Will eBay Partner Network's New Business Model Rules affect HubPages?

1. 59

   dawei888posted 14 years ago

   Dear All,
   
   On May 3 EPN published a post on its blog saying that there will be changes to its accepted business models and that EPN affiliates must only link to eBay from sites that they own. So, if I understand this correctly we can no longer link to EPN from HubPages. Here's the link:
   
   http://www.ebaypartnernetworkblog.com/e … ss-models/
   
   Here's my question: Can we still put EPN affiliate boxes in our hubs or do we have to put links in our hubs to sites we own, then link to eBay from there? Thanks
   
   -Dawei888 :-)

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2. 61

   popinterventionposted 14 years ago

   I'm new to this whole platform, and I'm not sure of the answer to this; however, I do know that one HUGE affiliate of Ebay had to go to charging it's clients for its services after Ebay made major overhauls to the affiliate program. That affiliate was acutiva. So when ebay says its changes won't really affect its partners, ebay is lying.
   
   The affiliate change not ony changed things for auctiva, but also for tons of ebay sellers who had to start paying auctiva or who had to go find other sources for their auction listings.

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3. 84

   embitcaposted 14 years ago

   I don't believe any of those categories apply to Hubpages. The first two are about pay per click advertising, which can no longer be done directly to Ebay. This was already not allowed from Google Adwords, Yahoo and MSN, but they've now expanded it to ban the practice from tier 2 sites like FindWhat.com, GoClick, etc. (it is all garbage traffic mostly, anyway)
   
   The second one refers to network media buys -- again, paid advertising. Basically Ebay is saying, "do not send paid advertising traffic directly to Ebay." They want the traffic filtered.
   
   The third, sub-affiliates, I believe would normally apply to something like Pepperjam and AuctionAds, but in that blog post EPN has actually mentioned them by name and said they are excluded from the new rule, so I can't even imagine what companies they are talking about since in the forum discussion over on Ebay all the big ones that people have named have been excluded LOL
   
   So the sub-affiliate model is the only one I'm unsure of, in terms of what kinds of companies that they are talking about. I think EPN is redefining the meaning of the word
   
   But I do know that we are not sub-affiliates on Hubpages. We each have our own accounts directly with EPN, so this would not apply to us.

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4. 69

   bigmikehposted 14 years ago

   I've just had an email reminding me that the new terms come into effect on 20 July for new users, and for the rest of us on 1 August. The email specifically says:
   
   Publishers may only place links and/or promotional content on sites they own. Affiliate links on third party sites such as Craigslist, MySpace, etc. are not allowed
   
   But if you click through to the full text of the new Code of Conduct it says:
   
   You will not place Links or Promotional Content in third-party newsgroups, message boards, blogs, comments, link farms, forums, classified ad services, counters, chatrooms or guestbooks unless it is allowed by their terms and conditions.
   
   which implies that it is OK even if you don't own the site.
   
   Confusing or what?

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   1. 57

      Mrvoodooposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      hmmmm that is confusing, do we own our hubs?  I believe that people over at Squidoo are free to buy and sell their lenses, so I guess they own them, is it the same with hubs, with each hub or lense being essentially a mini privately owned website?
      
      It sounds like they're just stopping people from spamming affiliate links here there and everywhere, I wonder if the HP team have any info on this?

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   2. 86

      Marisa Wrightposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      Thanks for looking into this, Bigmikeh. As far as I'm concerned, that's crystal clear.
      
      What this says is, you can't go posting eBay affiliate links on another site, unless that site specifically allows it.
      
      So you can no longer go to a blog or forum and leave a comment with an embedded ebay affiliate link. 
      
      But you can use eBay on HubPages, because it is very clear they allow it - they even provide tailor-made capsules,so there can be no doubt!

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5. 69

   bigmikehposted 14 years ago

   I've just been browsing the EPN forums where there has been a load of discussion about the ownership issue. An ebay representative has just clarified, as follows
   
   
   A related question was: “Can we use affiliate links on third party sites like Blogger, Twitter, Wordpress, Tumblr, Squidoo or article sites where we "own" the IP of the content but not the actual site?”
   
   For blogging platforms like Wordpress, we’re requiring that publishers use the download-and-install versions of the products so that they have full ownership of their sites. For other promotional methods such as Twitter, etc, it is ok for your links to lead to your own websites that have links to eBay, but not to lead to eBay directly.
   
   
   I've put the words in bold to highlight it specifically mentions Squidoo and article sites (like Hubpages) where we own the IP (intellectual property) but not the site. The second paragraph makes it crystal clear in my book that we will no longer be able to use the ebay capsule on our hubs.
   
   This is serious stuff - even though personally I've not seen any money from ebay since I joined Hubpages. But I do make money elsewhere from ebay and I'm not going to risk losing that by using ebay capsules on Hubpages.
   
   We need somebody from Hubpages staff to confirm this with EPN and take down the ebay capsule if necessary. Or we're going to have thousands of new hubbers in breach of the EPN agreement within a couple of days.

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