I have been a long term epn affiliate. I not seeing the problems you guys are talking about. My traffic and sales are up.

> I have found the same problem. 150 clicks and maybe 3 cents.

You can't draw any conclusions from 150 clicks, (unless it's 150 clicks/hour ) it's just too small a number.

> 51speakers.com went to the top page of Google with a lot of impressions, lot of clicks and little or no cash.

Your site has 8 pages in google, none with www. You really need many, many more. It's easy to get to the first page in google for obscure terms that nobody searches for . What's important is how many google referrals you get a day? What do you call a lot of clicks? 1000/day is a lot for some people and not much for others, but you need an average of at least this level of clicks to draw any conclusions..

> Can't help but be suspicious about the partnership program so I have started adding affiliate banners last week and was surprised at the number of clicks I am getting on them.

But are you getting any money from them? You really need to work at PPA, and learn what works and what doesn't, clicks on banners means little, The quality of your traffic means much more. There are many affiliate doing very well with EPN, but they have to work at it.

> 11 sites since Jan and 50.00 cash from Google.

You just can't compare PPA and PPC, it doesn't cost anything for someone to click an ad or a banner, perhaps your sites are just getting the curious visiting rather than buyers.

> Even Auctiva is feeling the pinch. ...

Most affiliates will say this is a very good thing! Auctiva used to overwrite many other affiliate cookies with their own round tripping.
They've never said there's a problem with EPN, just that EPN won't let them play any more.

Bad for Auctiva = Good for everyone else!

> I have found the same problem. 150 clicks and maybe 3 cents. I have 11 eBay sites now and profit production seems terrible compared to the amount of clicks in Google analytic and the stat plug-in shows.
>
> I started in July of last year with 3 sites but health problems and a wrong installation prevented me from getting anything. I thought that was the major problem.
>
> In January I began pushing, reworking, tweaking, installing new sites and sending traffic to them and one site 51speakers.com went to the top page of Google with a lot of impressions, lot of clicks and little or no cash.
>
> Can't help but be suspicious about the partnership program so I have started adding affiliate banners last week and was surprised at the number of clicks I am getting on them.
>
> 11 sites since Jan and 50.00 cash from Google. LOL Spent that much for the names.
>
> Around the net I am finding the same questions being asked. Is eBay affiliate worth the time, effort and cost to promote? I am getting my doubts and Marcus Campbell's video questions that also.
>
> Lanny

Adding to what I wrote here is some additional information,
Even Auctiva is feeling the pinch. The following is an excerpt from their new policies posted May 28th:

"In order to remain free all these years, our business model included many different sources of revenue," Schlicht continues. "In addition to shipping insurance and our other pay services, like Sellathon.com, we also derived more than half of our income from eBay's affiliate program. However, eBay recently made changes to its affiliate program that greatly restricted, and ultimately eliminated, this critical revenue stream. As a result, we will have to begin charging for some of our services."

Read the rest of the full posting is here: http://www.auctiva.com/edu/entry.asp...Enters-New-Era

Here are some correlating numbers for general effect on sales:
Google trends searches for "shopping" also try "ebay" and "auction"

http://www.google.com/trends?q=shopping&ctab=0&geo=all&date=mtd&sort=0

Just a quick note here as I think I have only posted on the EPN boards once in the past 18 months, which is about how long I have been with ebay as an affiliate. My "clicks" for May 2009 are higher than they have ever been and my "earnings" are the lowest they have ever been for any given month. Last month, April 2009, was a normal "click" month but a terrible earnings month. My earnings for April and May dropped 45% and 80% respectively. I do realize that ACRU's have not posted for May but I don't get a ton of sign-ups anyway. So, from another little EPN it's not going well the last 2 months from my perspective.

Know what you mean, I am WAY down over the last 6 months also.

I think is the same with every business profits are down - so, ebay is cutting(shutting down) affiliate programs to keep the profit after we drove traffic and promoted the recruitment of a lot of new ebayers.

(that will continue to generate revenue for ebay that they won;t have to share)

On another note:
Anyone know how to make an adult editor kit utilizing all the categories within the adult section of ebay?

Nope, no change. Do you think it was a correction or did they toss you a bone?

>That's for the default campaign. What do you see if you download all events?


That is all events. I click reports, transaction download, start May 1, end May 30, checked Download all events. and that is all it shows, I got 1 click from UK , my dash board is showing 110 clicks, now another click from Half US made the 110. I don't know what I am doing wrong. My dash board option show Graph: impression, clicks, EPC ($), Earnings and same other side. default set, clicks and EPC ($)
I saw a copy posted on here that had bid/bin.

Ooh I forgot 109 clicks, 80 for US and 28 Half US.

nathandloper : MANY affiliates, even long-term and significant ones, are seeing a drastic drop in revenue and figures lately...


4wilsons05: I've been here a year 23 sites and reasonable dollars. And never before has all 23 sites bottomed at once. Yes they have bad days But again this is extreme. Yes the clicks are better but not the dollars...

potentmix: I, too, have seen a significant fall off in revenue in May despite no diminution in traffic or the quality of my sites. Reporting of tracking and conversions has deviated from what's expected in many substantial ways.

hovesh07: I have been on EPN for close to 2 years and have never seen anything like this. I am "encouraged" by seeing that I'm not the only one out there with this problem.
My traffic is steady, but my conversions and (especially) ACRU's are about 60% off.

sfldirect: In my case, i noticed an 80% drop in conversions overnight on the 1st of May.

wwwpetdogdepotcom: When I saw my earnings plummet come May 01, 2009 I would have been a fool to believe this was a coincidence, and of course I visited the ePN forums reading other's accounts of the same decreases.

gadgets4medics: OK, you have a point. However, I would expect to see a gradual slide - not a collision into a wall.

smorgasboardofgames: My Amazon ratio has increased to 54 sales per 100 clicks this month. This month's eBay ratio is now down to less than 2 sales per 100 clicks. I reported this problem way back near the beginning of the month when I had not even received a Bid (much less a Winning Bid) by May 7th ... highly unusual.

epnmonkey: It’s really anyone’s guess as to what’s happening this month, it’s as people are only window shopping. Clicks are there but there’s just no bidding going on.

tbtoys: Over the last four days or so I am getting high numbers of clicks reported but zero earnings. This is new and I have not seen this before.

kimmothy: I just went and looked at my clicks/earnings graph in the epn user dashboard and noticed what I would call a pattern of cr*p earnings days...mon/tue/wed seem to be repeating cr*p earnings days in the month of may....

> > Blues are clicks, Oranges are bids.
> > Watch as the orange floats down to earth around the end of april...
>
> Presumably you mean May
>
> From your graph it looks like your bids are dropping at about the same rate as your clicks, (apart from the click spikes which are probably bot activity)
>
> It looks like your bid/click activity was better in March and April than in February and May, cyclic ups and down are usual due to seasonal and economic issues, also niche markets tend to vary across the year, Nothing unusual.
>
> There isn't any evidence in your graph of a tracking problem, it's just easier for you to think there is.
>
> Have you investigated your server stats? probably not. You really need to do so before pointing a finger anywhere else.
>
> Where does your traffic come from? Has your traffic decreased from one or more sources? How are your serps?, are you getting search engine referrals? There are lots of questions to answer before you can realistically come to any conclusions.

Traffic is around 85% from organic search results.

Traffic comes into 5 differing niche sites.

Yes i've absolutely ontop of 'server stats'. I run woopra which shows real time activity.

Most of what you've brought up, i've already looked into.

Could it be seasonal? Absolutely. If so, it's happening in the US only... as my Australian clicks to bids has no decline whatsoever in May.

Normally i'm used to ups and downs. But May has been consistently down. Yes clicks are slightly down, but on average, click to bid ratio has dropped considerably. Have a look at the graph from the start of may. It's quite clear.

Having numerous other veterans on here saying the exact same thing leads me to question the reasons why this is happening.

Thanks for your input, but your assumptions as to what i have and haven't looked at are incorrect.

Blues are clicks, Oranges are bids. Watch as the orange floats down to earth around the end of april...