Hiding Every EPN Identifier with PPC

michro01

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How do you make sure you are hiding your traffic source when using PPV advertising for an ebay affiliate site? I have the referrer and such covered, but apparently they can track headers as well? Can anybody give some information on this, and how to make sure ebay doesn't know your buying PPV like Media Traffic, which I hear always gets busted as its against there T & Cs.
 
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Make sure its all from the country u are located in. Make sure you have a good site with ebay content on it.
 
I was referring to PPV. Great reply, thank you. I also sent you a PM Genjutsu.

Is it impossible to make money with PPV? Will EPN always find you out, or are there programs or scripts that I can use to hide these things? How can I check the user_agent string? And what am I looking for?
 
The title of the thread suggests you are looking for a way to hide traffic from ppc, but your description says ppv. The two are completely unrelated and trying to hide traffic from either sources will differ. So which is it that you are trying to hide your traffic for?

The only thing in common between the two is that the advertiser has the option to manually check both campaigns, so hiding from them will never be 100%. In both cases, ebay will manually do searches on the major PPC networks for keywords on their do not bid list. Anyone that comes up on the paid search will likely be banned from their program. For PPV, they will manually check all the urls in their domain by installing adware. Anyone targetting any ebay domain will get flagged/banned.

If you can find a way to get around their manual checks, then there are a few things you need to consider.

PPV traffic is often classified as adware traffic. Users install toolbars on their pcs, sometimes against with will, and it also changes the user_agent of their web browser. This cannot be modified by any scripts, and is something that the user communicates to ebay directly, leaving you with no way to change it. This is very easy to spot/ban for. Before sending any ppv traffic to any vendor, make sure that it is safe to do so by checking the useragent string, and if your not certain, be sure to ask your affiliate representative if its ok to send that type of traffic before doing so. If there is no modification or changes with the useragent, it should be safe to simply use a double meta refresh to blank the referer, or a cloaked forced form submit to change it to whatver referer you want.

For PPC, a simple double meta refresh or a forced form submit to change the referer is enough, since the useragent will be normal because its a paid search result.

-Gen

Genjutsu, do they filter leads that comes form adware networks automaticly, or they cancel the leads later when they check manualy the useragent?
thx
 
Things that will show up in the User Agent will be something Like "Zango" or "Fun Web Products" or something along those lines.

Notset,
It depends on the network, but I think most of them check them later and then you could have a problem because it it then too late.

I would just ask the AM of whatever program you are working with if they have an issue with that kind of traffic, and if they do, plan accordingly. Some networks I have worked with have an issue with this kind of traffic, some do not, it just depends, so check it out beforehand and save yourself some frustration.
 
I do not know what Zango does as far as cookies go. I do think you need to check on some other threads here and see that many people have had their campaigns stolen by Zango if Zango thinks it was profitable and they would start promoting the offer themselves. Just make sure you do your homework on any new advertiser that you may be thinking of using.
 
I would assume EPN tracks those things? What "Steps" can I take that you were referring too?
 
Sending visitors with a PPV user agent may not be an issue by itself since those people browse the web and sites like ebay with or without you guiding them there. If an abnormal percentage of your visitors have the PPV user agents, then it might be obvious that this is your traffic source. Again though, you may be allowed to use that traffic as long as you are sending it to your own site and not forcing clicks. EPN has terms regarding this which do not necessarily rule that out. So one option is to blend in other traffic to dilute the user agent issue, but you would want quality traffic in that case so your EPC stays decent. You can also check the user agents and only redirect the ones you like (if your margin is high enough to sacrifice a lot of your traffic or if you can monetize it another way). Since it sounds like you're forcing clicks though, that's another matter. EPN is known for installing adware to catch people in the act. If they end up at your site without a forced click to ebay, then there may be no problem as long as the adware company is TRUSTe certified. EPN's terms on this are a bit confusing though but look in their code of conduct document in the legal agreements section. If they catch you forcing a click though then it's probably all over.
 
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I use one of the best cookie stuffers out there, and it has never gotten me caught before, so I would probably continue to try this, if that was my only worry. Unfortunately its not. If I wasn't making millions of dollars, why would they even look at my account? If I keep it around a certain number, would this still be a likely method?
 
I have no idea what to search for, but what I typed in did not bring anything valuable up.
 
lol thats a little hard when I have no idea what your referring to, thus no idea what to "research". I appreciate your help, but typing in "ebay IP addresses", and variations of that was pretty much all I had to go on, and that didn't list anything. Your confusing efford with inexperience and lack of knowledge, which is why I'm on the forums.

Thanks.
 
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