How to get approved with EPN
If you are new to Build a Niche Stores (BANS) please read this before you try to apply for partnership with the eBay Partner Network (EPN).
EPN has cracked down over the last few months and will not accept you, as an affiliate, unless you have a well developed web site that is engaging to your customers. By, a well developed web site, we don’t mean a site that has a bunch of well organized auction categories. 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 don’t 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. We have done these steps now for over 15 people in the last month and all of them are now accepted to every eBay program, including the coveted US/UK programs.
Step 1) Make sure you add a contact page. You can download one here:
http://startaniche.com/our-services/mods
Step 2) Add a privacy policy. You can download one here:
http://startaniche.com/our-services/mods
Step 3) Add content to your site that is informative of your niche. (Add at least 5 new content pages with quality information)
NOTE UPDATE: This should now read add 15-30 pages of quality content.
Let’s look at the BANS sample site http://www.gameimprovementirons.com/. You will notice that they don’t shove auctions down your throat right when you get to the site. They offer reviews of all the golf clubs they are trying to sell they have some key articles explaining how to pick the right club. (Very helpful for a golfer)
One way to test your site is to shut off the auctions and see what is left. Is your web site still full of content? Does it offer quality information to your targeted niche?
Ok, so we see they have added informative articles, their “what and why” article is very long and informative on what type of club each type of golfer should look for. They have reviews for every type of club they are listing on their site. One big mistake made by many is just slapping up 100 words with a few keywords per store page, this isn’t helping you get into EPN. You need to add QUALITY content. When I 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. You can even use our writers! You can see our content packages here:
http://startaniche.com/our-services/build-a-niche-store-content-order-bans-content.
Let’s say you have added 2 new content pages full of quality articles and information. You are struggling to figure out what to add next. Well let’s pretend the golf site is our niche. Here are just a few ideas you can build new content pages full of quality content.
- Information about the pro golfers
- Results of tournaments
- Add a content page that you blog about your golf game. Or have readers send in their best golf story.
- Golf instructions
- Golf News
- Find a Flash Golf Game that you can display on your site for them to play
- Golf terms
- A list of golf courses with a nice description of the course and fees.
I think you see where I’m going with this. Offer as much information to your customers to make them want to bookmark your site and EPN will like the site.
So we have the content pages set up on our site now. One thing I do want to add, it is ok to have a few listings on your home page. We usually put three on the home page under the home page content and have them titled as “Featured Items”.
Step 4) Add content to your store pages. Not a small little buy here now sentence. But add a nice keyword rich quality content paragraph. I would aim for 250 words or more.
Step 5) Add an RSS feed or two that has good information relevant to your niche. For example we could pull a golf rss feed from ESPN and display it on our site. Or a Google rss feed about golf.
Step 6) Add/embed some videos related to your site. This gives some viewing pleasure for the customer. Just make sure they don’t auto start. Not everyone has high speed internet and if your video is set to auto start you will lose all your slow internet connection customers. And here is a tip. If you are targeting customers over 60 a high number of them are still on dialup (you know that old time connection). Make the video as small as you can so it won’t take long to load.
This is it, we can’t guarantee you will get in but we can guarantee that this process has worked for us 100% of the time so far. If you have any questions contact us at:
