jatiN mahindrA doT coM

I have had quite a few emails asking where I have been over the past few weeks and truth be known, I have just burned out. The situation with ePN has really gotten my panties in a wad after watching one spider-bot after another come through my sites and literally, put a big damper on any hopes of knock-out earnings coming into the busy holiday season. The bad part… is that I know I’m not the Only One!

Just one visit from a bot will seriously damper any hopes of earnings for at least 2 weeks. I went from .28 epc on October 27th, to where I sit now… at .05 cents per click. ALL due to 2 bot visits. Before some keyboard cowboy comes along with a wise remark there is no way to 100% block spider bots 100% of the time. The BEST you can hope for is to catch them in the act, shut them out, and block them until some new script-kiddie comes along and builds a better bot, which will happen before you finish reading this post!

I have spent enough time working to make sure no bot activity occurs on my sites. From htaccess rules, to click limit filtering, you name it. Spambots are like email Spam – you may be able to block it all for several weeks, but eventually, the spammers just find a different way around the filter. Like I said above… it only takes one bad bot to ruin a month worth of earnings, possibly resulting in eBay shutting down your partner account.

I’m just done with that stress… time to focus efforts elsewhere.

ePN is Broken – and I Quit For Now

Yup – I am done sending engaged traffic to the ebay system until they find a way to fix their broken Quality Click Pricing system. For myself, that equates to rebuilding affiliate links on several sites, but I am much more enthusiastic about rebuilding for an affiliate program that actually respects and cares about their partners, than making them guess what they want, penalizing them for things out of their control (that will NEVER end – aka rogue bots) and just having a system that in no way rewards affiliates for sending quality traffic!

Here is an idea – drop the over-complicated QCP program, and base affiliate earnings on a 1-day cookie! IF the referred buyer completes a transaction within 24 hours, you make money. If they bid on an item within 24 hours and win 6 days later, that counts also! If not – you get nothing! At least that is something we can plan and build around.

The current system is just too volitile the way it is and eBay has ALL the control! Look through the ePN forums… One affiliate was running a PPC campaign, generated more than $200k in eBay sales and earned more than $20k in ePC earnings. eBay killed his account and kept his earnings. Who pays his PPC bill now?

I have been around affiliate marketing for MANY years – and never seen a program so quickly run into the ground.

If you stick with eBay Partner Network – best of luck to you. Until they fix it… I’m out of here! There are simply too many other respectable companies out there that actually WANT qualified buyers, and appreciate the efforts of their affiliate “Partners”!

Time to go an replace more content…

< / rant >

a

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