Doubts about Ebay Affiliate Program

[sweetheater]

How many posts/pages one should have in his/her site in order to get approved by Ebay as its affiliate partner? Can we feature products sold by other merchants in our site when we apply for Ebay Affiliate?

[bestchoice4life]

Great question I just recently tried to become a Ebay affiliate and they
denied me to I have blogs , websites back links, no broken links
professional themes that I paid for maybe it's because the sites are not generating huge amounts of traffic this has been my experience

[Brandon Mack]

Hi Sweetheater,

Over the years joining eBay's epn has proved more and more difficult and I hear more and more from affiliates that get the dreaded epn email telling them they are no longer an affiliate due to breaking one rule or another. It is proving harder and harder to be accepted by eBay, probably because there are large numbers that want to join and eBay can be choosy, which is my opinion is an incorrect way to run a business.

One thing that has flourished recently is the number of people or websites that now offer to build you your site and guarantee being accepted by epn. If you choose to go down this route I would advise you to be very careful, I am not saying they can’t get you accepted but I have heard good and bad in this field.

I would not recommend when applying for epn that you have “other” advertisers on your site at the time of your application, I would recommend unique content and anything from 7-10 articles (more if possible), make sure the niche you intend to use is of value to eBay and that eBay sellers are selling within that niche on eBay.

One last point you should consider: If you or others are having issues joining epn then consider an alternative option, I am a WPMage user and thin site user. Not to have all my eggs in one basket so to speak I transferred some of my WPMage sites (which are all eBay epn) to skimlinks, granted they take a cut but if the dreaded epn email arrives I can quickly transfer the sites as they are to Skimlinks. Getting your site accepted by Skimlinks can be difficult or so I have heard, however I have never had a problem in getting my sites through.

If you need any help relating to what you need to join then drop me a pm and I will point you to one or two of my approved sites.

Best regards and good luck

Jack

[Brandon Mack]

Sweetheater,

Sent you a pm.

Good Luck

Jack

[markowe]

Problem is, no-one can really tell you for SURE what EPN want from you when you are applying for the program, it's all a bit murky. I did write quite a long article about all the factors that I personally know of (think it's still linked in my sig), but the question of traffic I am still not 100% sure about. My feeling is that it could be a deciding factor, like, if your site sucks but you still have good traffic that might sway them, but if you have no traffic... hmm, well, maybe you should work on getting some traffic first anyway?

I build EPN sites (I mean for myself) by putting NO ads on there for the first few months and just working on producing some really great, useful content on the subject, and getting some traffic.

Check my article though because there are a bunch of other things people forget when applying to EPN, obvious stuff that you don't want to miss.

In general I would echo what others have said - don't put all your eggs in the EPN basket, it is a really quirky program. It can make you great moolah, but sometimes sales can tank for no reason, and there is that supposed risk of getting axed for no apparent reason. Why the heck would anyone even go with EPN, some will ask. Well, it's still a great source of niches that you can't get anywhere else, and when you are running $0.20 per click, and getting hundreds of clicks a day (remember, CTR is not an issue!) then you remember why EPN is worth a go...