It looks like the proverbial fecal matter has hit the fan and there are a lot of unhappy affiliates.  Like countless others I received an email and message last night in my dashboard from EPN saying that they are expiring my account.  Although the message was very vague, it does make reference to my visitors being less engaged with eBay.

The part about less engaged has me confused, because the majority of my income comes from winning bid recvenue, NOT ACRUs.  Furthermore my EPC is less than $3 which is not a crazy amount that should send a warning flag.  Also I should add that I have never undertaken any black hat methods of promotion for the eBay affiliate program.  I earn far too much to jeopardize that program, so it's all been white hat methods and quality traffic sent.

Currently there are countless discussions going on over at the BANS forums and directly on EPN.  Obviously that is just one thread amongst others that is getting the most attention.  The frustrating part, zero contact from EPN in regards to this mass ban hammer.  This shows a serious lack of understanding in regards to proper affiliate program attention, maintenance, and just common courtesy.

For now I've not seen a pattern in regards to those being banned from EPN.  My guess is that there is an automated script that takes a look at Impressions per Click ratio and sends out messages accordingly.  On any other affiliate program this would make sense, since many black hat methods involve cookie stuffing.  However with eBay they provide API's that require no impressions, so it should be null and void.  Perhaps some outside company have sold their services to EPN with promises to automatically take out the bottom feeders.  Although to me it looks like they just ended up doubling their work load.

I'm chilling for now, knowing that I have an account with the PepperJamNetwork, where I can still make money as an eBay affiliate.  That is until that automated script gets ahold of them too.  I'm praying a notice will be sent out that this was just an error on their behalf and things can get back to normal.