Please read my post here and also this one if you want a second opinion. EPN members not updating WordBay, BANS, phpBay, and probably some others, will face termination of their EPN accounts by June 8th!! Check with the writer of the script you are using to see if they have put out a fix. There have been changes before which have resulted in lost sales until script writers made changes to their software. This is now more serious, you could lose your EPN account altogether through inaction!!
I'm using the Short URL plugin for Wordpress which has this issue of using 302 redirects. Anybody else use that or have a fix?
I don't know anything about this plugin - you are using it to redirect eBay links, you mean? If so, yes, there would be a problem - I had a look in the plugin and found a line in the u.php file that reads: header("Location: $site_redirect"); PHP: You would need to change that to read: header("Location: $site_redirect",TRUE,301); PHP: Then you should be fine. I hate to think how many people are going to get caught out by this. Yet another way for EPN to axe a load of affiliates...
Yeah, I found the solution after a little study - using the change you listed. Thanks for confirming. EPN so sucks ass. The utter arrogance of shitting on their affiliates time after time. BTW, what is up with DP? Since the recent changes it won't keep me logged in. Even just clicking to a different forum I'm not logged in anymore.
phpBay has been updated for this change, just download the latest files and you're good to go. I gotta say that the developer of phpBay really stays on top of things like this. There's a fix on the BANS forum that was posted by a user since it's apparently no longer supported by the developers. I think it's bullshit that EPN dropped this on us like this. They're a textbook example of how NOT to run an affiliate program.
If they follow through with the threat then it's also going to be a textbook example of how to axe probably hundreds or thousands of pesky affiliates. Really can't see where it's all going from a business point of view, but I think I am pretty much done with EPN...
And they have zero integrity or credibility. Have you read their blog? They won't publish comments unless they are kiss ass. I've made a few pointed but fair comments and they were held in moderation never published. I wonder if the reps there have any fear of attending industry events, because they deserve an ass kicking.
What about BANS? Was a patch ever released? I haven't heard from them in ages, after they sold out to some other company...I have like 7 BANS sites that are very active.
As stupid as this will sound, I can't even find the forum. That site really went to hell in the past year or two. I even did a Google search for "build a niche store forum" and got a page that said that it will be back in August 2008.
Can anyone send me BANS patch or upload it to anywhere as BANS users are really facing problem due to this change. We can't find the forum as well on BANS site. Thanks in advance.
The forum moved to www.nichesitebuilding.com/forum/index.php - you can find the thread under the "ePN" section, there's a sticky post there that has a link to the fix.
I took the EPN pages off of all of my sites as well as Amazon. Neither one pays enough to make it worthwhile in my opinion... especially when dealing with them is such a pain and EPN in particular.
Smart. I got rid of EPN a while ago on most of my sites, just a couple left that have been providing moderate level of maintenance free income. I'll be damned if I'm going back in to make changes to please those scum bags. Any changes will be to rip out EPN and replace with something else. I've been dabbling recently in data feed sites and it's not very difficult to get some good looking results. F* ebay.
Oh.. and btw.. I think eBay is focusing more on their store owners now. I suspect they looked at the numbers and found that the little guy wasn't bringing them enough money. Once you've gone public with a company the focus shifts to the shareholders and the bottom line and they no longer care much about people.. whether that be customers or affiliates. They seem to be coddling established powersellers these days and trying to attract more of those rather than casual sellers or affiliates.
I don't have a rec for a script, sorry. I'm not much of a coder but have managed to piece together some php that gets the job done. Add a little css and the results look pretty good. I'm not using it on Wordpress sites, just plain old html/css sites. If you can code at all I recommend wrestling with it to get it working yourself. After you get the first one working it's pretty easy to copy/paste/tweak to add more products/merchants, at least from the same network where the feed format is consistent.
Easiest way would be to find an affiliate network or program that provides ordinary RSS feeds. Then you can just use one of the WordPress RSS plugins that are out there to display the results. However, most networks don't provide RSS, it's too limited, they either have an API (a web service), which you access yourself and display the data in whatever form you choose, or they supply a daily or weekly delimited file which you have to download, import and display data from. Either way requires quite a bit more programming knowledge... There are also (paid) services out there that aggregate product data from affiliate networks and provide it in RSS form, so that's something to think about, though most of us want something for nothing, right...