Today is the one year anniversary of eBay taking over affiliate program from commission Junction. If you were a CJ user then you needed to move all your sites to ePN. We had 30 days. For some 30 days was enough, but for others who had thousands of links the 30 days wasn’t enough time. Fortunately ePN did give users another 30 days to complete their migration.

Within a few weeks after the migration we started to see posts on the ePN boards of accounts being closed. This sent many of us into a panic. Not knowing why these accounts were being closed we wondered if we were next. ePN wouldn’t say much except the site expired had unacceptable traffic being sent to eBay. Some were caught up in the expiration’s that shouldn’t have been. Most of these users where reinstated after manual review.

After pulling eBay teeth we finally heard that these sites were using cookie stuffing techniques along with other black hat methods.

It would seem eBay/ePN wasn’t ready either for the change. With a lack of responses from ePN on the forum and email we can only assume they didnt have the staff in place.

When the eBay Affiliate network was with CJ anyone wanting to be a eBAY affiliate could do so with no problem. Now it’s a different story. ePN has implemented a vetting process. eBay has decided they only want quality sites with their ads showing. Vetting has included closing unused ePN accounts and manual reviews before approving new ePN accounts.

 If your a eBay Partner Network user expect to see more changes. From what I can see most are for our own good.