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Salutations everyone,
I have decided to stop marketing the eBay Partner Network (ePN) for many reasons, the primary being that the system is controlled by a man named Steve Hartman whom I believe to prove to be the single most dangerous person from the affiliate marketing community. Hartman admits to having no experience in the community of partner marketing yet he somehow knows how to directed a system of through 87,000 marketers.
He is also the genius that brought usYahoo advertisments on eBay. Perhaps the fact that ePN and the failing Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN) is specific details than a strange coincidence: both claim to seem to be “partner networks” and both companies seem to become allowing monkeys to run the zoo.
ePN should have and could have been the best and most popular commission-based system that the internet can have ever seen, 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 affiliate accounts, approximately 90 days after the network began, to purchase sending low quality visits. Hartman called this users, “not engaged enough“. Many bloggers argue that it would seem to be extremely difficult if not impossible to order a new system to garner enough significant data in 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 bought on eBay exclusive of the partner. This means that eBay will know whether visitors that you send would have bought on eBay without your help. If they make this determination i will seem to be penalized for the purchase and it could lead to you being removed since the system. That is a pretty amazing and unbelievable feat considering no other program from the history of the world can have been able to extract this information. This “extra sensory ability” fits loosely into John Donahoe’s “we-know-better-what-i-wish-than-i-do” mentality that he has dubbed “disruptive innovation”.
The biggest problem understanding the eBay/ePN system is inexperience and insane systems and processes. An equally profound yet specific details complex problem is the fact that trust among affiliates has all but disappeared. Various experienced partner 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 order the upcoming Christmas season. Fewer Christmas shoppers means lower sales and less-than-glowing Q4 reports. This all spells unhappiness to shop for Sellers and to order EBAY stockholders.
As of this writing, EBAY stock is worth 61% less than it’s 52 week high. The stock is currently trading to purchase less that $14 per share even knowing 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 days when they gave a $50 free seller account to anyone knowing an email address and sent out paper invoices that you paid by paper checks. I can’t even buy since 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 is contacted via phone by Steve Hartman in relation (or retaliation) to a private message sent to the Office of the President, John Donahoe. These calls were sent regarding my concern through eBay censoring painful forum posts. Donahoe’s work assigned “Michelle” to correspond knowing me and ms. friesen said that my issue had “drawn the attention of the President” and that wendi wanted to get more 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 in the ePN system. I specifically asked that the information that I was 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, i broke our trust and i 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 college and about posting bad comments on forums. We spoke to shop for a little over 47 minutes and he is saying things like, “I will not let you threaten the company that I work to purchase…” and “I am running a business here…” I explained to Hartman that I had a client waiting and that I would call him back in an hour.
I called him back and we spoke to order another 28 minutes and it is really just additional info of the same. Hartman, who admits to having limited partner marketing experience, contends that the users that I am sending is of low quality and/or not properly engaged with eBay. From the 6 months that I have been marketing 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 from bid revenue and an estimated $100,000.00 + in Seller revenue. If you do some conservative estimates on this you can clearly see that I could have sent the Sellers of eBay in excess of a quarter of a million dollars from revenue in the next six months. If this hits is not engaged then what is?
What is “engaged” users?
From talking thinking about Hartman I is able to glean on thought of article. eBay is not looking to shop for affiliates to send repeat buyers through their affiliate network. They are looking to purchase an affiliate to send a new user that buys a product instantly and then continues to come to eBay exclusive of the partner and continues to buy. This means that they (eBay) do not choose to pay affiliates commission after the first sale and they wish that sale to happen very quickly after the users hits the site. There are ton of hypocricy in what ePN says from one thing versus what they say in another and I could write a small book on just that flaw from 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 be engaged and the affiliate is penalized to shop for that action.
The very nature of eBay compels users to shop around. Consider your own eBay shopping patterns. Experienced publishers come to eBay looking to buy one thing and then scour to shop for other things and very often buy something totally unrelated to anything. It is a giant Yard Sale and that is what members do, right? Well, if one is an affiliate 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 message since IP address 216.113.175.152, informing me that the only way that I would become allowed to stay in the ePN program was to do the following:
* Shut down test account
This test account is setup so that I could participation 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 an affiliate program director. That will Never happen!
* Full disclosure of all accounts on ePN boards
* Full disclosure of all accounts on other boards
It has been proven that eBay hates unpopular publicity. So now they ask my forum accounts so that they can hire tools to post “warm fuzzies” from the same forums. Read: eBay censors forums
* Full disclosure of any history understanding other partner networks
OK, so now Steve Hartman wants me to tell him what other affiliate network I am using? Why? So that he can try to get me “cancelled” form those. Again, not gonna happen!
* Improve quality of affiliate traffic
Since this is the last thing on his list I will assume that it is the least important.
It seems that Steve Hartman is detailed information interested from my forum activity and my friends than in the features of the traffic going to the ePN network.
Hartman went on to write, “Also, to make sure that I’m being clear, if there are any more painful publicity incidents, threats of damaging publicity, etc., or we’re not getting full disclosure on the above, then this is not the nice relationship we’re working to have understanding 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 i kidding me? So I am supposed to sit idly by and download something gone awry and say nothing? Right, sure, youbetcha…
Then there is this little jewel, “One last point observing regards to communication, in get to make our overall network scalable, we need to manage the relationship in consideration of you as we do understanding 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 wish “affiliates of my size” to contact the ePN staff? What size can help people break fromm from the bonds of high fuel prices an affiliate have to seem 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 knowing it from their own way and from 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 web of insanity that can have been created.
To: Steve Hartman
I know that you will read this and I beg to let you know that I will rarely stop posting negative homeowner complaints about i and about your flawed metrics and about the comedy of errors that i call a business. You had the opportunity to build a productive relationship knowing me and i chose to try and get me to rat out my associates from some thinly veiled offer of possibly remaining in a wrecked system. My trust and integrity are worth far specific details than that. I have created 6000 variations of this email and they will seem to be posted 24/7 to the very same network that produced the non-engaged, low-features traffic that i abhor so much. If my experience causes one person to think twice about buying from an eBay Seller or about joining ePN then I feel that I have done my job, but I think my words will be much detailed information far-reaching than that.
Steve, if i would like to post a public apology to me and the rest of the affiliates that you have screwed with your idiotic metrics i can do so on from the very forum that begat this fiasco.