Removal of Free Tier & Link Cloaking at Auction Request

Post author By rhyswynne
Post date January 24, 2021

Today, we've made the very difficult decision to remove the free tier of Auction Request, as well as disable link cloaking and geotargeting for Premium users. Whilst not a decision we wanted to take, it's unfortunately necessary in order to preserve the integrity of the services we offer.

The Free Tier Explained

Up to this point, we've allowed free users to use Auction Request to list their auctions, but in return we would add our affiliate code to the links. The income from this, while relatively small, justified the server resources allocated to it, and also served as an extended "free trial" of Auction Request. In order to prevent free users from changing our ePN campaign ID to theirs, we routed their links through Auction Request's servers. So a link to auctionrequest.com/ap.php?uid=sampleuser&itemid=1234567890, for example, would arrive at our server, we'd compose the appropriate eBay rover URL, and then append our campaign ID to it. The click would then be forwarded to eBay to view the item in question. Technically speaking, this was accomplished via a 301 server redirect, so eBay should have (correctly) seen that the click was made from sampleuser's website.

What Happened?

A couple of weeks ago, we were contacted by ePN to state they wanted to investigate how we were generating traffic. We explained the situation to them, and provided the data they requested — the websites using our free tier. Unfortunately, a few days ago they responded to say that they believed Auction Request was generating "non bona-fide transactions" and that our ePN account was immediately terminated. While we did no such thing, we were not allowed any chance to fix it, nor did ePN provide us any specifics on what they saw as "non bona-fide". All of our free-tier clicks? Just some of them? Did this just start? Etc.

So, without knowing anything more about what the central issue is, we've come to the conclusion it must be one of two things: 1) routing clicks through our server, even with a 301 redirect, is either obscuring the source of the click to eBay, or introduces the possibility that we might be illegally generating false clicks. 2) One of our users is generating false clicks, which when routed through Auction Request's server and our campaign ID attached, becomes Auction Request's problem.

Again, without knowing specifics on what eBay has an issue with, or giving us a chance to fix it, we're left to conclude that we cannot process clicks through our server. Therefore, effective yesterday, all link cloaking (and the associated ability to geotrack) has been disabled. Premium users will see their rover links pointing straight to eBay (many of you may already be doing this, so you won't see any change). The links will not geotrack, as ePN does not natively support this ability. Additionally, displaying affiliate links on your website runs the risk of the "Google hammer"; your mileage may vary. While this all sucks (to put it bluntly), we don't want to risk any clients being targeted by ePN for suspicion of "non bona-fide transactions".

As far as the Free tier goes, without any income from our campaign ID attached to those links, we unfortunately can't justify providing server resources for feeds that nobody's making any affiliate income off of. Combined with the inability to prevent free users from adding their own campaign ID and circumventing our subscription plan, this makes the Free tier unviable going forward.

Summary of Changes

We have switched off the Free tier – Emails are going out shortly to all free users encouraging them to switch to a Premium tier. They'll get the standard 14-day free trial to see how it works for them. The free tier is now no more, unless ePN allows us to restart it.
Removal of Link Cloaking and Geotargeting – We suspect link cloaking was the problem. We've switched off link cloaking so all rover links now go directly to eBay. We invite representatives from eBay to review our code to see that what we were doing was above board, but if past experience is any indication, they are unlikely to take us up on this.
Raised Prices – With the double-whammy of the loss of affiliate income, plus the costs of the new dedicated server we obtained last month, we're unfortunately forced to raise subscription rates in order to keep the lights on. If you are currently on a Premium tier subscription your rate will remain the same, but all new subscriptions or upgrades will be at the rate of $12/month or $120/year. The new rates will go into effect in two weeks, on February 7, in order to allow current Free tier members to subscribe under the old rates.

As always, please contact us directly for any questions you may have.