New pricing structure for Active Confirmed Registered User (ACRU) compensation

Just got this email. EPN makes life harder for publishers.

 

Well, it'll certainly make life harder for folks sending bogus ACRU signups.

EPN will be able, after a few months, to look back and see whether your new eBayers actually became real customers, or were one time, minimum bid registrants who never returned. We'll all find out, over time, whether EPN loves us or hates us.

I expect there will be a large $1 ACRU contingent that will squeal like stuck pigs about how unfair the partner program has become.This will be controversial to say the least.

BTW, could someone please define a $50 ACRU? I'd like to know right now.

 

Heh, that'll put a crimp in some people's style. Frankly I see it as a good change, but we'll have to wait and see how it works in practice. EPN doesn't have a great track record with tracking so far.

 

eBays program used to be so perfect on CJ, whyd they have to take over and start screwing everything up. I can't even find their definition of "quality". Just gives them more room to screw with us and say oh your quality sucks, sorry.

 

Nothing new. They're already terminating site owners who send crappy traffic. If you're sending bogus traffic, you already know it. Quality traffic consistently comes from quality sites. Simple. No?

 

This is going to be great - quality payout for quality traffic. But it is sure going to throw a monkey wretch in the business models of EPN arbitrators like auctionads and pepperjam. But maybe that is the point.

 

My guess will be that all the ACRUs from you win at least 100 auctions per month.

 

Is it going to be based on the value of items purchased? Or is it going to be based on the number of times an initially registered person makes a purchse from eBay?

 

I expect the definition of "lifetime value" to rest in the eye of the EPN beholder. Don't hold out any hopes for transparency. Those who've been around the affiliate space for a while already know what makes up a quality affiliate site. Those who've been sending bogus traffic, already know what isn't a quality affiliate site.

I don't think there really is going to be much mystery about this as long as you concentrate on adding freight trains full of useful and unique content to your sites, and get good quality backlinks. Do that and you'll be good to go.

Build sites that only run the EPN API without any added value, and you'll be out of business. Pretty clear, huh?

 

I doubt it would be on the value purchased. Most likely on the activity of the users referred. Probably with prefernce given to users who do and complete a listing as a seller

affiliates with quality traffic needn't worry - I can only see good things coming of this. Those with dubious traffic or aggregating traffic from others will probably get slammed.

 

One thing is for sure.... Change is always a constant with EPN.

 

Keep this in mind. If you've been with EPN for a while, they already have the necessary data to evaluate whatever "quality" you're bringing to the table. If you had 20 ACRUs last January, they have all of the metrics needed to assess what those customers have done in the intevening months to eBay's benefit. Come November, you'll find out pretty quickly, IMO, how EPN is judging your site(s) performance.

One of the problems that could arise is whether one "bad apple" site in your menagerie of sites could spoil your whole empire. That's what happens with Smart Pricing in Google's AdSense program. So, this can get tricky, very tricky. It's probably time to take stock of your sites with a view to doing some muscle building for the weaker ones.

 

if you send decent converting traffic to EPN they you have nothing to worry about, if on the other hand you can playing dirty then you have something to worry about. Its as simple as that!

This will benefit people who are playing the game right and will punish the people who arnt.

 

This could also be a problem for those that use Adwords.

For example, I have good sites, lots of unique content that get great organic traffic.

However, I also like to use PPC to garner even more traffic. For the longest time, on some of the sites, Google gave great quality scores with .01 bids, then this last go around they didn't like it anymore.

So, I have a template I used to test a niche and posted that template to another domain for the slapped sites and the again get great bids. The only difference, is the templated sites do not have the rich content like the slapped sites.

The traffic is targeted so as long as they only go by the Quality of Traffic and don't go down the road of starting to place quality scores on sites, it should be OK.

If they do, that will throw a monkey wrench into the works for those who use adword blasting to find a good niche to work with so you don't waste your time building a great site only to get 10 visitors a month.

This could go either way as far as being a plus or a minus.

 

This is going to make my friend cry. He is frustrated as it is with EPN. I told him to quit screwing around with eBay and learn programming and start his own damn serious business. Epn is way unstable. Today you are happy, tomorrow they'll screw your entire business.

 

The big questions is what does EPN mean by quality traffic.

I don't think it will be the quality of your website(s) that are the issue, (good content , visitor value, etc.). I believe it will be the quality of eBay activity that the traffic you send to eBay does, that matters.

If you send traffic that bids regularly or become sellers over time, then you should get high marks. So "one-time/low bid farms" will be punished, while the traffic of new eBayers or eBayers motivated by visiting your niche should be rewarded.

 

Not to ruin the thread, but this was already posted: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=959990

 

Yeah, and this one has more posts. Who cares?

 

^^ Because technically speaking, its old news that many people would've probably knew already. Imagine somebody posting two or three posts about "CJ raising payout minimums" ... its a waste of time. I could fucking care less whether this one has more posts. But I was just saying that this was already posted up 2 hours AFTER the initial email went out. Like I said, I don't give a damn but why post up a second topic if it was already up. That's not doing anything but wasting space and duplicating the process...

 

id like to be refunded on my time reading your post.