Your response to this will no doubt depend largely on how your earnings have been affected by EPN’s new QCP system, which officially came on line at the beginning of October. I assume you are up-to-date with these changes - if not, then wander over to the official EPN forum to see what all the fuss is about.
I have kept quiet on the subject so far, but am now interested to hear how WordBay users are faring under the new system. Since our model is very similar I wonder whether there are any similarities in our performance (that’s assuming almost everyone has not suffered under QCP, as the cynical amongst us might be inclined to think) or whether the niche has more influence over our performance under QCP than the business model.
My experience so far
Here is a summary of what I have seen with QPC since the preview earnings appeared on August 18th. I am just showing figures for US eBay as my earnings with other programs are far less. Bear in mind I am paid in pounds sterling, so multiply my EPC by about 1.6 to get USD (at time of writing and rock-bottom pound!)
August seemed positive as it turned out my real EPC was pretty appalling - 0.01 GBP - and QCP was set to almost double my earnings, at least for that part of August, as it was showing an overall QCP EPC of 0.02, though I now realise this was pretty dire still. I have never been a big EPC-watcher (hey, who cares, as long as I am earning a few shekels every month, right?) but I now see that my EPC has been averaging about 0.03 GBP since EPN began.
Weird things noticed: strange patterns in QCP EPC over August, with almost all campaigns showing the same EPC for any given day, but varying over the month, so that EPC was a high as 0.04 some days, but ended August on 0.01 again for all campaigns. Now how can that be possible? Surely QCP is calculated on a per campaign basis! So how can all my campaigns show the same EPC on a given day, including my “generosity” campaign, which lumps together earnings from all “generous” users of WordBay who share revenue with me and operate an extremely diverse range of niche sites which cannot all be performing the same!
One theory was that this is the “pooling” effect, whereby small publishers are lumped together and given a default EPC which could display this behaviour, but I soon found out that a small publisher is defined as having an average of 20 clicks or less per day and I certainly have a BIT more than that (though not exponentially more)!
Still, I could handle my earnings doubling under QCP, was my overall assessment!
September
Started off with a terrible EPC of 0.01, but gradually rose until I had a couple of days with 0.08 and 0.09, i.e. about $0.14 USD - FAR more respectable - but then things slid back to 0.02 by the last day of the month, giving me an average of 0.04, as compared to a “real” EPC of 0.05 (strange improvement there in my actual EPC). So I was only going to be down 15% or so, I could still live with that. However, the strange pattern of consistent daily EPC across campaigns continued, and no explanation has been forthcoming on the EPN forums, despite a number of other publishers reporting the same effect.
October
QCP is live! What is going to happen, we wonder. It would be nice to see mostly those 0.08 days happening but… what do you know? EPC has kicked off at 0.02 and just peaked at 0.03 the first few days of October, dropped back to 0.01 and I have a sinking feeling… Whatever the explanation for those big paying days, it seems that a maximum of 0.03 EPC is going to be the order of the day for me under QCP. Downloading the transaction reports (make sure you download the All Events one), I see that this is considerably less than I would have earned, with a number of good-paying Winning Bids starting the month off. The most I can hope is that these will translate to an improved EPC later in the month…
So what now?
Well, the jury is still out on QCP for me. I can wait a few more months to see where this is really going but I am not entirely optimistic. Yes, like most EPN publishers I think the system is unfair, untransparent and ultimately less rewarding for many (most?) publishers. EPN WAS a very generous affiliate program, I must admit - easily my best earner and one of the highest-paying out there. I imagine eBay were getting robbed blind by black-hatters gaming the ACRU system and probably there has been a very common-sense business decision behind the introduction of the new system - simply put, they were probably paying out too much to affiliates and not seeing the best return, and this is their way of taking control of this, and in a way, one can’t blame them for this.
However, what will grate with many of us is the lack of transparency and the disconnect between the sales we are bringing in and what EPN is actually paying us. Ultimately many of us will NOT be encouraged to invest further in trying to figure out what on earth is being asked of us with QCP, and we will vote with our feet - frankly I can make a lot more than 0.03 EPC from good old Adsense, without standing on my head trying to figure out QCP…
What now for WordBay?
It DOES seem that the business model of sites using WordBay (which is pretty similar whatever the niche, let’s face it) does not bring in the mysterious “quality” that eBay is looking for, though maybe you will set me straight. I am surprised at this. The visitor Googles for “buy antique Persian love-god figurines”, comes to your site, clicks the exact item they are interested in, bids for this item on eBay soon after clicking through… Surely this is “quality”, as opposed to sending random potential customers through banner links? From my results it seems not…
So I have to apologise to all those who are waiting for me to add their favourite feature to WB, or to correct their favourite bug (I know, I know, there are a few emails and comments I have not responded to) - until I see what is going to happen with my EPN earnings in the next few months I am really not motivated to invest time in WordBay. At the moment Wordbay seems to work fine, with no major bugs, and no changes I introduce now are likely to affect QCP EPC greatly (well, what does affect it, we wonder…), so I hope you can live with that for now.
On the plus side, I am looking into what I could adapt Wordbay for - something similar could be written to work with Commission Junction, Amazon, or a host of other affiliate programs which offer web services. But it would take a bit of work, and I would have to find a way to monetise it, otherwise I cannot justify the work put in - especially not with a baby due very soon and the budget about to get a whole lot tighter! My wild coding days are over, I fear!
I would love to hear your experiences so far with QCP, your moans and gripes, your amazing success stories, and your ideas of how we as small-time niche-site owners can survive this and perhaps take the Wordbay idea somewhere else, where it will earn us enough to keep us in Persian love-god figurines for many years to come!
Posted on October 5th, 2009 by markowe
Filed under: Uncategorized
First and most importantly: my warm congratulations to Mrs markowe and yourself.
Secondly, personally I’m just going with the flow. While I liked the transparency of the old system (and the fact I could see exactly what my visitors were buying - I liked knowing that folks are actually buying the items I link to rather than being passing eBay users). The new system seems to be paying out a lot more. My projected earning with QCP were more than double my actual earning, this month so far seems to reflect that as well, but it’s really really early days. Also the items I sell are low value, £20 max.
FYI: my EPC figures in GBP are: July 0.04, Aug 0.02, Sept 0.02, Oct 0.07
As for your comment about a WordBay sites not driving quality clicks, I’m unsure. Currently the site with the highest EPC (0.09) is a purely automatically generated thin affiliate script, the site has been penalized by google but I still manage to get at least 200 eBay clicks from it, even though I can’t remember the last time I actually got a sale from them. Compare that to the niche sites I run with unique content, my main three sites are at the top of page one SERP, receive highly targeted organic traffic (in some cases the items are available only on eBay)…these sites get much fewer clicks but generate much more actual sales from the items advertised but that site’s EPC is only 0.02.
I say let’s wait it out before making any decisions, but looking for and implementing additional revenue streams is always a good idea.
My October epc started off at €0.01 then slowly grew to €0.08 which isn’t bad. especially with over 400 clicks per day. BUT the problem i have is i don’t know whether to remove ebay products from all my poorly perfoming sites or leave them and see what happens.
Update to my post. Seems that my spammy auto-generated site *is* generating sales, so that would explain why it’s got a EPC of 0.09GBP. (only just discovered you can still get the reports showing sales - just download all events and filter out the stuff you don’t want)
@Mark: It’s beginning to look like the EPC is set per campaign rather than per account. When I run a report by campaign(every single site and sub-domain I have has it’s own campaign…a pain to set up but it allows me to see **exactly** were my revenue is coming from) I can see the sites that do generate sales getting a higher EPC than ones that don’t. So your poorly performing sites are not dragging your account and EPC down…they are just poorly performing.
All in all, it’s still looking good for me. Nine days into the month I’ve made twice the amount I made the whole of last month. (but that’s more an indication of how little I make through eBay)
Thanks for your comments, still seems to be a widely-varying experience…
@Chuck - oh yes, EPC IS determined per campaign, the overall EPC is just an average of that, as I understand it. I have had separate campaigns for my various sites all along so I can see which ones are doing badly. Yes, that’s a point, it surely doesn’t matter per se if one campaign is performing badly, it doesn’t actually affect the performance of the other campaigns, just the overall EPC, though there is talk of EPN booting you if you have a consistently low EPC overall… Now, why ALL my campaigns have such a low EPC is harder to explain, including the ones making a number of decent sales. At the rate I am now going in October, my earnings will be down at least 50%… Not happy… Right now I am brushing up my programming skills to come up with ways to access other programs like CJ etc. But eBay IS such a goldmine of stuff, it’s hard to beat…
[…] have had this problem - while I am not actively developing WordBay at the moment due to the “QCP crisis” I don’t want to leave WB users in the lurch if there is some kind of […]
Markowe
How about developing WordBay into a Wp-robot style comparison script?
e.g. the css creates a grid layout and either by row or column there are multiple outlets
potential feed suppliers could be -
Amazon
Bonanzle
Clickbank
eBay
eBid (via ClixGalore affiliate agency)
plus the merchants in the big agencies with RSS product feeds, the agencies I know that have these include -
CJ
ClixGalore
Affiliate Future
AdBrite
It’d be a big job, but in the long run it would allow you (and WordBay users) to do what the mass of eBay sellers have been driven into to doing over the last three years - diversify to other channels, and in the case of many of eBay’s longest serving sellers, abandon the platform entirely.
If ePN are going to become increasingly opaque about results and performance data, and generally obfuscate and deploy smoke and mirrors, in the same way as eBay itself, then starting a diversification plan early is the best move. Yes it’s a lot of work, yes it can be painful in a number of ways, but those who did it early are now reporting far more elevated incomes than they ever achieved on eBay alone.
Something to think about?
Gaz
Gaz, you’re absolutely right, and I have certainly thought very much along the lines you have regarding a comparison script. I would LOVE to produce something like that (my mouth waters at the thought!) and I have the experience to do so after developing WordBay and http://www.storeminator.com, and some other ongoing stuff.
But you’re right, it’s a pretty huge job, especially aggregating data from such a diverse range of feeds. Some of them are accessible “live” via an API, while with others you have to import the feeds into your database. This all has to be automated. Then, they all have differing fields, so you have to “map” them all to a unified set of fields to compare on. If anything changes to the structure of any of the feeds, you have to be (or rather, I have to be) on the ball to catch those very quickly. Having said all that, there are paying third-party feed aggregation services which could shoulder most of this load.
Then there is the question of support - I barely have time to support WordBay properly, that’s why it’s free. It would also take a long time to write and I would have to find a way to monetise it, other than charging for it.
So there are a lot of obstacles, but I like the idea and fancy giving it a go sometime soon!
P.S. By the way, have you come across this: http://www.affilistore.com/
It does something along those lines, though creates a standalone site rather than working as a Wordpress plugin. They monetise it via some sort of footer link that you have to pay to remove. I haven’t quite grasped how you import the feeds, maybe I will download and have a fiddle. I don’t want to reinvent the wheel..!
Gaz- you rock! I’ve never heard of Bonanzle before, but they do carry a number of items that I though were only available on eBay. Since I started a site to take advantage of those items’ limited availability one week before ePN announced their QCP standard, I’ve been letting that site simmer as I try to find an alternative income producer. Bonanzle doesn’t have EVERYTHING that I was pushing, but enough that I can start switching ads out. Thank you!
Yes, thanks for the Bonanzle tip, I finally got round to checking them out. They have an affiliate program and an API which is still in BETA. I have applied for this and will see how the whole thing works. Maybe I can rig something up
Though the feed/API format is a little different to eBay’s (JSON rather than XML, bah, never worked with JSON before, but I suppose it’s time I did…)
WordVixen - glad my comments could help - what product line are you into? I like to hear what nihes others are targeting, so I can cross them off my own to-do list, and concentrate on those that others haven’t tried yet.
Markowe
Was thinking about the all channels idea - perhaps modularising it, so that each channel is in fact a plugin to a core plugin might be the way to go?
e.g. build a renamed “FeedBay” and WordBay becomes one module of that, then you have a Wordazon module, a Wordanzle module and so on
The idea being that each module takes the source feed, restructures the data to a standard format to FeedBay (might even simply use RSS to grab it instead of an API) - then when one of the sources change their stuff, you only have that one module to fix, not the entire package.
Modularising it would also allow users to pick and choose which ones they wanted to work with (and help differentiation between user sites) - once critical adoption mass was built up, you could contact the source providers direct, point out your user base volume, and ask for an over-ride affiliate account such that you were getting a few percent of all payouts to affiliates arriving via your plugins - this is how big aggregators (like Media Whizz / ShoppingAds) operate and monetise.
Gaz
p.s. - re Affilistore’s link in footer - haven’t looked at their terms yet but in open source I spotted a new trend - leave the link intact and overlay it with a graphic so it’s not visible, by using the align-z command for divs or td’s
Not exactly in the spirit of accreditation, but better than stripping the link entirely (which I always to do if they encrypt the link in the footer - leave it human readable or have it removed is my policy on the script source code.)
Gaz, sounds like a serious project! Yes, I could see how a structure for that would work out, it would mean brushing up my object-orientated programming big time! Would mean seriously stretching the Wordpress extension model too! Then of course it would need a fancy AJAXy backend, ahem… Would love to do something like that though…
I like the monetising idea too, though to do that I think you really need to be acting as a proxy for the feeds in some way, I can’t just say, “Hey, look, loads of customers are coming to you via my software, give me some money”! Mind you, worth a try I suppose
That link “cloaking” (that literally IS cloaking!) sounds like something Google wouldn’t approve of - hidden links meant purely for SEO with no user value.
As my Gran used to say, “if you don’t ask, you don’t get” - LOL - I’d say it’s very much worth a try, especially with ePN as they’ve been hot to trot with their Developers Network program the last couple of years - plus if you monitor their listing promotions and stuff closely, you can see they’re getting desperate at eBay and I reckon they’re reaping all the “benefits” of hammering their sellers for the last 3-4 years. Thus an idea like this might just make them bite.
Re: json - watch out for the hockey mask and machete - LOL - you might need to get Freddie to help you with that.
Gaz
Aargh - what is wrong with me today?
p.s. forgot to say - if you need someone to help with alpha and eta testing on a step by step basis - gimme a shout, I’ve got a couple of development installs on different hosts and would be happy to work with you on it.
I’ve also got a rough script for working with the eBid feeds to build wordbay style widgets (widgets not template tags) though it needs work to get it working with their affiliate system, though that only earns if someone buys their seller+ subscription, however, it might be worth a try to take it direct to the sellers and offer a way for them to be included if they pay a subscription to have their products listed.