Pixelrage.net

For once, I’m going to write an article about eBay Partner Network and not bitch about the program. Upon logging in to ePN, I’ve noticed a difference in load time, and then a whole new presentation to the dashboard that is pleasantly surprising.

Today, ePN released a massive upgrade to the reporting dashboard. The account metrics graph received a little visual transformation: it’s no longer flushed to the right of the screen, but presented bigger and in the center, with Impressions, Clicks, EPC and Earnings running horizontally across the top of the graph.

Below it is a new “Traffic Optimization Report,” displaying a bar chart for the “Landing Page Report” (where on eBay.com your sales have been attributed to: the home page, search results, seller/store results, item page or other), and a “Winning Bid Revenue by Category” pie chart, which can be expanded by clicking a “View Full Category Report” link underneath it.

This pie chart lists all of the official eBay categories in which your sales have come from. The majority of mine are from the intended categories I’ve chosen for my ePN stores, with some really bizarre and questionable ones thrown in that have obviously come from random impulse buys. The full category report gives you a closer look at these categories by providing metrics like ACRUs, Bid/Bin, Winning Bids and Winning Bid Revenue.

The categories themselves can be clicked and drilled down further into eBay sub-categories. This is where you can see exactly where on eBay your sales are coming from, and it’s a welcome feature. In fact, you can keep drilling down as far as the categories go on eBay. If you’d like to read more about how to read it, check out eBay Partner Network’s article on getting the most out of the category report.

Overall, it’s nice to finally see an upgrade on ePN when it has been long-awaited to even see the littlest change on the publisher dashboard in years. The much needed transparency of this data should ease most; if only they could be as transparent about their ACRU/EPC/payment structure (and stop banning affiliates with no rhyme or reason), this program would see a whole new light in the affiliate marketing community.