With “Partnerships” like that… it REALLY made me consider the time investment I have in ePN sites.  I decided to review my ePN sites to find the QUICKEST WAYS to increase EPN earnings… this is what I found.

Tips from eBay Itself

As each of us review our network of websites to find hints of information that will help us deliver the best type of traffic to the ebay partner network, we also keep an ear on the ePN Blog, hoping they will release a nugget of “Solid” information, that will help us out a bit… I DO give them credit for trying, but the info they are sharing is confusing me, more than helping!

As much as I hate to say it… I spend more time measuring the effectiveness of  alternatives to eBay Partner Network, versus improving my ePN sites.

eBay Showing Their Hand?

In a post on their blog last week – they gave an example of an EPN affiliate Best Practices scenario, where a marketing firm with 3-4 million unique monthly visitors, has implemented a few small changes and now thrives in the partner network.

Just to put that into perspective, I will take one of my own busiest sites – which gets about 35,000 unique monthly visitors. Using my site as the baseline multiplier – what does 3-4 million unique visitors translate to?

1. 3-4 million unique visitors = Approximately 9-12 MILLION visits. (Mine averages 3 visits per visitor, 4.3 pages per visit)
2. 9-12 million visits = Approximately 43 MILLION monthly pageviews (10 mill x 4.3 pages per visit avg)

Now I just have to ask… how many of you have an estimated 43 million monthly pageviews? This example they provided is a FAR step from ANYTHING that the majority of ePN affiliates experience! Congrats to the Marketing Company doing this, but my guess is that they are in the “less than 3%” crowd.

This is like walking into your local bank for some financial advice, and they lay out a plan so you can invest just like Donald Trump! Unless YOU have the same backend funding or traffic, you are never going to achieve the same front end results!

Summary – This example was no help at all!

A More Realistic Example of ePN Quality Click Pricing

The next day, another post was published, showing the importance of Geo-Targeting your visitors. I don’t know how many of you picked up on this – but if you look at the example they use:

1. Affiliate A – Raised EPC from .04 epc to .06 epc.
2. Affiliate B – Raised it from .02 epc to .08 epc.

Just being real here – .06 and .08 epc is BAD. The better thing they could have done for these affiliates, was advise them of a different program! Of course, if you are getting several hundred thousand clicks/month, its OK right?… NO ITS NOT!

Lets Face It – Whether you send 100 clicks or 500,000 clicks, .08 cents per click SUCKS if you can get .15 cents per click by simply changing to a different program!

This was a BAD example to use, but my guess is that its like this for the “Majority of Affiliates”. My own stats range from .16 epc on higher traffic sites to .24 on a lower traffic site. On the few sites I had that were in the -.10 cpc range, I pulled ePN off and replaced them with AdSense or other ads!

Easiest Way To Increase your EPN Earnings

I LITERALLY increased EPC from .11 cpc to .28 cpc, a 160% Increase, by pulling down ePN ads and using Adsense!

That busy site of mine with approximately 450,000 monthly pageviews was earning .11 cpc (Thats “cents per click”) at ePN. Auctions were removed and replaced with adsense, which earns an average of .28 cpc. So – instead of spending weeks and months testing – or guessing – at what kind of traffic ePN wants, I solved it one mouse click!

Adsense is NOT perfect by any means – but at least I know how to increase earnings with them… more traffic=more earnings. With ePN sites, it seems my higher traffic sites earn MUCH less per click than others. Whats worse… if I invest 100 hours into figuring it out, I MIGHT be dropped from the network tomorrow anyway!

Finally – Whats the Point of This Post?

Don’t bang you head on the wall trying to please “The Man” at ePN. Explore your options before you spend 2 weeks optimizing a site for ePN only to find out your target is .08 cents per click!

IF ePN earns you more for YOUR Traffic – keep them! If not, don’t hesitate to break your partnership with them…

</ rant>

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I mean – its really a catch-22 now with ePN – on one hand, you have to send a lot of traffic to make good money, and on the other… the more traffic you send, the lower your EPC value. Yawn…. b-o-r-i-n-g!

The Good Old Days of a GREAT Affiliate Network

I know – I’m posting that title like it was years ago… in effect, with the speed that eBay has made changes over the past 18 months, it was!

“Back in the Day” – I had this great site that focused (still does) on teaching consumers the ins and outs of a specific, highly targeted, high paying niche. Once I had their attention and had them ready to buy exactly what they needed, I sent them over to eBay to buy that EXACT item, which usually cost $900-$6000! There was nothing better than logging into my ePN account to find that 2-3 referrals bought exactly what I suggested and see that fat commission of $200-$300 for that single campaign on that single day! Wow… have the times changed…

Someone Wake Me Up When eBay Comes Back Around…

Its just Boring now… and heck, I’m in the 30% crowd that is earning MORE in the new system!

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In an unpredictable and somewhat sudden move… BANS is no longer for sale! :-) In an email received just a short while ago, Adam and Kelvin confirmed that they have decided to preserve the namesake and instead of letting BANS go off the deep end to someone who would simply market to the user base, they have chosen to refocus, and rebuild!

Just as I was happy last week, when they made the choice to sell it for further development, I am very glad now, that they decided to keep it themselves, and develop it themselves!

From the email:

The last thing we wanted was a scallywag ClickBank marketer snapping
it up at $100,000 draining the project for short term cash and
basically killing all the work we’ve put into it.

With an eye on the future the reality is that BANS is severely
outdated – not today as we and Mark Hansen have illustrated but over a
3 to 5 year timescale.

Whats All This About? Huh?

Many of you are probably as confused as Flippa buyers – but I actually “Get” where Adam and Kelvin are coming from. I would be lying to you if I said I hadn’t thought of selling this site over the past 2 years…and chose not to do so, simply because I didn’t want to alienate those who started as readers… and eventually became friends!

They started as site builders… much like myself. They built websites and actually HAD FUN building those sites and converting their skills into residual income! It’s what ALL OF US are trying to do better and better every day! Well, during their own time of building, they decided to hire a developer and have a simple script built that would simply help THEM build more sites to ultimately earn them more money. It wasn’t meant to be a “Made for the Masses” script… just a little tool in their own arsenal, to help them be more productive.

Eventually, and by popular demand of a few people they decided to share it with… that script became known as Build a Niche Store…you know the rest! At some point after that transition, they no longer built sites for the fun and challenge… they had now become software developers with 10,000 people relying on them to provide the next great thing!

Restructuring the Entire Business Model!

There is WAY too much for me to type about in this email – but you will have already, or very shortly, be getting one yourself! Adam and Kelvin have already begun talking with a team of developers and opened a separate forum within the BANS community to start working toward a new product, based on what people want!

Some changes will occur fast… others, 6 months down the road!

In the end… this is another step in the right direction for all of us!

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It all begs the question… Why would someone WANT to Buy Build a Niche Store?

The Value of Owning Build a Niche Store

Think of BANS for a moment… who was the target buyer of the product? In my opinion, Build a Niche Store was primarily targeted at new to moderately skilled people, who wanted to get into building their own network of affiliates with a minimum learning curve. To that extent, it has become one of the most successful Niche Affiliate Site Building packages in the marketplace and has a very large user base of people who are starving for more information on how to make money online!

Looking at the BANS Auction on Flippa, you can see that they mention over 10,000 customers of the product! To anyone who wants to build onto the BANS product, that is like having an audience of +10,000 people just waiting for you to open the doors to a new store with the EXACT product they are looking for! Assume for a minute someone developed a new version of BANS and sold it for $50. With a sell rate of only 25%, that’s an overnight income of $125,000 – believe me, if the new owner builds the right product, people will JUMP at it!

Who Will Buy BANS – Will it Be Me?

This was a common question in about half of the emails… and as much as I would love to say yes, the truth is, I simply don’t have that kind of money sitting around! I mean, cmon, its a half-million dollars… I saw where someone else posted they were considering buying BANS, but since they don’t know php, it’s not going to happen. Lets be real here, the buyer of Build a Niche Store is not going to be a programmer, blogger, or affiliate website builder… they are already going to have a team of programmers behind them, ready to build a new platform. If you have a half-million dollars of investment capital in the bank for the purchase, you have another $20,000 to get your ideas programmed into a new application.

The buyer(s) of the Build a Niche Store and N1Way systems are going to be seasoned business people, that recognize the value of this transaction is in its existing user base and platform popularity! They will have a solid business plan in place and listen to the needs of the community on what the new platform should do for them.

The new owners will understand that the majority of BANS users are primarily entry level site builders and need a simple to use and quick to launch engine for building affiliate websites with the least amount of learning curve!

What Should the New BANS Look Like?

I can sum this up in one sentence… “Nothing Like it Does Right Now!”

BANS was and still is a GREAT product for its time – but it has suffered from negative press and is somewhat limited in its functionality with all the other options out there in the marketplace.

When the new owners come along – they should recognize that eBay has soured quite a bit of its own affiliate base, and the new product should be rebuilt from the ground up! There are a lot of partner opportunities out there for affiliates and when, and IF Build a Niche Store resurfaces after an ownership change, I would expect to see a GREAT product, built upon a mix of feedback of seasoned affiliates and new site builders alike!

What are Your Thoughts?

Assuming that the new owners may just end up on this post one day… if you could build the next “Latest and Greatest Affiliate Site Builder”, what would it have in it?

Be real… lets give the new owners something to build!

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Check out the Build a Niche Store auction on Flippa

From Adam and Kelvin:

After much deliberation BANS, N1WAY and a host of supporting domains
and project concepts have been put up for sale.

We’ve done as much as we can in niche site building and are looking
for an enthusiastic individual or team that wants to build on the 3
year foundation we’ve put together.

This is BIG NEWS – and it should be a VERY interesting auction to follow!

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