Fascinating article hitting my eBay sellers groups this morning:

 

http://www.businessinsider.com/ebay-the-fbi-shawn-hogan-and-brian-dunning-2013-4

Interesting ''article''

 

Thanks for sharing!

Damn...You busted us!  On a serious note, eBay changed their affiliate system awhile back and it is ridiculous.  They messed with a good thing and now many legit affiliate marketers are getting paid next to nothing.  

Damn...You busted us!  On a serious note, eBay changed their affiliate system awhile back and it is ridiculous.  They messed with a good thing and now many legit affiliate marketers are getting paid next to nothing.  

 

Yeah, I'd heard they'd got all stingy on you guys. 

 

My favorite part of the article was the FBI pulling the World of Warcraft chat logs as part of their evidence gathering. Those must have made entertaining reading while looking for evidence. "Noob! More dots!" 

It's quite interesting and I wish I thought of it

 

eBay really did screw things up.  The changes they did last year really made it hard for most to make money as an eBay affiliate.   They say nothing has changed, but most just stopped fighting it.  Nothing will change.

 

Even Huw at Brickset put this post up today on his site updates..

Google AdSense. I said I would never show ads on the site but circumstances have forced me to do so. You will see ads on the site ONLY if you are not logged in. They have been in place for a couple of weeks and it appears to be worthwhile having them so they will stay, for now at least.

I know everyone is tired of me and Ed harping on this garbage, but even a well established site like Brickset that has much more traffic and members than us needs to change their ways of doing things.  Brickset probably doesn't even have 1/10th the expenses that we do either.

I have long thought that, though I love the money I make and the stuff I buy from Ebay, that their greed and selfish corporate policy will bring a changing of the guard eventually.

 

The one thing Ebay has over every other site is the traffic from brand recognition. That certainly does not last forever. There are plenty of companies that prove that.