Negative Comments on EPN

You may have heard some negative comments surfacing around the net about EPN's tracking. Truth be told most forum posts in the official EPN forum are misleading, don't paint a complete picture, and are made by amateurs who fail to take into consideration the full spectrum of affiliate marketing. I feel that the majority of complaints have no founding whatsoever, generally because there is not enough data, and a few ACRU's can really throw off a week.

My biggest kick out of people are those who collect their dashboard data for a week, showing some big numbers on say Monday and Wednesday and then complain something happened in the latter part of the week with close to zero sales. When these posts claim 'sales' they are really referring to ACRU's. ACRU's payout $25 CPA in the US, which can really spike a graph. The rest of an eBay affiliate's earnings come from getting a percentage of eBay's take, which if you earn under $2500 per mont is only 55%.

I receive over 14,000 clicks per month and take home around $500. It's real easy to sway even these low numbers with a handful of ACRU's, which even if I receicved 4 could spike my monthly earnings by another $100. Do I think it's because their tracking is flawed? No, I just realize that a few big ticket CPA's can vastly obscure actual sales figures, considering only a little over half of my monthly earnings come from winning bids.



As you can see there is a trend forming, in regards to my EPN dashboard graph looking a little bit like shark fins. This is not because I have way down days in regards to actual wining bids, but because I may miss out on only 1 or 2 ACRU's. Just a reminder to keep your eyes out for where your big money is coming from in a slightly more complicated affiliate program. Furthermore, it shows me that I need to focus on a niche where people haven't heard of eBay before. Wish me luck.

EPN 'Make Good' Issued...for some

Many affiliates for the EbayPartnerNetwork are announcing that they have received their makegood for the ACRU reporting errors earlier last month. Unfortunately there are also a number of people reporting that they have not received any makegood, I'm one of those people. I've contacted my account rep and she has verified that I should have received it by now and I qualify for one, but it just has not posted. Below is the message I got back from EPN support:

Thank you for writing us back regarding your 'make-good' field on your
Payment History page.

I have checked your account and I can confirm that this note is missing
from your 'Payment History' page. I've forwarded your email to the
Finance team at eBay Partner Network. They will review your question and
get back to you in the next few business days.

Sorry for the inconveniences you have while waiting.Thank you for your
patience and understanding.

Kind regards,

Hopefully they will be able to give me some news by the weekend. Hiccups in the system like this really effect my Adwords campaigns and other initiatives I make to promote my sites. Also, let this be a reminder to all of you affiliates, make sure and stay up on your reporting and news from the program you are affiliating for. Had I not known a makegood was to be issued, nor had I contacted my rep, I may never received my makegood payment.

I'll be reporting what I received just as soon as I know.

Affiliate Incentives

It's important, as in any business, to familiarize yourself with the companies that you affiliate with. Knowing their business practices and strategies will help you become a better affiliate for them and also give warning to things you may want to step away from. By becoming entrenched with a certain company though, blinders can be put on to similar affiliate programs that may offer some nice incentives.

I operate a number of automotive themed websites and blogs, which I affiliate for parts warehouses and places like eBay. While eBay is my primary source of affiliate income I also subscribe to affiliate program updates in my reader from the operating affiliate network. This means that whenever an affiliate incentive is being offered by another affiliate, in this example AutoPartsWarehouse.com, I can take advantage of the bonuses they offer. Often these bonuses are time sensitive so staying on top of an offer is important.

Currently AutoPartsWarehouse.com is offering affiliates a $50 or $100 activation bonus. This means that for an accumulated sales amount of $300 or more, you will receive a one-time cash reward of $50. If you generate an accumulated sales amount of $500 or more, you receive a one-time $100 cash out reward. Obviously this can really add to a monthly income for affiliate beginners or long term marketers alike. Had I not been attentive to the updates from my Affiliate Network I would not have been privy to this great lil bonus that should be easy to accumulate for the month of July.

In addition to staying up to date with bonuses and incentives, often times companies will provide seasonal promotional material. Web graphics and banners for affiliate programs will be updated during the holidays for special promotions that the company may be running. Being July and the 4th is around the corner make sure you are using all methods possible to promote your niche and make those extra affiliate sales.

Affiliate Store Builder Scripts

I'll admit, there are a lot of automatic website building scripts available, but personally I am only familiar with a few quality ones, so that's what I'll be discussing and comparing. The two scripts I'll be briefly covering are AOM for Amazon affiliates and BANS for EPN affiliates. While both do similar things they are extremely different in setup and functionality, and yes these scripts cost money.

Associate-O-Matic - $99 (or Free lite version where you share revenues)

This script saved my ass last holiday by providing me with a quick and easy way to throw up a store that looked like I actually kept the inventory. I'm throughly convinced that by giving the impression to visitors that I was keeping the inventory and allowing them to add items to a cart got me the majority of my sales and commissions. Keep in mind I was very clear that when they checked out they would be forwarded to Amazon, but I think putting it off till the last minute netted me some repeat business.

Associate-O-Matic's simple, yet powerful, browser-based control panel lets you customize everything from categories, colors, fonts, custom boxes, custom pages and much, much more. Below are a few screen shots of what you can find in the Admin panel of AOM and what customization can be done or achieved.





Build A Niche Store (BANS) - $97

This is simply a beautiful script to behold and if used properly can simply rake in the cash and pay for itself in a week, even on a brand new domain. The eBay affiliate store script BANS creates an SEO friendly site, built on eBay RSS feeds and categories. But in addition to adding tons of products to a store, you can easily add individual content per page and create you own content pages through the admin panel.

Setting up one of the eBay BANS affiliate stores is super simple, but maximizing it's potential can be very challenging. If all you want is a cookie cutter look a like site, a niche store can be completed in probably 15 minutes. However, if you want to create a unique site, with quality content and products, then get comfortable because building quality BANS sites is addicting.






Now, there is no way I would recommend a product on my own affiliate blog, without using the product thoroughly first. Both scripts have been put through the paces as far as I' concerned and both paid themselves off quickly and made me substantial scrilla.

I'm happy to answer any behind the scenes questions you may have on either one of my AOM Review or BANS review.

Affiliate Programs I Use

I'm often asked where I get access to all my affiliate programs and generally there is no one answer. I stick with a handful of companies that allow me to build partnerships and affiliate for a large number of programs. Below is a breakdown of which companies I'm signed up with and why i use them to affiliate.

• Commission Junction - They have a crazy amount of companies signed up that you can affiliate for. I originally signed up for eBay, but since then have been accepted into the NewEgg.com affiliate program and others. Many of the programs require you to signup individually for which program matches your website content, so you are not automatically accepted into their inventory of clients.
• Max Bounty - Generally speaking, they have the largest number of affiliate programs aimed at the simple 1 form, email gathering, affiliate programs. Meaning they have the $1 to $2 payouts for leading a visitor to submit their email for potential freebies and surveys.
• ebay Partner Network - They pay some of the highest commissions of any program I affiliate for. Their lowest tier of earnings makes you 50% of whatever eBay makes off an auction that ends with your affiliate cookie attached. Plus there are a lot of plugins and scripts to make building sites easy.
• Amazon - Who hasn't heard of Amazon? Some of their payouts are pretty low, but it's easily made up with the amount of volume that's possible. They also offer plenty of affiliate widgets, feeds, and store builder options.
• ClickBank - If it's a digital download, ebook, or some sort of online subscription service you can find it on ClickBank. They offer a huge inventory of these types of products that you can affiliate for with an even larger number of payout options. While I've only had limited success with this affiliate program, the potential is there if you can find a good niche.

Well, those are the affiliate programs I use in a nut shell. They have allowed me to eliminate Adsense on a number of my sites or at least not rely on the revenue from Adsense to earn a living. But remember, now matter how good a product or service may be, if you are not focusing on quality marketing you may just be wasting your time.