Tips on getting accepted with eBay Partner Network (ePN)

Thin affiliate sites (or worse, no site) just don't cut it now that ePN is being very selective on who they allow into the program. If you missed the hay day of a few years ago where they were handing out affiliate memberships like the do App Dev IDs, then you have a bit of work cut out for you. Luckily though, it's not impossible. People are reporting every week that they were accepted on their first try w/in a couple days (and just because you've been denied once doesn't mean you shouldn't reapply!).

Here are some tips culled from the web on how you can increase your chances of being accepted into the eBay Partner Network.

Of note: consider buying the auction2post plugin now and activating it w/out links. You'll be getting your site indexed and generating a report w/ the search engines that you produce niche-specific content regularly.

Submit a high content Website in a niche that isn't oversaturated in ePN - forget iPhone, Wii, Coach handbags, the usual eBay crap sites.
Choose the content business model - they ain't real keen on PPC and the other models.
Be persistent - it may take several tries before they accept you, if they do.

Applying from US/Canada/Western Europe/OZ/NZ - If you are outside these countries, I recommend you apply with a friend within one of these countries. And don't bother with free proxies. Ebay knows them all
Your IP address matches your Stated Address. (you can't give a US Address, but apply with a Brazilian IP)
Domain has Quality Content that would be relevant to products that eBay sells
Domain, Site and Content are at least 1 year old - preferably more.
Domain is NOT a Review type site or stinks of affiliates.
NO EBAY Ads or other Ads on the Site
Site is registered with PUBLIC Registration for at least 2 years forward
Public Registration Information matches your eBay application information.

Best article of the bunch - more listed below:

When I first planned out my series on creating an Ebay Partner Network affiliate site from start to finish, I did not intend to include this step. When I joined Ebay Partner Network, I already had a great deal of existing sites, and I was switching over from the old CJ program so I really did not have any issues getting accepted. It has come to my attention since that this is actually a pretty important element of this whole series, particularly for beginners starting out who do not have an existing website. I’ll preface these instructions by saying that I am not 100% sure on the best way to approach this because my experience was quite easy, but I believe by following these instructions you should be on the right track.

Location, Location, Location

From what I’ve heard, it does matter where you live as far as getting an Ebay Partner Network account. If you live in Nigeria, you’re probably not going to get accepted by Ebay very easily. If you live in North America, or most parts of Europe, or Australia, location will probably not be a big factor. If you do get rejected based on your location, you may just have to find another affiliate program - Amazon may be a good place to try. I’ve also heard it’s possible to purchase an existing Ebay Partner Network account from someone else, but I would imagine this is probably not a viable long term soluton, so I wouldn’t recommend it.

Have an Existing Website

Ebay will ask you for your website when you sign up. Once you get an account, you can add as many additional websites as you want, but I believe the initial website you submit in your application will weigh heavily on whether you get accepted or not. If you don’t have an existing website yet, here’s what i would recommend. Follow my initial instructions on choosing a niche just as you would if you were already accepted by Ebay. Then, instead of setting up the WP Commerce Steel theme to look like my demo site, just start by creating a basic Blog. Use any regular free wordpress theme. I would recommend my WP Contempo theme, Munchen theme or Teel theme for this. These all have a clean look and feel and are appropriate for a variety of topics. Get the blog set up, and start adding content. Do not add any pages to the blog yet - except for possibly a brief about page and a contact us page. You can go back and add product pages once you get accepted by Ebay. Instead, start by writing blog posts, and let your site display like a regular blog. Once you get accepted, you can move all the blog posts to a blog page, and resume setting up the site for the WP Commerce theme.

Content is King

Work on adding content to your site. If you submit a basic Wordpress template with 2 or 3 posts in it to Ebay, they may not take you seriously. Here are some ideas for adding content.

Add articles - you’re probably going to want to do this anyway at some point to help with SEO, so try to come up with some articles on your topic. I recommend you use 500 words or more per article, but at least be sure to have 300 words. Also, try to include pictures with the articles, this will help your site look more professional. If you can get 5-10 quality articles on your niche, this will help a lot in both getting accepted into EPN, and also down the road for SEO.

Add Product Reviews - this is a great way to add content to your site, especially if you’re dealing with a very specific niche that doesn’t have as much substance to produce articles for. Creating a product review is pretty simple. One way to do this easily is go to Amazon.com, and search for products in your niche. The nice thing about Amazon is that most products have been reviewed by users, so you should see a lot of existing feedback for products in your niche. Choose a product within your niche on Amazon. Find a nice picture of it and combine the user reviews on Amazon to create your own review. Do not copy user reviews, make sure you write the review in your own words using the user feedback as a guide. You can add lot of content to your site by creating reviews like this, and it will help you pick up long tail search traffic. Plus, in the event you don’t get accepted by Ebay, you could always find another affiliate program through CJ and possibly still promote the products you’re reviewing that way.

Find some news - certain niches like cell phones always have interesting news. Find news stories about your niche and rewrite them in your own words. Some very specific niches may not have a lot of news, so this won’t apply to everything, but give it a try.

Overall, I would recommend trying to generate at least 20 blog posts worth of content. You want your site to look professional to Ebay and make it seem like it’s well maintained. The more content you can add up front, the better, and it will help you just as much after you’re accepted, so all you’re really doing is slightly altering the order in which you go through this tutorial.

Keep it Simple

To do this right, you shouldn’t need anything more than a clean website with quality content. I strongly recommend you avoid cluttering your site with adsense and other affiliate offers before getting accepted into EPN. You can try, but you probably won’t make very much by having those extra ads starting out, and it could potentially hurt your chances of acceptance, so if it were me, I would absolutely avoid adding outside advertising.

[ source ]

More:
This was fairly well written/researched: Getting accepted to ePN
Another article: Tips for getting accepted into ePN

Here's an interesting article:

If you are new to affiliate marketing, please read this before you apply for partnership with the eBay Partner Network (EPN).EPN has REALLY cracked down over the last few months and will not accept you,as an affiliate, unless you have a fairly well developed web site that is engaging to your customers. A well developed web site is one that is informative on the niche items you are selling. It is a web site that offers more than just a landing page to get customers to click on the auction ads. You need to think outside of the box. Give your customers something the other sites do not offer to make them want to come back and revisit your site. The following steps should be followed to help you get approved with EPN. All of the people that have followed these steps (that I know of) have been accepted into EPN. This may seem like a real hassle and a pain in the 'you know what', but getting into EPN will be very rewarding for you down the road. I know of many, many affiliates building websites like this making $300 or so a month, and there are also those out there doing this part to full time making $1k to $3k per month, and then some that are SERIOUS about it making upwards of $8-$10 thousand per month or more! You MUST take these steps on your very first site, or you will most almost certainly NOT be admitted to EPN.

BELOW IS THE GUIDELINE THAT I RECOMMEND YOU FOLLOW BEFORE APPLYING TO EPN:

Before doing ANYTHING, you will need to purchase a domain name for TWO (2) YEARS or that you have one readily available. This will cost you under $20, but it will be YOURS for 2 years. If you have a domain that you've owned for a while and is indexed with Google, this will help you out even more to build your first site on. You simply will NOT get into EPN without owning at least one domain name. It would also be helpful if your site has already been indexed by Google or the other search engines. Submit your site to Google webmaster tools, and other search engines. Bookmark your link on some social sites such as StumbleUpon.com, Digg.com, Twitter.com, etc. This will at least give you some back-links out there.

   * Step 1) Add a contact page.
   * Step 2) Add a privacy policy.
   * Step 3) Add a disclaimer page (Instructions for this at bottom of page)
   * Step 4) Add content to your site that is informative of your niche. (Add at least 10 content pages of content with quality information. This must not be any copied content, i.e. from Wikipedia or PLR content.
   * Step 5) Leave off ALL Adsense ads, and ANY ads at all for that matter at least for the initial site until approved.

What you DON'T want to do:

Shove auctions or advertisements right down the visitor's throat right when you get to the site. Don't copy any content from anywhere! DO offer reviews of related products, articles comparing prices/values, etc. Or add a snippet of code in your site that will give you a Comments or Poll feature and engage the user. See example of the comments or pole boxes on the sample website. Ask yourself this important question that Google states is how you should look at your site: With absolutely no auctions or ads, will your site still function and give value to the visitor? Does it offer quality information to your targeted niche? One big mistake made by many is just slapping up 100 words with a few keywords per store page. This won't help you get into EPN. You need to add QUALITY content. When we say add quality content, this doesn't mean to go to other sites and copy and paste information that they use to your site. You can use other sites as ideas but write the information yourself or hire someone to write content for you. Articles average around $5 or $6 for a 500 word or so, well written article of your choice.

Here's an outline of suggestions of what to do again:

   * 10 pages of ORIGINAL content
   * Pertinent YouTube video page with comments (Non-Adsense Videos)
   * Survey on the Home Page (feel free to participate in the survey)
   * NO Adsense ads
   * NO monetization of any kind (meaning no affiliate ads anywhere)
   * Leave a Comment Script option
   * Lots of relevant pictures (free photos at www.sxc.hu)
   * Free e-mail course on Wedding Planning (this is not a requirement, I just happened to have one and added it to the site)

Obviously, these are all just suggestions. You don't have to do every single thing on here, but just remember, less is never better with EPN. I think you see where we're going with this. Offer as much information to your customers as you can to make them want to bookmark your site and EPN will like the site. You don't need to spend a month putting together your first site, but just make sure it is fairly content rich and informative. When applying at EPN, this is the description I used for a wedding site. Enter 10 characters or less something similar to this (change to fit your niche): Wedding planning designed to help users with creative solutions, offer feedback & assist each other.

Sample Disclaimer

You may use this as is, or edit as needed. Just create a page titled Disclaimer, and you may set auction listings to "0"(zero) so that nothing else shows up on the page. The information contained in this website is for general information purposes only. The information is provided by [business name] and whilst we endeavor to keep the information up-to-date and correct, we make no representations or warranties of any kind, express or implied, about the completeness, accuracy, reliability, suitability or availability with respect to the website or the information, products, services, or related graphics contained on the website for any purpose. Any reliance you place on such information is therefore strictly at your own risk. In no event will we be liable for any loss or damage including without limitation, indirect or consequential loss or damage, or any loss or damage whatsoever arising from loss of data or profits arising out of, or in connection with, the use of this website. Through this website you are able to link to other websites which are not under the control of [business name]. We have no control over the nature, content and availability of those sites. The inclusion of any links does not necessarily imply a recommendation or endorse the views expressed within them. Every effort is made to keep the website up and running smoothly. However, [business name] takes no responsibility for, and will not be liable for, the website being temporarily unavailable due to technical issues beyond our control.

Here's a post from December 2008:

It's very easy to get accepted, even nowadays.

First you need a site with content, original content. This is probably the hardest thing to do, but it's what ebay is looking for really. I would find a good niche and setup a wordpress site, and get some articles on it (write them yourself or hire someone).

Make the site look nice. Don't just install the basic look or defaults.

Add Contact Us & Privacy pages to the site. These are really required by the TOS of EPN but most rarely think about it.

If you are using some script like BANS, don't. Unless you are willing to spend lots of time making it NOT to look like a default BANS install. Best to do the word press route first, and then install BANS later.

Here is the question that a lot of people have told others to think about, and it's very true:

If you took away all the auction links and auction stuff what is left?

If you answer nothing, then your site is a thin affiliate site and EPN is no longer allowing them.

The key is to build a showcase site that will get accepted and then worry about ebay feeds, auction listings and the rest. Give the visitors something else besides just the auction listings.

I have followed these rules and just last week opened another EPN account (with US/UK approved) in about 24 hours. I needed a different account for a different business we were setting up. It works.

Another response from the same thread:
I found this info googling around:

Prior to EPN, the eBay affiliate program was hosted by Commission Junction. At that time, acceptance in to the program was pretty much automatic, provided that you had an existing website. Of late, it seems as though it has become tougher and tougher to get accepted into the program. I was not even aware of the problems until recently when a friend of mine applied to the EPN program. After waiting 3 weeks for a response, it turns out that his site was declined. I feel bad for him, as he spent quite a bit of time learning BANS, setting up his website and adding some content to it - and I was the one that talked him into buying BANS in the first place.

From researching the BANS forums and reading messages from people that have been accepted, it sounds as though eBay is looking for quality, content-rich sites before they will consider accepting you into their program. This has pretty much been confirmed by the following forum post by an eBay employee:

"If you are interested in applying, there are a few tips you should keep in mind. Please make sure you fill out the description as completely as possible, and make sure it is descriptive. Fill out the URLs that you plan to send us traffic from and make sure they are valid website addresses that will yield interested buyers. As an extreme example, an affiliate that helps potential buyers find and research sporting goods and then points them to great deals on eBay is going to get higher consideration than an affiliate that wants to put our banners on a ringtone site with limited targeted content and limited relevance to eBay. If your URLs aren’t ready or you don’t know the URLs, you may want to wait until your websites are ready or you have more information before re-applying."

And also this post from the EPN blog:

Lastly, as we have set high standards for the program, we are also taking this into account as we screen new registrations.* We are committed to growing the number of quality affiliates in the program, and we want to make sure our newest partners can meet those expectations.* As a result going forward we are paying close attention to all aspects of applications – especially the descriptions of affiliates’ business models and URLs that affiliates are planning on sending traffic from.* If you are interested in applying, please keep this in mind as you fill out your application.

If I were new to the game, knowing what I now know, I would start my site as a WordPress blog and spend several weeks adding content and driving traffic to my site. I would maybe start off the affiliate process by adding links from cj.com, amazon, and google adsense, just to earn some revenue while I was waiting to apply to EPN. Only when I had a quality site up and running, would I then apply to EPN. Hopefully in the coming day and weeks, I can explain more on how to setup a blog and add useful content to it.