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The streets don’t lie

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Hi everyone,

I have decided to stop marketing the eBay Partner Network (ePN) to shop for many different reasons, the paramount reason being that the program is directed by a man named Steve Hartman whom I believe to prove to be the single most dangerous person from the affiliate marketing field. Hartman admits to having no experience in the field of partner marketing yet he somehow knows how to run a program of through 87,000 partners.

He is also the genius that brought usYahoo ads 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 be allowing monkeys to directed the zoo.

ePN should have and could have been the greatest and most popular commission-based program that the interweb can have ever known, but due to the ineptitude of Hartman and the “disruptive innovation” of his boss, eBay CEO John Donanhoe the system is on a path of certain failure. On August 20, 2008, ePN cancelled hundreds of affiliate accounts, approximately 90 times after the program launch, to shop for sending low features hits. Hartman called this traffic, “not engaged enough“. Various bloggers argue that it would prove to be extremely challenging if not impossible to shop for a new program to garner enough meaningful data from that short time period to make an accurate option, but eBay seems to have done the impossible. Not only can they determine how engaged a visitor should prove to 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 affiliate. This means that eBay will know whether users 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 you being removed since the system. That is a pretty amazing and unbelievable feat considering no other network 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-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 more complex problem is the fact that trust among affiliates can have all but disappeared. Many 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 shop for 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 shop for EBAY stockholders.

As of this writing, EBAY stock is worth 61% less than it’s 52 week high. The stock is currently trading to shop for less that $14 per share even thinking about 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 understanding an email address and sent out paper invoices that you paid by paper checks. I 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 is contacted via phone by Steve Hartman in relation (or retaliation) to a private email sent to the Street of the President, John Donahoe. These messages were sent regarding my concern through eBay censoring disconcerting forum posts. Donahoe’s college assigned “Michelle” to correspond understanding me and she said that my issue had “drawn the attention of the President” and that wendi wanted to get specific details 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 is sharing not become sent to ePN because they have a history or retaliating against affiliates that speak negatively about the system. Michelle violated that confidence and forwarded the communication to Steve Hartman.  Michelle, you broke our trust and i have proven 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 frat and about posting damaging comments on forums. We spoke to order a little through 47 minutes and he was saying things like, “I will not let you threaten the company that I work to buy…” 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 was really just detailed information of the same. Hartman, who admits to having limited partner marketing experience, contends that the users that I am sending is of low features and/or not properly engaged observing eBay. From 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 from bid revenue and an estimated $100,000.00 + in Seller revenue. If i do some conservative estimates on this i can clearly see that I could have sent the Sellers of eBay from excess of a quarter of a million dollars in revenue in the next six months. If this hits is not engaged then what is?

What is “engaged” users?

In talking observing Hartman I is able to glean on bit of info. 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 from what ePN says from one thing 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 to buy 7 times. A users who comes back on day 4 and buys something is therefore considered to not be engaged and the partner is penalized to buy 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 surf to order other things and very often buy something totally unrelated to anything. It is a giant Yard Sale and that is what people do, right? Well, if you are a partner and your users a following that natural tendency to shop i will seem to be penalized by ePN.

So How Is I Extorted?

On October 28, 2008, Steve Hartman sent me an email from IP address 216.113.175.152, informing me that the only way that I would be allowed to stay from the ePN system is 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 an affiliate network 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 damaging publicity.  So now they request my forum accounts so that they can hire tools to post “warm fuzzies” in the same forums. Read: eBay censors forums

* Full disclosure of any history with other affiliate networks
OK, so now Steve Hartman wants me to tell him what other affiliate system I am using? Why?  So that he can try to get me “cancelled” form those. Again, not gonna happen!

* Improve features of affiliate 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 detailed information interested from my forum activity and my friends than from the quality of the hits going to the ePN program.

Hartman went on to write, “Also, to make sure that I’m being clear, if there are any specific details negative publicity incidents, threats of unpopular publicity, etc., or we’re not selecting full disclosure on the above, then this is not the nice relationship we’re working to have with 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 locate something past awry and say nothing? Right, sure, youbetcha…

Then there were this little jewel, “One last point knowing regards to communication, from get to make our overall network scalable, we need to manage the relationship in consideration of you 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. You don’t beg “affiliates of my size” to contact the ePN staff? What size works very well an affiliate have to be before they are allowed to contact the ePN staff? If a smaller affiliate can have a problem they are supposed to do what? Quietly deal in consideration of it in 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 detailed information 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” with ePN did not work out. I am upset that hundreds if not thousands of honest affiliates working earnestly to send visitors to eBay have been caught in this net of insanity that has been created.

To: Steve Hartman

I know that you will read this and I want to let i know that I will never stop posting unpopular consumer complaints about i and about your flawed metrics and about the comedy of errors that you call a business. I had the opportunity to build a beneficial relationship in consideration of me and you chose to try and get me to rat out my associates from some thinly veiled offer of possibly remaining in a wrecked program. My trust and integrity are worth far additional info than that. I have created 6000 variations of this message and they will become posted 24/7 to the very same network that produced the non-engaged, low-features visits 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 detailed information far-reaching than that.

Steve, if you would like to publish a public apology to me and the rest of the affiliates that i have screwed understanding your idiotic metrics i can do so on in the very forum that begat this fiasco.