The great news for existing affiliates is that starting the last week of August, you will be able to compare the new and old commission structure until October 1st to see where you stack up. Also if you are driving quality engaged traffic to eBay, you stand to earn more money. I for one initially welcome this change as I drive a ton of targeted traffic and do earn quite a bit with EPN, so I expect to actually earn even more. The higher the traffic quality the better you should do as well.
In short, what does this mean? It means you need to make every click count as much as possible. Better targeted organic traffic and full disclosure of where the surfer is going is paramount. Over the last month, I personally have seen EPN reel in the false clicks, this was important before releasing the new structure.
I am very excited about this change and if you are driving quality traffic to eBay, you should to.
If you have specific questions, I would contact EPN for clarification. You will read many interpretations on blogs and message boards, but I advise you to take them under advisement, not as law. As always, with previous changes to the eBay Partner Network, it will likely take 60-90 days for them to fully work the kinks out, so be patient. Also as I always suggest, you should not be carrying all of your eggs in one basket. Make sure you are constantly looking for other sources of income to drive your traffic to.
Below are some useful links for you to better form your own opinion and a copy of the email sent out.
EMAIL FROM EPN:
Today we're announcing Quality Click Pricing, a new payout structure designed to further reward the affiliates who drive incremental transactions on eBay and who send valued buyers to our sites.
What's Quality Click Pricing?
Until now, eBay Partner Network has paid for sales and leads. With Quality Click Pricing, we will now instead pay affiliates for each click sent to an eBay site. The price paid per click will still depend on the short-term and long-term revenue of the traffic that the publisher drives to eBay, but will now also take into account the incremental value of that traffic to eBay, i.e., whether a sale happened as a direct result of the publisher's actions. The greater the incremental revenue and the higher the expected lifetime value of the customers an affiliate sends, the higher the EPC and total earnings the affiliate will receive. Earnings Per Click (EPC) will be set daily for the previous day's traffic.
When will this change take place?
We plan to phase the introduction of Quality Click Pricing to ensure existing publishers have enough time to understand how this affects them.
* New publishers that join the eBay Partner Network as of September 1st will be paid out under the new system. This includes all publishers joining as they transition from TradeDoubler and affilinet.
* Publishers that joined eBay Partner Network prior to September 1st will remain on the current pricing system until October 1st, when they will begin to be paid under the new Quality Click Pricing payment structure. Before October 1st, and starting the last week in August, existing publishers will have access to a preview report to see how their new payouts compare with the existing payment structure for them.
How can I find out more about this change?
We know that you may have questions about Quality Click Pricing, so we have put together several resources to give you more information about it:
* Read more about this change and some of the reasons behind it on our blog, including a FAQs document.
* A new set of pages on the eBay Partner Network site that explain how Quality Click Pricing works in more detail will be available later today.
* Two new videos that explain the concept of Quality Click Pricing (one available today and a second that will explain new reports on September 1st).
* In addition, we will hold two live webinars to explain the change and give publishers the opportunity to ask questions. Find out more about the webinars.
We will also be on the boards more frequently over the next few days to answer publishers' questions.
We are very excited about the launch of Quality Click Pricing, as it will allow us to reward publishers who are driving high quality, engaged and incremental traffic to eBay. We are also committed to continuing to invest in helping our publishers succeed with eBay Partner Network, and to ensuring that everyone is rewarded fairly for the value they generate for eBay.
We look forward to working with you on this new endeavor. Thanks for your continued support!
Sincerely,
Steve Hartman,
The eBay Partner Network
IMPORTANT EPN LINKS:
EPN Quality Click Pricing FAQs
Tips for improving the quality of your traffic
Announcing Quality Click Pricing
Details of Quality Click Pricing Webinars
The Coming Evolution in Affiliate Marketing: A Focus on Quality
9 comments:
I wish I was as optimistic as you are. Personally right now I do not know what to think. Every time you turn around they are making changes. Makes you wonder.
@Gill, I certainly can understand the frustration of all, but I will say that every time they have changed, I have made more money. Also it has taken time with each switch for EPN to get their sea legs under them and I expect this time to be no different. Is there some gray area still? Sure, but personally I think it will come out in the wash.
Dave
You can color me skeptical as well, but reading what some beta testers have said on the Php bay forums, I am feeling a little bit better. I guess time will tell. I am prepared though to drop the ebay program out right though if I need to.
Do you believe all these changes are going to benefit EPN affiliates? From prohibiting EPN links on social media sites and free blogging platforms, which pretty much defines the whole nature of the web. To changing the ACRU payment structure and moving from CJ to in house.
Best of luck!
I agree with the previous commenters, I too am skeptical as to the earning potential and implications that this can have.
EPN is never very clear on what quality traffic is, though we all know that it means those that continue to shop there, but in reality, affiliates do not have control over what the traffic will do on ebay in the future.
How can we control, if they buy the one product they find on our sites versus continuing to shop on eBay in the future.
I will have to wait and see how this will affect earnings, so I will hold final judgement till then.
If a visitor to our site(s) clicks an ad link or product link to Ebay and surfs through other products we should get credit because a cookie has been established via that original click in the visitor's browser. (Correct me if I'm wrong)
If a visitor immediately leaves Ebay they are not considered "quality traffic." If that visitor continues searching Ebay for like items does the "quality" of their click increase?
And of course if a purchase is made off that click then the "quality" standard increases exponentially.
Also, there is most likely a grading system to the number of clicks and traffic a particular site and campaign is bringing, which will raise your score.
Like it or not the Ebay algorithm is a "work-in-progress" and the only control we have is to develop our sites and treat them as a constant "work-in-progress" by adding content and using all the tools available in SEO to promote our site.
Nobody said this was going to be easy. ;)
They wouldn't be doing this unless it helped cut their costs. I'm betting everyone is averaging less per click 12 months from now. Maybe not as bad for better quality traffic, but still a step back.
It's a good time to re-evaluate other affiliate programs.
Well, I disagree, but time will tell. They have been fantastic to me in the past and until I am done wrong, I have no reason but to give it a whirl.
Dave
Quality Click Pricing is designed to do one thing only - allow ebay to pay affiliates less and make more for themselves. Why? Because they can and there is nothing you can do about it as an affiliate.
Example, I earned 92.00 for sept. Quality Click Pricing predicts my payment would be 32.00 for the same traffic.
What is wrong with that?
The 92.00 is based on actual earnings for auctions won by people who come to ebay through my links. Why is it ok for ebay to now claim that traffic is worth only 32.00?
The 92.00 was based on performance. Quality Click Pricing is based on voodoo.
I will be removing every ebay auction link I have and replacing them with something else. Probably aff links from a source who sells something from my site's niche but anything is better then dealing with a company who just wants me to be happy being screwed.
ebay, you suck!
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