jatiN mahindrA doT coM

I got an email from a reader…. after 4 years in the ePN, they canned him. Poof – Your account is closed, and the $X,XXX.xx +/- balance in your account is frozen. He said there was no warning… no “Fix this Now” type message, not even a “Hi Partner” greeting in the email.

With “Partnerships” like that… it REALLY made me consider the time investment I have in ePN sites.  I decided to review my ePN sites to find the QUICKEST WAYS to increase EPN earnings… this is what I found.

Tips from eBay Itself

As each of us review our network of websites to find hints of information that will help us deliver the best type of traffic to the ebay partner network, we also keep an ear on the ePN Blog, hoping they will release a nugget of “Solid” information, that will help us out a bit… I DO give them credit for trying, but the info they are sharing is confusing me, more than helping!

As much as I hate to say it… I spend more time measuring the effectiveness of  alternatives to eBay Partner Network, versus improving my ePN sites.

eBay Showing Their Hand?

In a post on their blog last week – they gave an example of an EPN affiliate Best Practices scenario, where a marketing firm with 3-4 million unique monthly visitors, has implemented a few small changes and now thrives in the partner network.

Just to put that into perspective, I will take one of my own busiest sites – which gets about 35,000 unique monthly visitors. Using my site as the baseline multiplier – what does 3-4 million unique visitors translate to?

1. 3-4 million unique visitors = Approximately 9-12 MILLION visits. (Mine averages 3 visits per visitor, 4.3 pages per visit)
2. 9-12 million visits = Approximately 43 MILLION monthly pageviews (10 mill x 4.3 pages per visit avg)

Now I just have to ask… how many of you have an estimated 43 million monthly pageviews? This example they provided is a FAR step from ANYTHING that the majority of ePN affiliates experience! Congrats to the Marketing Company doing this, but my guess is that they are in the “less than 3%” crowd.

This is like walking into your local bank for some financial advice, and they lay out a plan so you can invest just like Donald Trump! Unless YOU have the same backend funding or traffic, you are never going to achieve the same front end results!

Summary – This example was no help at all!

A More Realistic Example of ePN Quality Click Pricing

The next day, another post was published, showing the importance of Geo-Targeting your visitors. I don’t know how many of you picked up on this – but if you look at the example they use:

1. Affiliate A – Raised EPC from .04 epc to .06 epc.
2. Affiliate B – Raised it from .02 epc to .08 epc.

Just being real here – .06 and .08 epc is BAD. The better thing they could have done for these affiliates, was advise them of a different program! Of course, if you are getting several hundred thousand clicks/month, its OK right?… NO ITS NOT!

Lets Face It – Whether you send 100 clicks or 500,000 clicks, .08 cents per click SUCKS if you can get .15 cents per click by simply changing to a different program!

This was a BAD example to use, but my guess is that its like this for the “Majority of Affiliates”. My own stats range from .16 epc on higher traffic sites to .24 on a lower traffic site. On the few sites I had that were in the -.10 cpc range, I pulled ePN off and replaced them with AdSense or other ads!

Easiest Way To Increase your EPN Earnings

I LITERALLY increased EPC from .11 cpc to .28 cpc, a 160% Increase, by pulling down ePN ads and using Adsense!

That busy site of mine with approximately 450,000 monthly pageviews was earning .11 cpc (Thats “cents per click”) at ePN. Auctions were removed and replaced with adsense, which earns an average of .28 cpc. So – instead of spending weeks and months testing – or guessing – at what kind of traffic ePN wants, I solved it one mouse click!

Adsense is NOT perfect by any means – but at least I know how to increase earnings with them… more traffic=more earnings. With ePN sites, it seems my higher traffic sites earn MUCH less per click than others. Whats worse… if I invest 100 hours into figuring it out, I MIGHT be dropped from the network tomorrow anyway!

Finally – Whats the Point of This Post?

Don’t bang you head on the wall trying to please “The Man” at ePN. Explore your options before you spend 2 weeks optimizing a site for ePN only to find out your target is .08 cents per click!

IF ePN earns you more for YOUR Traffic – keep them! If not, don’t hesitate to break your partnership with them…

</ rant>

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