eBay - Low Quality Expiration - DC10

I got the following notice from what appears to be Ebay.com today:

Anyone else receive a similar notice? I am surprised as I have generated several nice sales for Ebay this month. Which I believe total well over $1000. I started the month with 20+ clicks a day @ .14 based probably based on a $475 sale of an antique china cabinet. My QPC did drop over the month to a low of .01 but had increased 2 days in a row based on several sales. The last day I could view the QPC for (Saturday I believe) I had 3 sales totaling over $400. Over the month I worked hard to get my clicks up to averaging 60+ for the last several days.

My antique furniture website is targeted toward creating customers for our live North Georgia antique auctions. Which is a bricks and mortar type auction house. So I doubt that these customers would be considered "low quality traffic".

Email I received also states:

While I considered Ebay's antique furniture listing an enhancement to my website. The amount of effort I put into earning $50 for the month of October is pretty much a joke. I guess in the future I will be directing what Ebay.com considers "low quality traffic" toward Amazon.com!

 

Thats too bad....

Unfortunately, I somehow don't think that you will be on your own as ebay continues its culling.

It would be nice to know how they arrive at these "metrics" that are being used to measure ones quality.....

good luck with Amazon

 

Thanks! In doing further research it appears that the culling of Ebay affiliates has been going on for quite a while. Sadly I would have been quite willing to make changes to try and improve the "metrics". If I knew what the requirements were or had been given a warning. Most of my traffic was related to the sale of antique furniture. A business that has been hurt QUITE a bit because of the economy! However when a furniture sale is made online it is often for at least a couple hundred dollars. Amazing that in this economy that an online auction company would reject additional sales leads for their auction consigners on the basis of "low quality traffic"!

 

There's nothing on CJ that you could use instead of Amazon?

Amazon has some pretty poor commission percentages.

 

I got the EPN ban hammer for "cookie stuffing" which I definitely wasn't doing but its been a week and they still haven't responded to my email. I converted my higher traffic sites to Amazon over the weekend and made a $600 sale yesterday so there is hope.

Amazon has the lame 24 hour cookie and low commission but on the other hand they have the widest range of products and it converts well because people are familiar with Amazon. I agree that it isn't the best for everything though, for some of my specialty shops I will probably use CJ merchants.

In other news eBay is at a 5 year low for traffic, great time for the geniuses to shaft their affiliate "partners"!
http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y09/m10/i19/s01

 

Those are some telling stats Dreamerr. The idiots at ebay have been at it for a while, driving their business into the ground with crappy treatment of sellers (eliminating buyer feedback), buyers (only Paypal for payments) and now affiliates (queer click pricing).

I've been considering Amazon but yeah, their cookie and commission rate suck so bad. They are a last resort for me but I might try them on the last few spots where I still have EPN.

 

I'm curious as to whether Ebay contacted you prior to terminating your account. They are supposed to contacted partners with low click rates (as a form of warning) and provide constructive suggestions as to how to improve the quality of your traffic BEFORE terminating someone's account.

If they're going to terminate people's account without any warning then that's scarey !

On another note, you have a nice site but I can see why you're not getting many clicks. All of your content is too general. You're selling antique furniture and have divided your site into categories for bedroom, dining room etc but the content for your "bedroom" category is a long article about the "history of the bedroom". You should be targetting keywords containing the word "antique" or "antique furniture". Even these keywords are probably too competitive to get any visitors so a niche within the antique furniture sector would probably have helped you more.

 

Unfortunately not only eBay - many similar companies terminate your account without any warning. It's not just scary - it is unprofessional as well.

 

I've had CJ affliates terminate accounts but then keep the links up so they can cut me out and still profit from my traffic.

eBay is going to H&^% for affiliate opportunities. Playing the Adsense we will pay you whatever we want game.

Amazon will benefit, but not so much for affiliates because the 24 hour cookie is a real killer.

 

the evil empire strikes again...smh

 

I don't understand what eBay has to gain from this, other than profiting off sales from unchanged links. Most savvy publishers have figured out ways to switch links rather quickly, so it seems like they'd only be getting a small percentage of the traffic that a particular site was sending them. If I send eBay a visitor and they don't buy anything, what is that really costing them? A fraction of a cent for bandwidth? I can see why they'd want to cull people who are trying to cheat them, but judging low quality traffic is a different story. As the OP noted, someone who targets high-priced goods will probably have a very low conversion rate except on the rare occasions when they make a huge sale. That doesn't mean the traffic is poor, just that it's different from someone who sends a lot of visitors who each buy $2 items.

 

That would be me.

There is a LOT to be afraid of. Visit ePN's forums - there are several posts of people who get banned. It still happens every day - it doesn't happen in waves. I was banned a couple years ago and was "lucky" to get back in.

My average EPC is 0.02 to 0.03. My first month of QCP was amazing - I made 55% more than usual. The month later, it tanked like a rock. Now I'm extremely afraid. I make about $2500/mo off of ePN. If I ever got banned, I am f***ed. None of the other affiliate programs even come CLOSE to what I make with ePN. They are ban happy and there is no rhyme or reason as to when or why they will do it. No forewarning either...that whole thing of them auditing you before banning you is BS. That simply doesn't happen. You just get banned, with a generic letter, and that's the end of the story.

 

I don't make as much as you, but I am with you on the fear. I am making some more baskets for my eggs as quick as I can - probably Amazon and CJ are the closest. But I also doubt I can reach the sales I am now with EPN...

 

I think the next step up from here is dropshipping. However, it is going to require a hell of a lot more time since you will have to do customer service. It really sucks if you have a full time job and have to do this as your 2nd job (which most if not all of us do)

 

Yeah, I'm definitely not getting into that, that's the whole point of affiliate marketing, not having to provide full-time customer support - just set it up and let it run, with relatively low maintenance. If we were able to get into proper retail kind of business I guess we wouldn't be in aff. marketing.