Up until 2 days ago, I considered Pepperjam Network to be one of the great affiliate networks. With the CEO of the company Kris Jones popping up everywhere where the words “pepperjam” or even “pepper” and/or “jam” were uttered in order to guide us followers through the darkness, I said to myself: “Oh, OK, here’s an interesting company who cares for its publishers and advertisers equally”. Boy, was I wrong!

The premise: I only have 2 eBay affiliate websites. Why only two? Because I really think that the eBay partner network is a mess. I would rather use my time elsewhere than constantly worrying about my commissions being either returned (as it once happened) or being told that my leads are not of good quality, etc. After all, there are plenty of programs out there on a pay per lead basis, and 99% of them much more professional than EPN. My 2 websites that do promote eBay products are built on the WordPress platform and have phpBay Pro installed (which is by the way a great product, I will be reviewing it soon, and if they also incorporate Amazon, that would be great).

The incident: One of my websites sits on a domain that I had bought as pre-owned in May this year. The truth is that I bought the website, installed Wordpress, wrote three articles, and installed phpBay pro. I had forgotten about it, and I was meaning to get back to it when I had the time. So, this being said, about two weeks ago I check into my Pepperjam Network account with the intention of finding some good offers to promote. Luckily, I hadn’t yet promoted anything from the Pepperjam Network. You will soon know what I mean by “luckily”.

When I check in, I see my balance at approximately $52. That was a surprise for me, because I was expecting it to be near 0. I look at the stats and see that 2 sign ups for eBay had been made. I said to myself: “Way to go, little website”. After all, I had worked an hour at best on it.

Fast forward to yesterday. I receive 2 emails from the Pepperjam Network. The first one says this:

“It has been brought to our attention that your account has experienced activity that violates Advertisers’ Terms and Conditions set forth in their Pepperjam Network affiliate programs. Because of this activity, Pepperjam Network is withholding your payments until further investigation. Please call us at your earliest convenience at (570)408-9861 to discuss this matter. You will need to provide information about your account before a decision is reached in regards to your payments.”

And then the second one:

“Your promotional methods, publisher information or conduct have been identified in breach of the Advertiser’s Terms and Conditions and/or the Pepperjam Network Partner Service Agreement you agreed to follow. Due to this breach, your affiliation with this Advertiser and account with Pepperjam Network has been terminated. Pursuant to the Partner Service Agreement, your commissions are being reviewed and transactions may be reversed by the appropriate advertisers. If you have questions regarding this notice, please reply to this email using the provided reply-to address and leave the subject line intact.”

So what happened? I don’t know exactly what happened, I can only guess. My guess is that a person registered twice for eBay, and they considered that I did it on purpose. How can a person register twice, you ask? I really don’t know, probably a person who is not at all computer savvy. The truth is that these incidents happen all the time. It is your duty, as a partner network, to find these incidents and void the commissions for those specific actions. For instance, I promote an online degree affiliate program which is hosted over at Shareasale.com (a REAL high quality affiliate network). That particular program pays $24/lead. I have had stuff like that happen over there also, but they, instead of terminating my account, they did what any professional network should be capable of doing: they voided the transactions! They must be aware of the fact that you, as a website owner, only have limited control over the behavior of your visitors. It is absurd to even ask anything else, as eBay and Pepperjam Network are doing, without even giving you the benefit of the doubt!

So, I wonder: if I had started promoting some programs from the Pepperjam Network and I had some reasonable amount of money in the balance, and this incident had happened, what would have happened to all my money? Down the drain, of course. So be careful, if you are promoting eBay but also other programs from the Pepperjam Network, the lighting may strike you when you least expect it, because it seems that eBay’s paranoia and lack of professionalism are very contagious. What about my two websites? They will be promoting Amazon products, of course. That’s a company that knows what it’s doing.