John donahoe, go to hell
November 3rd, 2008 by mybloodyvalentine8689[tags]General,,[/tags]
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Hello everyone,
I have decided to stop marketing the eBay Partner Network (ePN) to buy a host of reasons, the primary being that the network is controlled by a man named Steve Hartman whom I believe to prove to be the single most dangerous person in the affiliate marketing field. Hartman admits to having no experience from the industry of partner marketing yet he somehow knows how to directed a program of through 87,000 partners.
He is also the genius that brought usYahoo advertisments on eBay. Perhaps the fact that ePN and the failing Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN) is more than a strange coincidence: both claim to prove to be “partner networks” and both companies seem to become allowing monkeys to run the zoo.
ePN should have and could have been the greatest and most popular commission-based system that the net has 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 expired hundreds of partner accounts, approximately 90 days after the program launch, to shop for sending poor features users. Hartman called this visitors, “not engaged enough“. Many members argue that it would seem to be extremely difficult if not impossible for a new system to garner enough accurate 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 seem 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 hits that you send would have purchased on eBay without your help. If they make this determination i will be penalized 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 program in 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-i-beg-than-you-do” mentality that he has dubbed “disruptive innovation”.
The biggest problem in light of the eBay/ePN network 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. 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 shop for 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 purchase 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 buy less that $14 per share even seeing 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 observing an communication 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 was contacted via telephone by Steve Hartman in relation (or retaliation) to a private message sent to the Fraternaty of the President, John Donahoe. These messages were sent regarding my concern through eBay censoring unpleasant forum posts. Donahoe’s work assigned “Michelle” to correspond seeing me and ms. friesen 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 program. Michelle violated that confidence and forwarded the communication 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 from 408-967-6000 and immediately began to berate me about contacting Donahoe’s college and about posting unpopular comments on forums. We spoke to order a little through 47 minutes and he were saying things like, “I will not let you 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 in an hour.
I called him back and we spoke to buy another 28 minutes and it were really just additional info of the same. Hartman, who admits to having limited affiliate marketing experience, contends that the visitors that I am sending is of low quality and/or not properly engaged with 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 from bid revenue and an estimated $100,000.00 + from Seller revenue. If you 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 visitors is not engaged then what is?
What is “engaged” hits?
From talking in consideration of Hartman I was able to glean on thought of information. eBay is not looking to order affiliates to send repeat buyers through their affiliate 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 need 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 in one joint 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 a partner send a visitor to eBay a cookie is set. This cookie lasts to purchase 7 stages. A users who comes back on day 4 and buys something is therefore considered to not be engaged and the affiliate is penalized to purchase 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 order 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 bloggers do, right? Well, if you are an affiliate and your users a following that natural tendency to shop you will prove 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 seem to be allowed to stay in the ePN system is to do the following:
* Shut down test account
This test account were 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 a partner system director. That will Never happen!
* Full disclosure of all accounts on ePN boards
* Full disclosure of all accounts on other boards
It can have been proven that eBay hates negative publicity. So now they want my forum accounts so that they can hire tools to publish “warm fuzzies” in the same forums. Read: eBay censors forums
* Full disclosure of any history understanding other affiliate networks
OK, so now Steve Hartman wants me to tell him what other affiliate program I am using? Why? So that he can try to get me “expired” form those. Again, not gonna happen!
* Improve features of affiliate hits
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 features of the visits 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 unpopular publicity incidents, threats of unpopular publicity, etc., or we’re not finding full disclosure on the above, then this is not the nice relationship we’re working to have observing 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 view something lost awry and say nothing? Right, sure, youbetcha…
Then there is this little jewel, “One last point understanding regards to communication, from purchase to make our overall network scalable, we need to manage the relationship in consideration of you as we do seeing 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 partner can have a problem they are supposed to do what? Quietly deal with 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 from eBay and detailed information specifically, stay away form ePN!” Am I upset? Yes, but not 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 traffic to eBay have been caught from this interweb of insanity that can have been created.
To: Steve Hartman
I know that i will read this and I want to let you know that I will rarely stop posting unpleasant buyer 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 productive relationship seeing me and you chose to try and get me to rat out my associates in some thinly veiled offer of possibly remaining from 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 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 since an eBay Seller or about joining ePN then I feel that I have done my job, but I think my words will seem to be much specific details 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 in light of your idiotic metrics you can do so on from the very forum that begat this fiasco.