Can you give those of us still here any tips as to how we might continue to drive the type of traffic that eBay looks for? It's hard to decide whether to continue putting effort into our sites if we feel that we may very well be banned from the program at any minute for vague reasons.

Good lord, you can't be serious. How in the world can you determine how "engaged" or "interested" the traffic we send is before it gets to Ebay. Engaging them and keeping them interested is YOUR responsiblity, just as it is with any traffic that makes its way to your site. No affiliate program is going to survive with policies like this.

I am sorry Steve I Should have placed that in Bold You dont need to be working for ebay you need to be a comedian or a white house news guy

Come Clean or tell us all to go away RIGHT NOW.

Was this a one time purge or should those who did not get the email be in constant fear that they might pick a niche that sends non-engaged traffic and ruin their 20 other niches that does?

If this is an ongoing thing, then it's time to let the sites that made it sit and any new sites developed will need to promote other programs so there is no risk of ruining the ones you have.

Seems to me your going to be losing a lot of potential affilaite marketers and actually drive them to promote other big box affiliate programs that your trying to move towards.

Steve - first and foremost, thank you for addressing the issue. I surely hope the news brief came with a suit of armor... if not, you may still be able to find one on eBay if you hurry! I realize you are just the messenger of this post, but we deserve better.

Several of us have been involved with eBay for many years and in your reply, you show no care or respect for "Partners" in the network.

Running any successful program involves keeping your sales force informed. We are a large part of your sales force Steve. If you have been a team leader in any part of the corporate world, you know it all begins with Goals. Realistic and MEASURABLE goals.

What you have just told us is that there are a few rogue affiliates out there doing bad things. Because of those bad people, you are not going to tell the rest of us, the majority, what THEY need to do in order to succeed with this affiliate program.

Communication has completely broken down and until there is a transparent and measurable set of goals, we are all going to feel we are playing Russian Roulette.

When I buy into a Vehicle I want to know that its going to start for me every morning, When I buy in to a program like this, and sink My hard earned time and money in to it, I want to know its going to be there for me in the morning!
Something needs to be set in Stone as to Policies and WHAT YOU WANT FROM US.
If Tims going to give you a ride home you can both clean your desk out....

I've already shut down 20+ sites that had tremendous potential, just weren't performing great yet. The whole thing is kind of silly, we have no idea what you want from us unless you tell us.

I've heard directly from some of my websites visitors that they use my eBay search page all the time! I have a series of helpful searches that narrow down the results and give them specifically what they are looking for. SEVERAL people in my target hobby use my site for this purpose and have thanked me for the service I provide. I guess that is all worthless now, they will miss this service after Aug 27 when I delete it. Sadly, I was not able to meet an invisible, unknown metric until it was too late, and now that I'm banned, I will never have a chance to try again.. not even with entirely new websites with new topics.... what a shame. If I had at least known I was in danger, I could have attempted to fix the problem.

How depressing.

Sounds like there are some serious ASSUMPTIONS being made right now on behalf of those brainiacs at EPN. I have honestly never heard of an affiliate program acting in such a way. The most unprofessional and inconsiderate group of people I've ever laid eyes on or had the unfortunate experience to work with. ASSUMPTIONS from a few metrics that haven't had enough time to possibly prove themselves. Sounds like to me you are measuring them up to those that are using black hat techniques. How could you possibly be getting poor visitors from those utilizing white hat SEO and PPC. So flawed and so disgusting. Coming from a person who was about to go into business for himself based on eBay being about 50% of his affiliate revenue. Not to mention countless dollars spent promoting, developing, and doing white hat methods to be a good affiliate. I suppose we all learned a lesson here.

Making Money Answers

There you have it - eBay showed its true nature. Your typical evil corporation that cares nothing about its constituents.

I suppose my one year of 30+ hours per week of hard work writing content and optimizing my site for 100% pure organic search traffic hasn't paid off a bit. The drilled-down traffic and constantly improved results that my sites have received were all in vain, as eBay (or as they like to think of themselves, jesus christ) deemed to be worthless and non-quality. The measly 0.05% return on the total profits that eBay made off of my efforts were a drop in the bucket, after all.

Nice to be compared to black hatters - too. I've been in web development for 10 years and search engine optimization for 4 years, and have been a hardcore white hatter every inch of the way, but it sure feels good to be stereotyped due to a faulty algorithm and prompt quick fix by your company. Not an endearing quality, ebay.

Your "responsibility" is to make EPN a valuable experience for yourselves and your affiliates. However, you've removed the latter and replaced it with typical public relations speech and still refuse to address each individual account. I hope the guilt of all of the people whose lives are ruined weighs on all of you who have contributed to making this happen. It's all collateral damage though, isn't that right?

My post isn't intended for the "damage control" mouthpiece, but for the bastards who have chosen to wrongly lump together outstanding affiliates in the EPN community who have consistently followed the rules in your TOS, and have probably even endorsed them on the marketing forums throughout the internet (DigitalPoint, BANS, etc) in complete vain, as they have had no warning, no "fix it" email, no nothing - but a complete ban and a lifelong hatred for your company.

I truly hope the wave of negative publicity that is about to hit eBay will cripple the company and only serve as a huge advantage for your competitors.

Also, my commissions better damn be paid, or I surely will have my lawyer involved.

Steve said in his post..... Our responsibility in the affiliate marketing channel Well, not fair to blame the ads on Steve. I'm sure he has absolutely no control over them as head of the ePN. His job is indeed to "allocate our resources to best drive incremental demand to our sellers", with the term our meaning ePN resources. There are other angles to take against ePN certainly, but this isn't a legitimate one in my opinion.