It’s unclear at this point exactly how these changes will affect things but it has created a lot of worry about where eBay is headed with this and exactly what they mean about the traffic you send being ‘engaged’ with eBay.

I suspect it’s their form of “smart pricing” for low quality traffic but instead of dropping earnings they kick out the affiliate, apparently permanently.

It seems very hard to discern a pattern as to who’s getting dumped … both big & small producers seem to have gotten the bad news email.

And it avoids you making the mistake of leaving the BANS footprint everywhere which could get you penalized by Google.

Thanks for the good info about the new EPN guidelines.. Going to have to re-think the cheap stuff I’m pushing..??

-Corey

Over the past few years eBay has been wanting to be more like Amazon so I think you have a point there. eBay will tend to favor big producers who they think provide a good buyer experience, whether it’s power sellers or affiliates. It would be good to have some objective criteria we could use though.

It’s not clear yet exactly how eBay will be grading ACRU’s. A BANS site could get quality ACRU’s with repeat customers. It’s just unclear at this point exactly how eBay will be grading your sites. At least we’ll have some lead time to figure it out since they won’t start the pricing scheme until November on existing accounts.

The lower ACRU’s are probably due somewhat to the time of year, which is traditionally slow on eBay, along with high gasoline prices and the uncertain economy. When I sold on eBay, the summer months were the worse time. Autumn, leading up to Christmas was usually very good and, after a short post-Christmas slump, things picked back up again until May/June.

eBay doesn’t seem to count as many ACRU’s as CJ did. They want to keep tight control on this since it was abused so much in the past.

It’s their business and they can very well do what they want, however, quality ratings based upon some unknown criteria is, well a little suspect. Any honest traffic that I strategically bring to their marketplace at my expense is of good quality whether they’re repeat buyers or not. Especially in today’s market economy.

If they want to change their ACRU payout then so be it. They certainly don’t need to base it on some half baked reason. Just do like big Google and offer no reason at all for any changes.

splork