ePN QCP (PPC) vs. AdSense
BySpecial Notice!! -- Click Here to take the new independent ePN affiliate survey (a new tab will open).
In case you haven't figured it out already, QCP is actually just PPC, regardless of all the propaganda ePN is not-so cleverly weaving into their forum and blog posts. Sources tell me they have even taken to telephoning some of the more publicly vocal affiliates with rhetoric speeches trying to win them over. But, just like the so-called "Government Option" in the U.S. health-care reform debate, only a minority are buying into it. If you could climb way up the ladder and look down at the entire ePN affiliate forest instead of just seeing your personal tree, you may see that QCP is no more than just a radical scheme to dramatically cut program costs by achieving an overall reduction in affiliate payouts and give eBay more bang for thier affiliate buck.
So now that we're firmly within the realm of reality here, let's get down to the business of how to best work with the new ePN PPC system.
I'm sure it is an unintended consequence, but now that ePN's new PPC payout method is live, it can be compared to AdSense and Chitika's PPC in a "apples-to-apples" analysis. If your current ePN PPC is more than about $0.25 per click, you're good to go, just start slamming eBay with clicks. If your current ePN PPC is lacking, as countless affiliates are reporting all around the Net, good old Google AdSense may be the answer to your downturn in ePN commissions.
It will depend on your overall site layout, but I suggest placing a double 250x250 square AdSense ad on TOP of your eBay listings. Create the ad to display text-only links and make the ad's border the same color as your background. Make the title color #0000CC, the text color #333333 and the link color #666666. If your not sure how to make the two 250x250 AdSense ads display side-by-side, here's some HTML you can work with:
<table width=100% border=0>
<tr>
<td align=center width=50%>
<!-- Google Code Here -->
</td>
<td align=center width=50%>
<!-- Google Code Here -->
</td>
</tr>
</table>
The end product should look something like this:
250x250 Double AdSense Ad
If you have room in your sidebar, you can also display a 160x600 Chitika ad. I mean, you've been forced into playing the PPC game, so you might as well play it smart and cover all your options, right? If you don't know about Chitika PPC, click the yellow stripe at at the top of this page for details.
AdSense is probably going to pay you a lot more than your current ePN PPC and Chitika will probably pay you just as much as you current ePN PPC, so test it out for a couple of weeks and see if the addition of AdSense and Chitika raises your site's daily average earnings back to where it was before the whole ePN PPC mess started.
If it works out for you, post a comment below and let me know.
Until then, remember... You've gotta' fight to get and keep your piece of the affiliate pie!
Militant, you may be onto something here. As someone who’s suffered some ridiculous ups and downs with EPN, I’m already looking to move to a different business model.
In fact, I’ve been doing more with Adsense already and look forward to giving your setup integrating Adsense and EPN a try.
Keep up the good work.
Hi Gary,
I’m aware of your personal plight with ePN. It makes me wonder how many other affiliates they have done something similar too who didn’t have your tenacity to stand up and fight back and prove them wrong.
IMO, when dealing with ePN as part of your overall affiliate business plan, one should always keep in mind that ePN apparently gives the authority to suspend or terminate your account to staffers with little or no common sense.
How can we organize a group on a site and sent massive amount of letters to the Feebay shareholders telling them about this mess and to remove the high school joke, the moron who is running FEEPN? They are trying to reinvent the wheel and don’t listen to affiliates. Don’t they care about their reputation? Steve who? That guy is running the affiliate program into the ground! That’ll go on his resume! I’ll bet he’ll be removed soon. Backlinks to Feebay are decreasing daily by the truckload.
Lovejoy, Although I empathize with your feelings towards ePN’s senior management, going to the shareholders too complain seems akin to going to the police department to complain about a cop. If ePN management can successfully cut costs without significantly reducing income, they are hero’s in the the shareholder’s eyes. Shareholders care about NOTHING but their stock value and dividends.
The real way to fight back is to do as suggested here. Send your clicks to another program.
Let the big brain boys figure out that while they may have intially saved money, they are suddenly not earning as much because their traffic from affiliates has tanked.
I used your suggestion here and put the adsense ads on all my niche sites after ebay dropped my epc down to 0.08 the first of November. As of now, I have made more from adsense this month then from epn. Now I’m just going to focus on building adsense sites using ebay listings as seo bait.
Can adsense be added to content pages?
Militant..this is an absolutely brilliant idea however how exactly would you get this to work with the wpmage template system. Where would you actually put the code for this to show right above phpbay pro 3 column embedded in the wpmage template. Hope this makes sense
Using phpBay Pro in your mage templates makes it easy to add Adsense Ads directly above your eBay listings. Simply edit your phpBay display form template found in the “…/plugins/phpbay/forms/” folder. The name of the file you want to add the AdSense code too is “form.page.header.php.” Add another table row above the original one to put your AdSense code in.
Militant thanks a million for this I will get on this in the morning. By the way your technique for bait n switching ebay clicks to an adsene page as far as you know does this break any kind of adsene TOS. I’ve never really been into adsense but I would love to give that a shot on several of my mage sites that are way under performing. I mean like .08 to .13 a click.
I’m with adsboy, I’m trying to figure out something here. I’ve got Adsense and EPN showing and for some reason adsense reports the clicks and impressions but EPN is not, even though I’m getting clicks. Is there something wrong between adsense on the site and using EPN?
Tony
If you’re using a third-party script like phpBay Pro to display eBay listings, the ePN impression code is not automatically included. You can add it by generating it in your ePN Dasboard tools and copying it to your phpBay header template. Personally, I don’t use it. I don’t believe in giving ePN any more information than is absolutely necessary. My own server logs tell me everything I need to know.
I just had my EPN site expired and was told that I violated some rules, but they never told me which ones. I have over 6K in commissions due to me. Any suggestions as to what type of recourse we may have?