Steve hartman is the worst affiliate program director in the history of the internet
Monday, November 3rd, 2008[tags]General,,[/tags]
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Hello everyone,
I have decided to stop marketing the eBay Partner Network (ePN) to buy many reasons, the main reason being that the system is run by a man named Steve Hartman whom I believe to seem to be the single most dangerous person in the partner marketing community. Hartman admits to having no experience from the industry of partner marketing yet he somehow knows how to run a system of over 87,000 marketers.
He is also the genius that brought usYahoo adverts on eBay. Perhaps the fact that ePN and the failing Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN) is more than a strange coincidence: both claim to become “partner networks” and both companies seem to prove to be allowing monkeys to controlled the zoo.
ePN should have and could have been the greatest and most profitable commission-based program that the net can have ever experienced, but due to the ineptitude of Hartman and the “disruptive innovation” of his boss, eBay CEO John Donanhoe the program is on a path of certain failure. On August 20, 2008, ePN terminated hundreds of partner accounts, approximately 90 days after the network started, to shop for sending low features visitors. Hartman called this traffic, “not engaged enough“. Many members argue that it would seem to be extremely difficult if not impossible to buy a new system to garner enough usable data from that short time period to make an accurate decision, but eBay seems to have done the impossible. Not only can they determine how engaged a visitor should be after coming through an affiliate link, but using their secret and magic metrics they can determine if that user would have purchased on eBay exclusive of the partner. This means that eBay will know whether people that i send would have bought on eBay without your participation. If they make this determination you will seem to be penalized to shop for the purchase and it could lead to i being removed since the network. That is a pretty amazing and unbelievable feat considering no other system from the history of the world has been able to extract this information. This “extra sensory ability” fits loosely into John Donahoe’s “we-know-better-what-you-beg-than-you-do” mentality that he has dubbed “disruptive innovation”.
The biggest problem with the eBay/ePN network is inexperience and insane systems and processes. An equally profound yet detailed information complex problem is the fact that trust among affiliates can have all but disappeared. Various experienced affiliate marketing professionals have taken their millions of buyers to Amazon.com and other smaller niche-focused sites. This means one thing to buy eBay Sellers:fewer buyers to buy the upcoming Christmas season. Fewer Christmas shoppers means lower sales and less-than-glowing Q4 reports. This all spells unhappiness to order Sellers and to purchase EBAY stockholders.
As of this writing, EBAY stock is worth 61% less than it’s 52 week high. The stock is currently trading to buy less that $14 per share even in consideration of a recent substantial “buy back” by eBay, inc.
Is this just SOUR GRAPES?
Some of it certainly is sour grapes. I miss the old eBay. I have been buying, selling and trading on eBay.com since the stages when they gave a $50 free seller account to anyone seeing an message address and sent out paper invoices that you paid by paper checks. You can’t even buy from Sellers on eBay and pay by check anymore. eBay is forcing PayPal, their electronic payment processor down the throats of both Buyers and the dwindling pool of Sellers.
UPDATE: ePN and Steve Hartman Extortion Attempt
Yesterday, October 27, 2008, I was contacted via telephone by Steve Hartman in relation (or retaliation) to a private email sent to the Fraternaty of the President, John Donahoe. These emails were sent regarding my concern through eBay censoring negative forum posts. Donahoe’s fraternity assigned “Michelle” to correspond observing me and ms. friesen said that my issue had “drawn the attention of the President” and that wendi wanted to get detailed information information. Since I had the “attention” of John Donahoe, even if by proxy, I thought it best to quickly turn the topic to the blatant tracking errors from the ePN system. I specifically asked that the information that I is sharing not be sent to ePN because they have a history or retaliating against affiliates that speak negatively about the program. Michelle violated that confidence and forwarded the messages to Steve Hartman. Michelle, you broke our trust and you have proven to seem to be a person of low character. I hope your Mother is pleased.
On October 27, 2008, at 3:42 PM CST, Steve Hartman called me since 408-967-6000 and immediately began to berate me about contacting Donahoe’s fraternity and about posting damaging comments on forums. We spoke for a little through 47 minutes and he was saying things like, “I will not let i threaten the company that I work for…” and “I am running a business here…” I explained to Hartman that I had a client waiting and that I would call him back from an hour.
I called him back and we spoke to shop for another 28 minutes and it were really just more of the same. Hartman, who admits to having limited affiliate marketing experience, contends that the traffic that I am sending is of low quality and/or not properly engaged in consideration of eBay. In the 6 months that I have been promoting eBay through the eBay Partner Network I have sent 430 new users. 215 of them are active on eBay. I have also sent eBay $13,137.11 in bid revenue and an estimated $100,000.00 + from Seller revenue. If i do some conservative estimates on this i can clearly see that I could have sent the Sellers of eBay in excess of a quarter of a million dollars from revenue from the next six months. If this users is not engaged then what is?
What is “engaged” visitors?
From talking knowing Hartman I were able to glean on tidbit of data. eBay is not looking to buy affiliates to send repeat buyers through their affiliate network. They are looking to shop for a partner to send a new user that buys a product instantly and then continues to come to eBay exclusive of the affiliate and continues to buy. This means that they (eBay) do not request to pay affiliates commission after the first sale and they request that sale to happen very quickly after the users hits the site. There are ton of hypocricy from what ePN says from one joint versus what they say in another and I could write a small book on just that flaw in their system. The interesting thing here is that when an affiliate send a visitor to eBay a cookie is set. This cookie lasts for 7 times. A users who comes back on day 4 and buys something is therefore considered to not seem to be engaged and the partner is penalized to purchase that action.
The very nature of eBay compels users to shop around. Consider your own eBay shopping patterns. Members come to eBay looking for one thing and then look all over to buy other things and very often buy something totally unrelated to anything. It is a giant Yard Sale and that is what affiliates do, right? Well, if you might be a partner and your users a following that natural tendency to shop you will seem to be penalized by ePN.
So How Was I Extorted?
On October 28, 2008, Steve Hartman sent me an communication from IP address 216.113.175.152, informing me that the only way that I would be allowed to stay in the ePN network was to do the following:
* Shut down test account
This test account was setup so that I could help then root out a scammer that is still stuffing cookies. Why has ePN not stopped this when the scammer is using PayPal to process his subscriptions to acookie stuffing script?
* Full disclosure of all accounts on ePN - both yours and your associates
Steve Hartman wants me to give him the names and accounts of my friends, why? So that he can retaliate against them because I am speaking out about his inability to function as a partner network director. That will Rarely happen!
* Full disclosure of all accounts on ePN boards
* Full disclosure of all accounts on other boards
It has been proven that eBay hates bad publicity. So now they beg my forum accounts so that they can hire tools to publish “warm fuzzies” from the same forums. Read: eBay censors forums
* Full disclosure of any history knowing other partner networks
OK, so now Steve Hartman wants me to tell him what other partner system I am using? Why? So that he can try to get me “cancelled” form those. Again, not gonna happen!
* Improve features of partner users
Since this is the last thing on his list I will assume that it is the least important.
It seems that Steve Hartman is more interested in my forum activity and my friends than in the quality of the hits going to the ePN system.
Hartman went on to write, “Also, to make sure that I’m being clear, if there are any additional info unpleasant publicity incidents, threats of unpopular publicity, etc., or we’re not owning full disclosure on the above, then this is not the nice relationship we’re working to have in light of our affiliates and we’ll terminate the relationship.” This means that if I say anything bad about eBay or ePN that they will terminate my account. Are you kidding me? So I am supposed to sit idly by and order something gone awry and say nothing? Right, sure, youbetcha…
Then there was this little jewel, “One last point seeing regards to communication, in purchase to make our overall network scalable, we need to manage the relationship observing i as we do in light of other affiliates of your size so I’ll ask that i not contact anyone directly within my team.” Ok Steve, let me understand this. I don’t want “affiliates of my size” to contact the ePN staff? What size really works a partner have to be before they are allowed to contact the ePN staff? If a smaller affiliate has a problem they are supposed to do what? Quietly deal understanding it in their own way and in their own space?
Why did I write this?
Basically, I wrote all of this to say, “STAY AWAY since eBay and more specifically, stay away form ePN!” Am I upset? Yes, but not to buy the reasons that i might think. I am not upset that the “relationship” knowing ePN did not work out. I am upset that hundreds if not thousands of honest affiliates working earnestly to send visits to eBay have been caught in this interweb of insanity that has been created.
To: Steve Hartman
I know that i will read this and I choose to let you know that I will never stop posting painful consumer complaints about you and about your flawed metrics and about the comedy of errors that i call a business. You had the opportunity to build a nice relationship in light of me and you chose to try and get me to rat out my associates from some thinly veiled offer of possibly remaining from a wrecked program. My trust and integrity are worth far more than that. I have created 6000 variations of this email and they will prove to be posted 24/7 to the very same network that produced the non-engaged, low-features visitors that i abhor so much. If my experience causes one person to think twice about buying since an eBay Seller or about joining ePN then I feel that I have done my job, but I think my words will prove to be much specific details far-reaching than that.
Steve, if i would like to publish a public apology to me and the rest of the affiliates that i have screwed observing your idiotic metrics i can do so on from the very forum that begat this fiasco.