On August 20th eBay evidently eBay dumped a ton of affilaites from their partner network. I have atleast 50 emails asking me what is going on with it.
Here is the state of my relationship with eBay.
1) Everyone I was close to when we had AuctionAds is no longer with the eBay Affiliate team.
2) The people that are their now do not return my emails or give me a “no comment”. I am no longer useful to them I guess 
.
Anyway I am curious were you one of the several thousands of affiliates that were dumped? What site did you have?
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Give them high quality traffic and they will pay, for sure.
I was dumped yesterday for the ‘quality’ of traffic I was driving. I was on EPN for exactlly 27 days, generated over $9000 in sales, 27 ACRUs… my commission was less than $900 toal for all that, and to top it off…they dumped me, and said I could never rejoin! Gonna start up own auction site now.. forget ebay!
I was dumped, without notice, or even an email. Earnings gone
Anyone want to sell me their account that they’re not using?
I dont like ebay much.I only use ebay’s paypal
I dont think I have been dumped but I rarely logon to the site.
i’m still in and i make nothing hardly off the site i have it on
I am using eBay onces a month and … I don’t know
Yep I was dropped like a bad habit lol
I am still on for now, Let’s see what happens in round 4
Not dumped yet. LOL.
I was thinking of starting a BANS. Is this not a good thing to do now?
Wondering the same thing….
eBay’s affiliate program was created to make THEM (not you) money. Everybody whining because they got kicked needs to keep this in mind. If ebay’s long term strategy says “yes, we may make a few bucks off their traffic initially but in the long term it costs us money” then I think they were very wise to do this.
Now, I think their execution is shoddy as hell. If they wanted to boost quality of traffic, they should be more specific around what they consider quality traffic. People who want to continue to make money with them would have adjusted their sites to drive the appropriate traffic and then its win/win for everybody.
It seems like this market is about to be turned inside out by the affiliates and put back together, either that or those not left out in the cold will be left to try and reap the harvest of a lifetime.
I was dumped, and am in the process of merging CJ/PJ/Linkshare affiliates into my sites. I’ll leave some of the eBay ads on my pages, just for the nice keywords they add for the search engines.
any approximation on the number of people that were dumped or expired?
Another reason to always ensure you diversify your income streams…
IMHO – just the next round of dumps
I actually think that this is very wise on the part of eBay. Their profits are sinking, and if they’re going to continue to offer true value to advertisers they really need to trim the fat that they’ve recklessly accumulated.
Ah… the infamous eBay. The stock sits at $15 a share and soon it will be a day traders paradise as the reaches new lows. They recently had to borrow $1 billion dollars just to keep things afloat. Along with the fall of the U.S. economy, eBay will not go unscathed. This is the real reason why the affiliate program is crashing and burning. If there are “puts” on eBay stock…I would be a buyer as the stock will go lower. The only thing going for them is PayPal. As the high priced internet stocks came and went so will the rise and fall of the eBay empire.
i haven’t got kicked off yet, but i guess i need to recheck what’s happening out there.
Dumped. Felt like a kick in the gut since I am a white hat SEO doing all the things they suggested. Serves me right for not diversifying more, I guess. Here is a good post by an experienced SEO on what probably happened to get to this conclusion:
http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?threadID=520002988&tstart=0&mod=1219592795235
I hope the EPN reps have to eat their hat.
Just want to say that BANS can be used for good or evil; I have used it to make good sites and not so good sites. It is really not too much different then Wordpress if you customize it.
I wasn’t aware of this! I’m still an ebay affiliate and I’m hardly referring anybody…
I own a marketing company in Houston and I was listed on affiliates.ebay.com as a success story in 2004 and have made many millions of dollars promoting eBay, inc sites in the US and Western Europe since 2002 via SEO and PPC.
Our revenue is down 55% and we have pulled the plug on eBay. Although Amazon was far inferior to the eBay CJ program, Amazon is far superior to the ePN. At this point I don’t think I would trust them with my traffic anyway. I have employees to pay and they have more or less screwed my company in order to raise their stock price in the short term. In essence, I don’t feel comfortable supporting the internet version of Enron.
I do thank eBay for making me so much money over the years, but like all things on the internet it had to be finished someday. It goes to show that building an internet empire is building an empire on quicksand.
the ebay affiliate program to me is a huge waste of time. so who cares
I just started two Bans shops, and I need time to build traffic, I hope they won’t ban me in the meantime.
I didn’t get kicked off… but this is disconcerting news! Someone needs to start an auction site to compete with eBay!
The affiliate who were so called ‘Expired’ on the 20th, will continue to get there existing commission and will also continue to earn commissions until the 27th. However access to there account will not be allowed. On the 27th, they would officially be off the eBay network. But these affiliate who were expired can expect payments around the 20th of next month provided they are above the payment threshold of $25.
Cheap used cars is right – it’s a hard capitalist world out there, everyones out to make money and while we all have rights, none of us have the ‘right’ to be an affiliate, its all about the money.
That is really bad for the people that were earning and were kicked off.
I think its about time the “insta-website” group gets told to shape up honestly, the net doesn’t need a bazillion MMO BANS sites does it?
I never even got around to signing up with them so no chance of me being dropped. Anyway, so what if Ebay dropped you? Plenty of other (better) programs out there.
Haven’t seen a macbook giveaway yet…
Well, this is the final straw for me. I’m TOTALLY done with eBay. They are completely crapping on their affiliates and have been since the move over in March/April. Honestly I’ve felt like I’ve been walking on eggshells wondering when I was going to get an email like this.
I’m not a bit surprised… I can tell you this – eBay will completely die off and a new competitor will take their place.
Sellers are pissed, buyers are pissed and affiliates are pissed at eBay. Is there anyone NOT pissed off at eBay?
me myself still have no lucky with aff .. need to learn a lot form all of you guys..
@ john – I guess that is pretty interesting… The only comment i read from someone who supposedly was dropped, was most likely a BS comment… So what has it… The forum says a community of Black Hatters so it sounds like a targeted move on eBay’s part instead of a random selection thing…
epn rocks for my blog
@Andrew and others – Affiliate marketing is about making money. Period. It is certainly not about “affiliare rights” and telling the world how we want to be treated. The fact of the matter is eBay is a great place to send all kinds of traffic, and if you are lacking a better place to send a click, eBay is perfect and converts at a high rate. You don’t like it, kick rocks. I am sure they won’t notice.
As for all that “support your fellow affilaites” bullshit, keep it up. I hope all of you quit the program so there is more money for me. You think eBay is going to change their program because of a few small time affiliates? The top 30 affiliates are all making above 200k / mo, you think they are just going to turn that off? You guys are high, but have fun holding hands and singing kumbaya.
i was dumped – i feel like such a cheap, used whore
I agree,There are tons of pissed off people because of this.All my sites were whitehat and I had an epc of about 13 or so.Ill take my traffic to someone else who will appreciate a super affiliate.I hope everyone at epn management gets herpes.
I wasn´t dropped but you never know… I do think this is a great opportunity for say iOffer to come in with their own affiliate program to drive traffic to their site (which seems to be growing very fast).
They (iOffer) should contact the guys behind BANS
Everyone who works as an affiliate marketer should exclude eBay links and affiliate links from their websites and ads. You should do this in the first place to support the affiliates who got kicked out, and second to tell eBay, and the rest of the world, that this is not how we want to be treated.
It is our responsibillity to protect the affiliate marketers rights and not letting the merchants use us as toys.
Wow…. lately all the posts I’ve read about EBay have been pretty horrendous. They have some serious damage control to do.
I do not worry much because my ACUR bid and bid again also I have high ratio of number of bids : ACUR more then 10:1
Frankly, I can not say anything about this matter. I did not have to deal with ebay. -(((
Ebay is quickly killing itself. Run away before it’s too late.
I am still here, and while I last I will TAKE as much cash from eBay as possible.
Just do what Auctiva does. It’s easy…
Do what Auctiva does? How do you mean?
It is against the terms and conditions now. It is called round tripping
Auctiva and many others were taking traffic from ebay, sending the traffic to their website, and then sending them back to ebay as their customers.
Auctiva was doing this for years…
Which kind mess for Ebay specially for the EPN…
@Le Melon : I’d say, this is one of ebay’s best years. Forget a downfall, if you look from an online business point of view, wherein you are having genuine sales, just imaging the tons of scam users and buyers that are going off their (ebay) systems…
i see this as rung of a ladder ebay has just started to climb!
see, the ebay partner network had earlier very generous comissions especially for the US program. Now what a large number of affiliates did was that they got themselves hooked onto stuff like hide-my-ip.com and managed to get hold of US ip addresses. This sky rocketed their income on the ebay partner network.
Secondly, a very large number of ACRU’s the so called ebay aquired users from the affiliates were one time buyers only.
Now couple these 2 things and you have a scam which just got zoomed on by ebay. ebay simply shut these 100000+ affiliates down…
account which generate a large number of geniune sales, still are working. At least my account remains active till date
First eBay annoy their sellers (more fees, dodgy feedback system) and now they’re annoying their affiliates!
Is this their downfall?
I am also an ebay affiliate and I have NOT received the good bye email from them. Please let me know the other best affiliate companies to partner with?
Of course, Ebay
Aren’t there better companies to be partnered with?
man, this sucks!
i haven’t been dropped yet, but i did see several negative commission days last week!!!!
I am still safe, hope it continues
I was also just in the process of becoming an affiliate. I must say this changes my mind. i have been really irritated with their fees for auctions and paypal. By the time you are done paying them, you don’t have much profit left. Discourages selling more that way. And the stock is way down.
ahhh! Jeremy, I hate it when companies don’t respond with an adequate answer to my questions, I bet you feel the same.
@Douglas this link might give you more information: ebaypartnernetworkblog.com/en/news/new-value-based-pricing-for-ebay-us-program/
SORRY – But in your
Friends Me ? widget below
Digg link is pointing at some post rather then to your Digg Profile, i Don’t know if it is correct.
Market other networks
I wasn’t dumped, but for those of us who are left….why should be put any more time into developig sites if we can get the ax at any time for reasons beyond our control. They want us to send traffic their way…and to be responsible for what those visitors do in the future. Yeah right.
Yikes!!! there were lots of unhappy folks on the ebay link you provided. I understand their dismay at this initiative by ebay.
I was contemplating becoming an ebay affiliate, but not sure if it is worth the effort now promoting products knowing you could get the axe at any moment.
I’m Still with ebay partner network made couple bucks with them
I am amazed at eBay. Who is running the show over there? Their site is less and less popular. People who promote them keep their house payments coming in. Did u know that a one day auction actually can take 24 hours to even be seachable in a category. So by the time it ends, people can finally find the ad. It’s a wash. No one sees your ad and u still have to pay the fees. Ebay sucks. They need to clean their own house instead of their affiliates
I was dumped, never even got a notice… my login didn’t work anymore. After an email they told me “You are unable to login to your account on the eBay Partner Network because your account has been expired. ” The reason for that was: “we determined that your account has been generating non-bona fide transactions.”
I was sending over 4k clicks per month with little earnings (about $200 per month). After an email to them asking for an explanation they reviewed my account and turned it back on.
I was not given the nasty form letter myself, but I have helped several of my blog readers get reinstated after the first wave. It looks like the second wave is more permanent though. Rest assured I have a platform almost in place to open up more income options for income. Thanks for the info from your side Shoe, I will talk to you soon.
Hmmm, I would consider my little eBay website to be one of the first on the hit list.. But I’m still in!
Curious to know why would they dump you? wouldn’t they want to have someone like you to help promote?
If there was little/no warning, that was a disgraceful move by eBay!
I hope the people chucked off the aff program find a better one/have success with other ones!
I’m still in EPN… keeping my fingers crossed.
Thankfully I am not one of the ones that got dumped, but currently make most of my income from EPN. I don’t exactly trust them anymore so am looking for ways to use my current EPN earnings to diversify. Hopefully they will keep me for a few more months while I figure a few other things out.
I hate waking up each day now, wondering if there will be an email from EPN saying that I’ve been “terminated” because I wasn’t able to send them customers that were “engaged”. Not sure how that is the job of the person sending the traffic. If ebay isn’t able to provide value to a potential customer, how is that my problem??
hmmmm…….1,000’s dumped and none of them read this blog? lol I am curious to hear from a dumpee, cause I wasn’t, yet.
This must be a blow to those who are making a fair income from ePN.
I was one of the many that was dumped.Pulled in a handsome 16k per month.There loss…
I was expecting that!
I was not dumped, but have a large group of readers who were.
Its quite apparent the ePN has no value to their affiliates and have made cuts to all levels of affiliate. From new ones generating $10/month to quite established affiliates, generating $10k/month.
The worst part is that there was no warning of network quality, visitor quality, essentially, no metrics for any of us to try and avoid being next.
The only comment from the Pink, Steve, is that we need to make sure our visitors are “Engaged in the eBay Process”.
End of discussion.
I have many sites of my own in the ePN generating substantial income. I will continue with the program for that reason alone, but at the same time, will continually revise my sites with an escape plan.
Mark
eBay is well famous for ignoring their affiliates
Your pal McCain loves the CEO of eBay. Maybe that’s why they hate you, Obama supporter.
Hi Jeremy. There’s lots of info at the eBay forum including their response and reasoning. Just starting to read so not sure I have an opinion yet, but if you got dropped I’m sure it really sucks!
From Ebay Steve: August 20 Expirations
http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?threadID=520001583&tstart=0&mod=1219442481811
Complaints about being banned and more info:
http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?threadID=5200000864&tstart=0&mod=1219442519456
Linda Buquet
@Edgar lots of people have made LOTS of money from eBay’s program, whether through PJN or directly with ePN. Just because your personal experience was bad doesn’t mean everyone’s will be. BTW – hundreds of clicks is NOTHING. I have sent ebay over a thousand clicks since I started typing this comment. Step your game up son!
This ENP sucks..I have generated hundrends of click and No money ..
I tried switching to Peperjam but they SUCK in responding , so screw them too . dont use either of them ..
I am an ebay affiliate with several BANS stores, and I have NOT received the bye bye email from them, however, I have to say that ebay is and has been for a while doing some outrageous things in the past months. THAT POST is the craziest of all, it is a completely passive penalty, not for anything the affiliates have done, but because the traffic they sent was not QUALITY???, based on their post affiliate link visit buying habits. Like affiliates have anything to do with ongoing visitor behavior on the eBay site?
My job as an affiliate is to send you a visitor that buys something, if I do that, then I’ve done my job, if EPN wants that visitor to continue buying from ebay then that is their responsibility, NOT mine. LUDICROUS! Maybe EPN should take a look at the deteriorating quality of THEIR site, where constantly sellers put items into wrong categories, so when people search for an item they get bombarded with irrelevant items, that might improve the buying habits of affiliate referrals.
Shame on eBay and a true devistation for those affiliates that have worked their asses off and invested money in their affiliate sites and are now cut off.
From my understanding… this is round 3 of dumps. They have already done this a few times before. Nothing to the amount they did yesterday but still, are we next?
Everyone better start paying to drive more traffic to your bans sites!
I was not dropped when they moved from CJ to their own, homegrown affiliate network. My site is http://www.tailgatingideas.com and deals with the tailgating lifestyle and tailgate parties. I guess they have a lot of collers and grills to sell on there. I dunno.
I was dumped!
I have around 50 BANS sites. Roughly $6 EPC for all the sites on average. Making around $1,000 a month with em.
My sites are listed on my blog http://www.aaronnimocks.com if you want to see em.
Anyways I submitted a request for review and we will see how that goes.
This is your fault. They met with you and you said, drop commission junction. So they brought it in house, and now this is the mess we have. Good job. I’d rather have CJ with occasional tracking mistakes then this disaster.
at least you got a few million out of your relationship back then
I’m still rocking on the eBay affiliate program. The 20th was actually one of my better days too!
I work pretty closely with the eBay affiliate team and the explination I got is it’s tied to their new “value ranking algorithm” which basically takes all your numbers and makes a guess at how much your ARCUs are worth – to them. If you didn’t provide a certain level of value to eBay – gone.
They are also changing the pricing on their ACRUs from a volume based model to a value based model. You can read more about it here:
http://www.ebaypartnernetworkblog.com/en/news/new-value-based-pricing-for-ebay-us-program/