With the latest blunder of ePN (eBay) in coming up with a "magic 8 ball" algorithm of determining how affiliates will get paid, many affiliates are moving out of promoting eBay and promoting their own auction type websites.

One website, discovered in Northeast Pennsylvania, was given space in a newspaper covering 5 counties of the 10 counties that this website serves. The Times-News gave page 5 space to this little start-up website in the article about the site they published on October 9, 2009.

The difference with the new website? It is free to members. No listing fees, no final value fees, and no corporate greed. It survives on advertising and donations alone.

It seems to be a new approach in providing a service to a local community, rather than a raping of the entire world in order to keep profits up and please stockholders.

The only catch? You must be resident of one of the 10 counties it serves in NEPA.

The website seems to have covered its' butt in competing with eBay. It has an entirely different look, so there is no mistaking it for an eBay site - something eBay has argued in court to close down such start-up auction sites. In fact, it openly states that it is not eBay and blares to all its' denouncement of eBay on the landing page. It displays no advertising from eBay and any traffic it directs to another selling platform is that of Amazon.com.

It also does something eBay does not. It offers free listings for yard sales, free items, and for sale items, which takes on the likes of Craig's List and Freecycle - both of which are having problems of their own because of their size.

The interesting thing about the webmaster is that he was a former member of eBay as a seller and as an affiliate who used to promote eBay. It seems ePN has really pissed off a group of developers who are fighting back.

Sure, one little website isn't a pimple on the ass of ePN at the moment, but what will happen when 1, 2, or even 5 years down the road when a mass of developers begin to realize that a huge well of dissatisfied eBay affiliates are chomping at the bit to create a platform that they can control and offer the same services as eBay. Not on a grand scale, which would be overwhelming for one individual, but on a smaller scale serving their own area.

Those little pimples would turn into a festering sore for eBay.

And is this little website offering auctions and sale items the only one in existence? Hardly. Buried in Google returns are a number of small websites offering similar services. However, the failure of those sites in becoming populated is that they try to compete with eBay, in that they charge for listings and want to charge fees similar to eBay. Not likely to happen. Once they change their thinking, however, and opt for a more rational approach to attract users, eBay will be looking at a monster (actually little monsters) with teeth, all taking tiny bites out of ePN. One mosquito isn't a bother. Thousands of mosquitoes can ruin your day.

Since we're on the subject of eBay and ePN, let's review their latest scheme to screw affiliates. Their newest program is called QCP. Rather than pay you a percentage of the earnings from sales, ePN now pays you for worth of all clicks sent them, in which a sale resulted. In theory, if you sent them 100 clicks resulting in $10 of your share in revenue, each click would be worth 10 cents. That isn't the way it works.

ePN determines what they think your clicks are worth - and they won't reveal how they are coming up with a determination. It's a secret. Affiliates have now begun calling it the "Magic 8 Ball Algo" because they are earning far less under the new program than they were previously with no explanation of why it is so. And this M8BA is done on a daily basis, determining the clicks worth the day after sales are made.

Affiliates are leaving in droves and pushing visitors to eBay competitors. Is it any wonder?

If ePN thought this would result in higher profits they may be correct for the first quarter of reportings to stockholders. After that I guarantee their revenue will show a huge nosedive.

ePN needs affiliates more than affiliates need ePN (no matter what ePN may think). eBay may believe they have the upper hand being a household name, but they will soon learn that without affiliates sending them traffic, they may have to squeeze their sellers to make up for losses, beyond the limits of tolerance - by increasing fees to a point where even they will say, "No mas!".