How To Get Accepted To The eBay Affiliate Program (ePN)
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The eBay Affiliate Program is one of the best ways to make money as an affiliate, but eBay has become very selective about who it allows to enter its program. To improve your odds of being accepted, make sure your site is fully developed before you apply. Ebay has become very “snobbish“ since they took their affiliate program in-house and away from Commission Junction. Most webmasters have determined that eBay seems to favor a certain standard.
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The following is a checklist to help you get into the eBay affiliate program (ePN). Though it seems like a lot of work, you only need to do it once. You need not get approval for any other websites you build, though you do need to keep those websites within the guidelines of the affiliate contract you agreed to.
Always have the following before you apply:
1.) At least 30 articles of original content about the niche your website covers - eBay wants to make sure you are building a website that is likely to attract repeat business and not solely concerned with making money (right!).
2.) No other ads - do NOT have any adsense or ANY affiliate banners/links on your website. eBay, for reasons that likely reflect their desire to be the lone player on your website, really dislike these features. Have your website free of these monetization methods when you apply. Once you are approved, however, it’s fine to add the other money making affiliates you join.
3.) A Privacy Policy - eBay despises spammers and a privacy policy makes you legitimate. Many good privacy policies can be found. Simply copy and paste one to your website, changing the name used, to your own website name.
4.) Add a “Contact” page - this also makes you more legitimate. It need only be a page with a working email address, but should be easily found.
5.) Multimedia of some type - add videos, pictures, polls, or something other than just text. You want the overall appearance of your website to look nice and will cause people to eventually find eBay through your site, resulting in a purchase.
6.) Though debatable, some webmasters believe your odds of acceptance can be improved by actually becoming a member of the eBay auction site. Personally, I don’t give it much weight, but perhaps they do cross-reference their database to see how involved you are with eBay. In any event, I suppose it can’t hurt to join. If you are not already a member of eBay you can register.
When these guidelines are followed to the letter, few people fail to be accepted due to their website. Most often it is for other reasons (such as having been previously banned), or having obtained an “aged” domain name that was banned from the eBay affiliate program.
Regrettably, eBay has a bad policy of not telling people exactly why they weren’t accepted. Hopefully that won’t be a concern for you. If you follow the guidelines above, it shouldn’t be.
For more tips and advice about websites and affiliate marketing, visit ShortBusWebmasters.
CommentsLoading...
being 'snobbish' will bring the downfall one day
I agree. Their decisions made over the last year and a half have been ill-conceived and have obviously affected them negatively as affiliates are driving traffic toward companies who treat them better (such as Amazon).
It is frustrating that ebay are so snobbish and amazon have a very short cookie life span :/. I have also heard a few good horror stories about ebay taking earnings away from affiliates when shutting down their account and the reasons are murky at best.... All in all we need something better.
I wish I knew why Amazon won't change their cookie. They use a 1-day/guillotine cookie, which means if the person completes an order the cookie is killed. So if the person decides to order something else that same day - you don't get anything for the second order. It is the absolute worst cookie they could give.
If they changed their cookie to even 7 days (getting rid of the guillotine) they would kick eBay's ass with all the affiliates that would migrate to them!
Those horror stories about eBay canning affiliates is very true. Also, eBay seems to have a problem with affiliates who run successful PPC campaigns using Adwords. It is believed eBay doesn't like the competition in PPC.
I've tried to get into eBay EPN for months and months. Did pretty much all of the above and still no luck. A while back I simply gave up and signed up with ShareASale. I'm pretty happy with them.
If only Amazon increased the length of their cookies... I'm sure loads of people would leave eBay for sure. But 24h is just too short.
Thank you for the great guide. Currently working on a niche website in hopes of getting into ebay affiliates - I'm hoping that having ebay AND amazon on my hubs might increase clicks.
Good and concise. Ebay is quite strict about website approval.
rosie 2 years ago
Well now this give me a clear reason why I was banned. Also, explains why they did not tell me the reason for rejection. Thanks for sharing this. Thank you very much.