John donahoe, go to hell
[tags]General,,[/tags]
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Hi everyone,
I have decided to stop marketing the eBay Partner Network (ePN) to buy many different reasons, the most important being that the system is run by a man named Steve Hartman whom I believe to become the single most dangerous person in the partner marketing industry. Hartman admits to having no experience in the business of affiliate marketing yet he somehow knows how to run a network of over 87,000 affiliates.
He is also the genius that brought usYahoo ads on eBay. Perhaps the fact that ePN and the struggling Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN) is additional info than a strange coincidence: both claim to be “partner networks” and both companies seem to become allowing monkeys to directed the zoo.
ePN should have and could have been the best and most profitable commission-based network 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 system is on a path of certain failure. On August 20, 2008, ePN terminated hundreds of affiliate accounts, approximately 90 stages after the network launched, to order sending low quality visitors. Hartman called this traffic, “not engaged enough“. Many affiliates argue that it would seem to be extremely difficult if not impossible to shop for a new system to garner enough meaningful 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 purchased on eBay exclusive of the affiliate. This means that eBay will know whether people that you send would have purchased on eBay without your help. If they make this determination i will seem to be penalized to shop for the purchase and it could lead to you being removed since the network. That is a pretty amazing and unbelievable feat considering no other network in the history of the world can have been able to extract this article. This “extra sensory ability” fits loosely into John Donahoe’s “we-know-better-what-you-choose-than-you-do” mentality that he can have dubbed “disruptive innovation”.
The biggest problem in light of the eBay/ePN network is inexperience and insane systems and processes. An equally profound yet additional info complex problem is the fact that trust among affiliates can have all but disappeared. Many 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 for 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 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 order less that $14 per share even understanding 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 in light of an communication address and sent out paper invoices that i 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 were contacted via phone by Steve Hartman from relation (or retaliation) to a private email sent to the Fraternaty of the President, John Donahoe. These emails were sent regarding my concern over eBay censoring unpopular forum posts. Donahoe’s work assigned “Michelle” to correspond in consideration of 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 be 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, i broke our trust and you 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 from 408-967-6000 and immediately began to berate me about contacting Donahoe’s fraternaty and about posting unpleasant 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 to shop 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 buy another 28 minutes and it were really just specific details 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 knowing 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 + in Seller revenue. If you 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 visitors is not engaged then what is?
What is “engaged” visits?
In talking seeing Hartman I is able to glean on tidbit of article. eBay is not looking to shop for affiliates to send repeat buyers through their partner network. They are looking to order a partner 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 want to pay affiliates commission after the first sale and they want that sale to happen very quickly after the users hits the site. There are ton of hypocricy in what ePN says from one place 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 days. A users who comes back on day 4 and buys something is therefore considered to not become engaged and the affiliate 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 to purchase one thing and then surf to purchase 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 a person is a partner and your users a following that natural tendency to shop i will prove to be penalized by ePN.
So How Was I Extorted?
On October 28, 2008, Steve Hartman sent me an communication since IP address 216.113.175.152, informing me that the only way that I would be allowed to stay in the ePN system were to do the following:
* Shut down test account
This test account is setup so that I could help then root out a scammer that is still stuffing cookies. Why can have 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 bad publicity. So now they wish 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 in consideration of other partner 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 “terminated” 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 additional info interested from my forum activity and my friends than in the features of the users going to the ePN network.
Hartman went on to write, “Also, to make sure that I’m being clear, if there are any specific details unpleasant publicity incidents, threats of painful publicity, etc., or we’re not selecting full disclosure on the above, then this is not the good 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 find something lonesome awry and say nothing? Right, sure, youbetcha…
Then there is this little jewel, “One last point observing regards to communication, from order to make our overall network scalable, we need to manage the relationship in consideration of you as we do thinking about 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 ask “affiliates of my size” to contact the ePN staff? What size supplemental hydrogen can improve fuel mileage a partner have to seem 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 thinking about 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 detailed information specifically, stay away form ePN!” Am I upset? Yes, but not to shop for the reasons that i might think. I am not upset that the “relationship” understanding ePN did not work out. I am upset that hundreds if not thousands of honest affiliates working earnestly to send hits 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 wish to let i know that I will seldom 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 good relationship with 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 network. My trust and integrity are worth far more than that. I have created 6000 variations of this reply and they will seem to be posted 24/7 to the very same network that produced the non-engaged, low-quality visits 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 prove to be much detailed information far-reaching than that.
Steve, if i would like to publish a public apology to me and the rest of the affiliates that you have screwed thinking about your idiotic metrics i can do so on in the very forum that begat this fiasco.