Special 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!