Until recently, I wasn’t aware of the Google Adsense and Ebay Partner Network (EPN) Privacy Policy Requirements for affiliates. This is serious business folks, if you are listing eBay auctions as an affiliate or using Adsense ads within your BANS Build a Niche Store or blog they you are required to have a privacy policy. If you don’t have one, and you are one of the few sites manually reviewed by EPN or Adsense support – your account can be cancelled. That’s right, cancelled, revoked – no more commissions! It’s part of their terms of service (TOS) you signed up for.
Maintainence wise – this sucks if you own a lot of blogs or web sites. Luckily enough, Synclastic has come out with the Privacy Policy WordPress plugin to make things easier for your blog. This will cover Adsense and EPN needs (if you use BayRSS or PHPBayPro to add auctions to blog pages), you’ll have to copy and paste accordingly and manually add the same information to your BANS niche sites.
The plugin is pretty cool, you just enable it and then create a page, and add this comment code to it:
Then, your privacy policy is auto-generated for you, and you don’t have to do a thing!
Here are the options:
You just punch in your name and email, and at the option your page title and slug (permalink) and you’re golden!
If your blog is not WordPress (Movable Type, Blogger, Live Journal, Joomla, etc) – you can just use this handy Privacy Policy Generator by SerpRank.
Thanks for this info. I wouldn’t have found this plug-in on my own, and it’s definitely going to be a useful time-saver.
REPs last blog post..Amazon Kindle Lauded at Qualcomm’s Digital Smart Services Leadership Summit
Great info, and good to know.
I’ve installed and implemented this, thanks for shaving our arse… err.. i mean SAVING our arse.
Anthony.
http://iphoneauctions.com.au
Anthonys last blog post..Investigating the iPhone 3G Problem – Infineon / Apple Remain Silent.
PS What do you think of EPN shutting down users accounts recently?
http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?messageID=520029563
Anthonys last blog post..Investigating the iPhone 3G Problem – Infineon / Apple Remain Silent.
@Anthony – I know people are making a big deal over it, but I think it’s a very, very small set of affilates who were caught in this. There were probably a few who shouldn’t have been, but most probably weren’t sending any decent traffic.
I mean really – how many shallow sites have you seen with nothing but a bunch of auctions. You’re supposed to send eBay “targeted traffic” from blogs or sites with real value and original content. A great majority of these sites have no content or redeeming qualities at all, and in turn the people buying once they get to eBay are few(er) for them then those of us that have built quality sites.
Unless you yourself get caught in the crossfire, don’t worry about it. By the same token – don’t be stupid and rely on eBay for more than say 25% of your monthly income as an affiliate marketer. Diversify you income streams as best you can.
Oh my gosh! I JUST read about this a little while ago. As I’ve been saying on here, I’ve slowly been trying to get myself a blog started (which I recently did at erikakendall.com) and am now looking into the BANS series that you’ve been doing… so I appreciate you keeping us updated on ways to thwart problems before they arise. Good stuff!
Erikas last blog post..Miami Web Design
The link for EPN is their privacy policy regarding the affiliate’s information just as mine is for my visitors. The link to EPN’s requirement is –
https://publisher.ebaypartnernetwork.com/PublisherRegPSA
See section H-2.c
Your ePN reference links to ePN’s Privacy Policy. Where does it states that a privacy policy is mandatory for affiliates?
GDs last blog post..Birds of the Bard
Ditto GD. The policy refers to affiliates themselves, not for the bods who landed on yer page!
I was looking for information on ePN and Adsense I am glad I ran across this post and found this plugin. Looks like I will be busy with the plugin for a good part of the day. One less reason to have an account shut down. Thank …