ePN & Quality Click Pricing – Some Good Advice

Unfortunately I am a little behind with the news, it was my birthday on Monday and so I decided to give myself a few days off where I stayed away from the computer completely. Upon my return I was shocked to see that eBay Partner Network had announced to change their commission structure from CPA/Click Per Action to QCP/Quality Click Pricing.

The current CPA structure basically means that ePN pays you for sales and leads. With QCP affiliates will be paid for each click sent to and eBay site. I'm not going to go into the in's and out's of this as you can read the entire story over on the ePN Blog.

The emphasis from now on, as it has been with ACRU's, is going to be on the quality of traffic sent to eBay rather than the quantity. So don't think that as long as you get loads of click throughs then you will earn a bigger chunk of commission because this won't necessarily be the case. Although, as long as you are driving quality traffic to eBay there is no reason why you shouldn't earn more as a result of this change. Toward the end of this month there will be a link in your ePN account under the 'useful' links section which will allow you to see what you would have earned under the new QCP structure, enabling you to see if you need to make any improvements to your sites.

How Can You Ensure Top Quality Traffic & Higher EPC?

ePN have outlined some great tips on increasing your EPC by increasing the quality of traffic sent to their sites. These tips give you an idea of what sort of sites eBay are looking for from their publishers, the sites which send the highest quality traffic. To many of you these things won't be a surprise but they are a good reference point to keep in mind. The change will happen for all current affiliates on the 1St of October.

Tips for Building Quality Websites

Pick the right business model

• The sites which work best are those that get people interested in buying and they tend to be sites which are part of the shopping process or product oriented.  Examples of types of sites that work well are those where you can read reviews, compare prices, discover great deals and niche content sites.
• The sources of traffic to your site should be of high quality, whether you pay for it or it is organic.  If you have good quality traffic coming to your own site, this is likely to result in high quality traffic to eBay, but the reverse is also true.  Therefore, if you buy traffic to your site, ensure that is well targeted and try to optimise your site for SEO.  (Wil Reynolds has written a series of great guest blog posts on SEO, which we recommend you check out.)

Create a good user experience

• Develop relevant copy and regularly update it to keep your users interested.
• Encourage user-generated content, such as product reviews – this keeps people coming back.
• Integrate eBay listings into your site, as this generally performs better than static creatives or text links by themselves, unless text links are embedded into relevant content.
• Use the data you have about your visitors’ demographics and interests to showcase the most relevant listings.
• Always inform a user they are going to eBay.
• Do not offer your visitors an incentive to click on an eBay link.

Landing page optimization

• Use the geo-targeting functionality to ensure your traffic is directed to the most relevant eBay site.
• Consider which landing page on eBay you direct your traffic to carefully, as the eBay homepage is not always the best option.  For example:
  • If you are showing products using one of our tools, such as Custom Banner, try deep linking to the View Item Page.
  • If your content is about model cars, try linking to a model car search result page.
  • Use Advanced Search options to further target your landing pages.
  • Also, look out for more information on landing page optimization coming soon, where the eBay Partner Network will be helping you to further improve your traffic’s conversion.

Continually optimize and test, test, test!

• Try to give each placement or site a different campaign id, so you can monitor the metrics for each.
• The EPC at campaign level will be a great indicator of your traffic’s quality, so use it to focus on campaigns that are performing well and optimize those that are of lower quality.
• When testing new approaches, remember to set up a new campaign and start with a small volume of traffic, so you can check that the quality of the traffic is of a high enough level.
• Only when you know a new approach works, should you roll the changes to the rest of your site(s).

To see a quality built ePN website and to have your chance to win it for free you can visit Mark's N1Way Guide Blog.

Be Sociable, Share!

•