Disappointed with ePN

I had really high hopes for eBay’s separation from Commission Junction. For one, it’s usually always better to communicate directly, without a middle man. And that’s all CJ was, a middle man in our way, preventing us from getting our reporting on time. Or so we thought.

In my mind, perhaps I built up the changeover too much. I imagined a sugar-coated fantasy land where we had real-time click stats, and could click right through on a day’s numbers to see the auction data behind it. Tell me, why wouldn’t eBay just let us run our reports, then click through to a detail to clearly see which transactions resulted in commissions for us? Why the hassle of downloading a CSV file and using third party websites like MyePNReport.com? I mean if that guy can build a tool that breaks up that report and links to auctions, shows you how much you made etc, how come eBay can’t do it? Maybe they don’t want to do it?

Couple this with all the people complaining their earnings are off and would we have to conclude that as of now, ~40 days into the changeover, maybe getting rid of CJ was a mistake? Not a mistake from eBay’s perspective, because I don’t know what % they were paying out to CJ and it must be nice to have that big () missing from the monthly report. But from the affiliate’s perspective? I guess you can only call a decision a mistake if it was your decision to make, and with this one we unfortunately have to suck it up.

A couple other affiliates have blogged about their lackluster earnings including my friend hanjicode. I am not going to post my earnings but April compared to March is off by more than 40%. Now I understand about cookie lag because I am still getting earnings in the account I stopped posting links for 40 days ago. I also understand that maybe a lot of people are implementing their links wrong. I have been writing code for a living for 10 years and I assure you I am not posting my links wrong. The click tracking is for the most part fine, numbers are not off there. Is there an issue? Was there an issue with CJ inflating numbers and therefore their % and this is the correction? I think we might never know about that one.

One thing that is definitely not working is geo targeting. When eBay was with CJ I had geo targeting written into ZinText. I just applied to all the eBay programs through CJ and used the MaxMind free geoip database to send the click to the correct ebay. I would say maybe 15% of my clicks went to ebay.ca, ebay.co.uk, and ebay.au. When ePN announced geo targeting as part of their program, I was happy, one less thing I have to worry about, right? Right? Right? Wrong. I have 0 clicks outside of eBay US. Yes, I have checked the geo targeting option. Yes, I am using type 2 or 3 links. No answers so far from eBay, I am waiting to ask them at the eBay Developer’s Conference they have graciously invited me to.

I understand that eBay has a HUGE affiliate program and changing over from CJ is no small task. I actually expected reporting issues! But the little things I imagined, the detailed reporting, it is a disappointment to me that those things aren’t there. This was an opportunity to reach out and really bring their affiliates into the fold, and it just doesn’t look like that’s happening. The boards have been more active than I’ve ever seen them, and 98% of those people are upset. I really hope eBay does whats right and listens to their affiliates. After all we are on the same team aren’t we? Aren’t we?

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