Why EPN is dying

I used to like EPN from the early days for making some good revenue and driving customers to Ebay, but since the new EPN was introduced it has gone downhill badly.
I have been in sales / commision work for most of my life and understand that a salesman needs to know how much he can earn, but EPN does not let you do that.
From one day to the next your earnings can rise and drop and you just dont know where you stand...
For instance, one day i had 80 clicks, low but was on 15p per click, the next day after a lot of hard work i had over 300 click but then my rate was dropped to 3p a click, no explanation, nothing...the forum is full of people complaining, you never get any response to the so called people in charge, just a standard email, what a way to run a business.
A salesman needs to know what he is capale of earning, Amazon is at the moment for me, 5%...so if i promote something for £500 and it sells i get 5% of that...simple...
On Epn we have no idea, the algorythm used would baffle Einstien, they dont explain it or try to help explain it.
I have now started changing my affilate websites that used to promote Ebay to Amazon, at least i know where i stand with them although not perfect at least they care about the affiliates.
If anyone has an opposite view about Epn, i would love to hear, how and why.

 

You're giving the wanks at EPN too much credit. Their algorithm may be clever but that's not what it's about. It's about screwing affiliates behind a shield of fuzzy algorithm talk. ebay has Amazon penis envy. They are trying to get rid of all the stuff that made ebay great in a dim witted attempt to become a straight retailer. EPN is just a complicating appendage. I recommend moving on and putting your efforts into another affiliate program.

 

the ePN can be fickle and will delete you without warning. In my opinion it's not BANS you need to worry about, it's ePN. Your story about the lady who got dropped without being paid, is not uncommon. Plus there is no discussion on the matter either. If they say you're out, you're out and they'll keep your money.

Honestly, the fact that you haven't been accepted is probably a blessing in disguise. Put your effort into something you have more control over. If you are using ebay feeds/API to pull their product data and earn commissions with ePN, you are relying quite heavily on one company. I don't know, maybe you have other sites too, but ePN is really not something you can afford to put all your eggs in one basket with. This is true of any company really, but it is more of a risk with ebay, that has a questionable track record.

If you need to, use it for pocket money. I wouldn't advise anyone to build an income with ePN that they actually depend on.

 

Yeah - it's a joke.

259 clicks = $1.04 earnings

 

You can thank some of the scammers on this very forum for EPN being taken away form CJ. That's right, I said it. Not only was the owner of the forum stuffing cookies, but there were forum members who were selling bogus acrus and ripping eBay off. As a result, everybody on the program suffered.

So thank your fellow forum members for the current state of EPN.

 

I was thinking about joining ebay affiliate today, but sounds like they are FOS now. I am doing well with CJ and Adsense. I was thinking about expanding. I just signed up to linkshare and will probably try Amazon (though I am not impressed with their 5%). My affiliates on CJ pay 6%.

 

You hit the problem right on the head geomark... throw the affiliates a few cents while they collect all the money and you do all the work!

 

I agree with most of what's been said, and can't really defend the EPN system's lack of transparency, but you do have to bear in mind that eBay were stung for literally MILLIONS by fraudsters back before they left CJ. The program was incredibly easy to game, I mean come on, giving away $25 just for someone to sign up and place a bid..?! But now they seem to have gone the other way and are over-strict (I was banned for several months, despite no wrongdoing other than possibly carelessness, so I know), and the lack of transparency is presumably their way of foiling fraud, but makes it very difficult and frustrating to promote EPN actively. However, having said all that, I still personally find it easier to earn with EPN than any other program - for me niche sites built around RSS listings work great and I like the steady stream of income that comes in from each click. Bit like AdSense on speed.

 

Still have 3 sites on EPN. The amount paid for clicks on all 3 is the same amount. This basically carries over month to month never changing. 2 sites have high ticket items but pay no more than the other lower priced item site.

 

That's mostly true for me, except that when I do sell a big-ticket item (not that often, I must admit, though I've had a few biggies), my EPC shoots up crazily for a few days and then gradually drops again. To me that just boils down to pretty much the same as actually just getting the commission you would have done for selling that item under the old system, but in a roundabout (not so transparent) way.

 

I'm baffled by the lack of transparency now. It seems like I'm getting commissions on sales and yet they show it as .11-16/click. I'm wondering if I had a 1.10 commission on one sale and then 9 people who never bought, which averages .11/click?

Very odd.

 

I like having numbers and actual data when marketing something. It makes it damn hard to work on specific keywords/niches when you aren't 100% what sold based on x amount of people to show the commission breakdown.

I do also miss the acrus, awe remember getting an extra 28+ per sign up. Miss getting 20 or more in a month and actually smiling. EPN doesn't get me smiling much these days but it still is an extra income source. I am about to move my epn niches to adsense and cpa network products and see which makes more.

 

I don't understand why they changed their comission model at all. Surely it makes SENSE to pay affiliates per sale? Surely it's more incentive for users to promote eBay more if you're getting paid per sale?

My earnings dropped by about 80% when quality click pricing was introduced. Then when I had a spike in traffic, I had 0 comissions for around 6 days when they were apparently "Adjusting" my cost per click relative to my traffic spike. When it has been recalculated, the CPC dropped down yet again.

They're fabricating this "quality click pricing" model that noone actually understands or knows how it works in order to screw over their affiliates. A once fantastic affiliate program, ruined.

 

EPN is paying you to refer people with incremental value. That is, they don't necessarily want people who make a purchase, but instead, they want people who come back to make more purchases, or set up their own store, or sign up for PayPal.

If you're earnings have dropped it's because the clicks you're sending aren't worth beans. If you have people clicking an EPN link, and then spending just 10 seconds looking at a product, and then going away, your EPC will steadily decrease until you finally give up and go away. And EPN doesn't mind you going away. They don't want to waste their bandwidth and CPC on that kind of traffic.

You might have a website with a focused audience, but that audience might not be serious about making purchases. They might be interested in digital cameras, for example, but they're not hardcore digital camera enthusiasts who trust what you say, and buy the products you write about. That's what eBay wants.

In March 2009, eBay published a document that outlines what they're looking for in an affiliate marketer. It'll give you a good insight on which affliliates they reward, and which ones they kick out of their program...

http://www.semj.org/documents/SEMJ_ebay_vol2.pdf