my preview reckons i'll make about the same money ... we'll see!

eBay has been advertising on Chitika pretty hard lately too.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------- Thin isn't thin unless it's OneLung Thin

I want to clarify this for the benefit of others, especially those who do not hide behind a posting id.
About 2 years ago or so, ebay used to be rife in google's listings. I remember typing in a product and an ebay listing would usually appear a couple times in the top ten.

Now when I do searches on google, it is extremely rare for me to find an ebay listing. I have also not seen an ebay adword in the past year. I see the river advertising, but never ebay.

Leads me to believe there was a big tiff between ebay and google, maybe due to payment processing competition, maybe due to adwords. I don't know.

The point I am trying to make is that everyone goes after their own interests. People with good traffic are not going to be sending it to ebay when adsense or affiliate programs are more profitable. It is simple market economics.

Screwing over affiliates just leads to less customers, which makes sellers (who pay the fees) unhappy. While in the past sellers would be replaced by new sellers, this isn't happening anymore.

I have no vested interest so it doesn't matter to me, but if ebay ever gets its head screwed on straight, then I might be interested in sending them customers.

Google removed ebay from their listings, as did yahoo (for the most part), and I almost never see ebay adwords anymore.

This is the page I was talking about listing items for sale. Maybe just a user's post.
http://www.hooked-on-rc-airplanes.com/airplane-accessories.html

My comments weren't intended to explain the QCP drop. Just in response to your targeting comment.

But I do think that your ads may be less targeted than you think just because you are not targeting to buyers, but to everyone. I'd think that many of your users are seeking information, not looking to buy. Those users, when they click they don't intend to buy, they are looking for more info or saw something interesting. They might still buy, and maybe buy something else. But if eBay is punishing for people who wander around, funneling your buyer into a store page may improve things.

It's the hidden penalties that I predicted early on that concern me. I've documented a case a couple pages earlier in this thread in my UK program where a high conversion rate and excellent category targeting are being punished, apparently based on the traffic volume. This seems to be a common complaint from the eBay Motors promoters as well.

- On your buy and sell page you have no eBay ads. - your field eqpt page has a dozen topics. You could tighten that down with a page for each item class. - You have pages that are written as tutorials with eBay blocks at the top and the tutorial following. A person that needs a tutorial isn't a buyer (at least till they get to the bottom of the page.) It really doesn't matter how well the ad is targeted, you'll get a percentage of non-buyer clicks. - your google search doesn't drop people ready to buy on a page of items being sold. If I search "field charger" I should land on a page that prominently shows field chargers for sale. Your site is loosely targeted. There's a lot of great content, but it you organize it down to specific purchase points you'd probably convert better. Have you considered setting up a store area with detailed pages for each specific brand/item? You could feature the store on other pages and integrate the classifieds, your own items for sale and eBay ads into a store page by topic. This would target not only by topic, but target to buyers as well. You're already tightly targeting the EKs to topics, but you aren't targeting buyers to the EKs. I'd toss the right column and turn it into a detailed store menu with each link pointing to a highly targeted page, preferably dynamic. Goto google and type in hobbico. The drop down will show you the most popular search terms. These terms should be on your site. This will drive buyers to your site from Google. Repeat the process for other products. You should check the terms on ebay.com to see if there are items results for them before linking to ebay. If you link to eBay for "field charger" you get tons of noise. If you link to "hobbico field charger" you get 10 precisely matching items to buy. You might look into paypal buy it now buttons for your own items. You might sell items quicker than an email-me scheme. Some of your potential buyers are using the comment system instead of emailing you. Probably because the email-me section at the top is lost in the Adsense block. Also take a look at the MSN funnels tool to see how people search around your keywords. http://adlab.msn.com/Search-Funnels/index.aspx?kwd=rc+airplanes&direction=out&filter=top&filternum=5&newsearch=true

What does a 7 day cookie have to do with anything? That sums up everything. I'm not even going to waste my time.

Hmm,

What's with all the sarcasm here?

Every one of my sales are exactly what I advertise on my site. Not really worth arguing about. I could copy and paste the transaction records but I don't feel that necessary.


Do you no realize that the editor tool updates the listings in real time?

What does a 7 day cookie have to do with anything? The people are bidding on and buying the listings that display on my site.

Now amazon is a different story. People are constantly buying stuff that I don't promote. But this has not been my experience with ebay.

That fact remains that my traffic is 100% targetted. Maybe it's not valued by eBay, but doesn't change the fact that it's targeted.

I don't game the system. A 10 second check told me different albeit minor. You promote feeds extremely heavily, which creates no referrer or links on a site you don't own. The very first link on your home page goes to an AU ebay guide with a US rover link. But yeah, I'm sure all your troubles are ePN's fault.

In the preview report it lowered my monthly by about 2/3. Anytime epn makes any change I get less. I don't game the system. I just assume that if epn is making a change I will get less. That's how it always works.

but this month so far it is 100% true Sorry, I didn't realize both your sales were targeted. I should rephrase, any affiliate with ANY kind of real volume will NEVER see 100% targeting to the product. That is completely and utterly absurd, I don't care what you say. 80% within the meta category you promote is good. No "goofy blog", it's common sense. eBay is poorly run now. That is a known fact. Many large hedge funds have been short the stock for months. It started with eBay losing sellers, which of course is the backbone of the site. Now it appears that they are trying to run affiliates off, which in the long run translates to a pretty massive hit as well. See how you start out with the word "fact" even though it's your opinion? Everyone assumes that stock performance is directly related to how a company's run. If people don't have money your business will suffer. PERIOD. Then you move on to "appears" about running affiliates off... which I'm telling you is crap from what I see on several boards where I hang out. More affiliates are on board with this change than the ACRU change. I'm pretty sure they said in the first Webinar that affiliate spend will likely go up. So it follows that the affiliates that were sopping up the gravy will be upset and the people with the meat and potatoes will be happy.

100% of my conversions are the products I advertise on my site. Hate to break it to you, but that's simply not true. Doesn't happen with a 7 day cookie on the busiest auction site in the world. I'm certain the powers that be have no idea the hit they will take if they run a majority of their affiliates off, which is precisely what they're doing. Which goofy blog did you read that on? In reality, at least where I hang out, there are less affiliates complaining about this than there was with the ACRU change. It just seems there's more now because this time they're just complaining louder and spewing more made up nonsense and speculation. I could take an hour and go through the first page of posts here and come up with a hundred statements that are completely made up.... starting with the two quotes in this post. One of my recent favorites... "Even Chikita pays more than epn and I'll tell you what... that ain't good news for EPN..." I almost spit my coffee out on that one.