Weather you are new to Internet Marketing or are a Old Salt the new is important to you. April marked bid changes in the Affiliate Marketing World, eBay decided to move there eBay Affiliate Marketing Program from Commission Junction to a in-house program called eBay Partner Network.

Affiliate were given 30 days at first to migrate to ePN, but the time was changed to 60 days. For some the migration was so difficult they just gave up. Not a conducive to being self employed at all, but anyway lots happened in a short period of time. Some user had been affiliates since the inception of the affiliate program and some had just started.

Affiliates that use other scripts like Build A Niche Store aka (BANS) and phpBay Wordpress Plugin had even more to deal with. BANS was in the mist of a update that had come with its own set of issues.

 

June 2008 PepperJam Affiliate Network shows up on the seen. Looks like eBay has decided that another platform/company would help relieve some of the stress in the air. Pepper Jam is independent affiliate network that has lots to offer from what I can see. A tremendous amount of material to teach affiliates different techniques to succeed. Better Merchants. Better Affiliates. PepperjamNetwork.com. has impressed me so far.

 

So before deciding to make another major change to my Internet Marketing plan I have decided to do a test of the Pepper Jam Marketing Program and The eBay ePN Affiliate Marketing Program.

What I have done is take two (2) Websites selling the same product using BANS Script. The domains are both new and I'm using unique templates for each. Because the domains are new and the need to see some decent traffic to make a good enough test to be able to compare the so called Google Honeymoon Period comes into play. The Honeymoon Period Is a period that google usually indexes a site and then puts it on page one. Why this happens there is no definite answer to be found but we can assume that it's Google testing sites to catorgized them. It's inevitable that 99% of all new websites drop in page position as time go's on. Some times Web Site don't drop off the face of Google. I've had sites stay on page one from the day they went live to present, so it's not unheard of.

 

Back to the test. I have put up two site selling the same product with domains that era very similar.

 

Pepper Jam Partner Network Joined June 12, 2008  Test Site Indexed in Google 6/24/08 312 Clicks, 712 Impressions Earnings to date $68.00

ePN eBay Partner Network Joined April 1, 2008 Test Site Indexed in Google 6/21/08 102 Impressions, 6 Clicks Earnings $0.00

Summary 6/29/08 : Pepper Jam definitely tracks better than ePN.

Sept. 12, 2008 update. This is a very unscientific comparison I did on the fly. Though we love PJ we can only assume that PJ uses the same method of tracking as ePN. This simple test is based on a very short period of time and both sites where experiencing the Google honeymoon period.

 Since Pepper Jam has different metrics and tracking it is near impossible to create a  true comparison.

In short the world of affiliate marketing is always in flux and IMO marketers should never just use one affiliate program. experiment constantly and never give up. Becoming successful can take months or even years.

If you are a novice SEO marketer try following the The Rich Ski Bum.

 

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