN though, looks like finding some other program is a better bet right now.
I wish we knew. I think probably the ACRU quality rating must have something to do with it. Also it looks like some people may have been caught out by buying up old domains that may previously have been associated with a banned EPN account. I guess there must also be a fair number of people whingeing about being axed but not coming clean about what they were actually up to. Seems to me eBay are basically looking for value, i.e. as much return on those commission payments as possible. In that regard I sometimes wonder if they are at all keen on niche sites that essentially "steal" niche keywords that eBay previously ranked highly for and was getting the traffic for anyway. I suppose they want us to send them new customers, or send old ones they'd lost, and then get lost! I mean, I would...