Obviously there has been much talk about this, both in the Phpbay Pro forums (users only) as well as the EPN forums. And whilst the “pinks” (EPN staff) have been especially helpful (another dose of sarcasm would be appropriate here), there still remains some confusion over how it all works. So, that begs the question, how does this all work? I’ll be honest here and tell you – I’m not exactly sure - however, I can speculate from reading many threads and posts from other members that quantity over quaility is best, quite contrary to the name which EPN has given to their new “system” (Derren Brown would be proud). It seems one of the things coming in from EPN affiliates is that you need to make up the shortfall in EPN earnings with enormous amounts of clicks as opposed to more quaility traffic.

I have however, waded through all the FUD and have the following tips (disclaimer: these may not work for you and it may change after October once EPN get their act together):

- some affiliates are grouping smaller campaigns into one bigger campaign, enhancing the higher click amount paid over multiple campaigns;

- try and get users to take action immediately after clicking the auction link, as according to eBay this is what determines “quality” traffic;

- don’t get ACRU’s (it appears that click earnings tank after this);

- “thick” (i.e. content-rich) affiliate sites may not be worth it over “thin” affiliate sites that generate lots of clicks; and

- low ticket items are preferable, as people click-and-buy these far more often than big-ticket items.

That being said, some affiliates are looking elsewhere, as pay-per-click programmes are not uncommon and some are reporting better earnings per click than EPN under the “enhanced” system. Some have recommended Chitika. With October approaching fast, it’s a good time to start thinking about it.
What are your thoughts? How are your earnings doing?

Related posts:

1. EPN RIP – 1 October 2009
2. Updates
3. Experiments with PPC and Ebay Partner Network

Of course, this does not include the 9 other clicks performed by visitors, so there may be some additional revenue there in the next 30 days, depending on whether those people purchase items on Ebay (and no other affiliates plant their cookie). In addition, it does not include the £5 fee which I paid to Google to get into Adwords.

My thoughts on the experiment? Not very scientific and it was really to get my feet wet with regards to EPN and PPC, but I would say it was a sucess in that I didn’t technically make a loss and I certainly learnt alot.

Related posts:

1. Updates
2. Fear uncertainty and doubt or what I think about eBay and QCP
3. PhpZon beta testing for Amazon affiliates

I duly signed up with Google Adwords, which was a doddle, gave them my credit card details (they take $5 or £5 from you just for signing up, depending on where in the world you are) and setup my first campaign. The first thing I did was set a daily or monthly limit (or budget), as this prevents Google from charging you a fortune in clicked advertisements. I chose a small amount, $5 per day. Keyword choice was my next endeavor – I decided to target specific keywords, so I included square brackets ( [ ]) around my keywords, meaning that the advert only displays when all of the keywords are typed into Google. One last task, I made that my campaign was paused as I did not have my actual target landing page in place yet.

With Adwords and my campaign set, next I purchased a domain name from my favorite provide, name.com. A quick setup of my virtual host (I’m using a VPS from Linode) and a Wordpress installation later I was good to go – except I needed a landing page template. After some Googling (and this being a bargain experiment) I settled on a free landing page I found, compliments of a user on the BlackHatWorld forums (download here). It’s relatively easy to setup and is very simple to use.

In terms of the landing page itself, I made sure that the following pages were present, as Google has some minimum requirements in place in terms of landing page quality.

- Sitemap, I used the Sitemap Generator Plugin for Wordpress to add this;
- Privacy Policy, used the Privacy Policy Plugin to generate this;
- Terms and Conditions, search the web for one of these specific to your country, I used this resource as a base;
- Contact Us, make sure you include a full physical postal address and telephone number; and
- About Us, use your imagination for this, be sure to include a description of the purpose of the website and the business operating it, most likely you.

I also included a “testimonial”, a reason to buy and a background on the item that the prospective buyer was looking for. I chose to include 4 auctions pertaining to the product I was promoting and left it at that. I then proceeded to test and retest the page to make sure it was all working, as you don’t want to send clicks you are paying for to a non-functional landing page.

I then proceeded to start the campaign and then ran a “tail -f access.log” from the command-line in order to observe the traffic activity. It certainly seemed that I chose the right niche, as my $5 was quickly used up in clicks. I left things running and the following day my $5 limit was reached again, within the first few hours of the monring. I ended up with a average cost per click of 0.35c which translated in approximately 28 visitors. The results? I’m not sure at this stage, as my EPN stats have not been updated, but I will certainly post an update when they are available.

Update: results here!

Suggestions? Ideas? Feedback? Please leave a comment!

Related posts:

1. Breaking even with EPN and PPC
2. Fear uncertainty and doubt or what I think about eBay and QCP
3. Google slaps or why you should diversify