I created a plugin a while back that would read and parse the link created by the Ebay Partner Network RSS generator link widet. It made me a steady $500 a month for years and then stopped. I make maybe $5 a month now. EPN was a cash cow and did far better than ads or other affiliate programs because I could link directly to auctions that my readers would find interesting. Now nothing!
I figured it was the general drop of internet advertising revenues that I’ve experienced over the last few years, combined with EPN changing some TOS to cheat me out of revenue.
Recently, I clicked on an item that looked interesting from one of my web pages and I did not go to the right page. I went to some kind of landing page with only one picture and no description. I had to click again to get to the main listing. As we all know, surfers will not scroll, they will not read anything but headlines and the won’t click buttons.
The result was that I was losing revenue. Today it is a freezing cold day, and I am stuck inside, so I tried to debug the issue and I was able to alter my plugin – adding three lines, that fixed the issue.
This is what I added:
$d=str_replace('item','icep_item',$d);
$d=str_replace('vectorid','icep_vectorid',$d);
$d=str_replace('toolid=10039','toolid=10001',$d);
$d is the display area of the widget. I don’t know which of the changes did it, and since it is working I won’t change anything. The link needs the older type item and vectorid parameters, and the tool id is the tool id for an individual link. These things fool the API into thinking you are coming in from one of their generated links, and not the RSS.
I would offer the plugin to you all, but it has things hard coded. The category, my id, the campaign and the list of search terms that I use to randomize the search each time the thing is displayed are all part of the code. It would require a coder to fix it up.
If you are the author of a an EPN plugin feel free to try this. If you use an EPN plugin, tell the author about this.
EPN does far better than any other affiliate program for sites that are highly focused on products that can be found on eBay. I hope that I have fixed the issue and that in a week or two, as auctions complete, I will start getting some revenue back.
It looks similar and they may have started with my code, but it does quite a bit more. It is a nice improvement. I am not sure it is worth $17. From the comments it seems that it is dangerous to use.
I included some of this functionality in Stop Spammers, but I was careful to not show the really dangerous options that could kill a site if removed.
Thanks for getting back to me.
Yeah, EPN introducing the 24hr cookie was the death knell that proceeded many affiliates jumping ship to other similar programs.
Myself, I stuck with it but changed the type of site I use to generate an income. These are now more of a churn and burn site, generated to make a short, sharp income only – which is a shame as my sites before their cookie change were quite useful and informative.
Thanks for offering the code. I have downloaded it and will look it over. If I make any modifiactions or changes I will certainly let you know.
On another note, this looks very similar to one of your plugins: https://codecanyon.net/item/smart-options-optimizer/4562514
Is there just similarities or is it a blatent ripoff?
Thanks again.
My eBay partner network revenues have gone to zero and remained there. I have fiddled with the plugin over and over again and still no revenue. I get 1000 exposures and 20 or so clicks a day so I should have at least one buy per week, but nothing. The widget is entertaining but otherwise worthless. I am guessing that my websites may have been blacklisted for some reason. (Check https://www.jt30.com to see it in action).
The plugin variables are changed by changing the code. There are no settings. Right now it is hard coded to display vintage musical instruments using one of about 30 search strings. It shows a search string at random each time, so the user gets a new list on every page viewed. It has the remains of other iterations of the widget which look like they are functional but are not.
There is a switch to turn the page link alterations on and off. It is set to false be can turned back on. It made no difference to me.
If you can code PHP you are welcome to the source. I may clean it up and make it more user friendly, but that might be a lot of work, which I believe will be wasted. You would have to change the search string and the eBay category id to make it work for you. You would also have to change the campaign id so you would receive the money.
There is a short-code also so you can embed auctions on a page.
Let me know if you are brave enough to try it. Code is at https://www.blogseye.com/epn_reloaded.zip
Hi, thanks for the post – very intriguing.
So, you’re making this plugin available to a limited few for testing purposes (strip any personal info)? Count me in…
Thanks.