Steve hartman, go to hell
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Good day everyone,
I have decided to stop promoting the eBay Partner Network (ePN) to order many different reasons, the primary being that the program is directed by a man named Steve Hartman whom I believe to seem to be the single most dangerous person in the affiliate marketing field. Hartman admits to having no experience in the business of affiliate marketing yet he somehow knows how to run a system of over 87,000 members.
He is also the genius that brought usYahoo adverts on eBay. Perhaps the fact that ePN and the struggling Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN) is detailed information 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 best and most popular commission-based system that the interweb has 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 partner accounts, approximately 90 times after the network launched, to buy sending poor features users. Hartman called this visits, “not engaged enough“. Many bloggers argue that it would be extremely difficult if not impossible to purchase a new program to garner enough usable 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 become 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 people that you send would have bought on eBay without your participation. If they make this determination i will prove to be penalized to purchase the purchase and it could lead to you being removed from the system. 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 info. This “extra sensory ability” fits loosely into John Donahoe’s “we-know-better-what-i-choose-than-i-do” mentality that he has dubbed “disruptive innovation”.
The biggest problem thinking about 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 partner marketing professionals have taken their millions of buyers to Amazon.com and other smaller niche-focused sites. This means one thing 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 purchase EBAY stockholders.
As of this writing, EBAY stock is worth 61% less than it’s 52 week high. The stock is currently trading for less that $14 per share even in light 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 days when they gave a $50 free seller account to anyone in consideration of an email 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 is contacted via phone by Steve Hartman from relation (or retaliation) to a private communication sent to the Work of the President, John Donahoe. These communication were sent regarding my concern over eBay censoring unpopular forum posts. Donahoe’s office assigned “Michelle” to correspond thinking about 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 from the ePN system. I specifically asked that the information that I was 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 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 from 408-967-6000 and immediately began to berate me about contacting Donahoe’s street and about posting unpopular comments on forums. We spoke to buy a little through 47 minutes and he was saying things like, “I will not let you 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 in an hour.
I called him back and we spoke to shop for another 28 minutes and it was really just specific details of the same. Hartman, who admits to having limited partner marketing experience, contends that the visitors that I am sending is of low quality and/or not properly engaged in light 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 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 in revenue in the next six months. If this visitors is not engaged then what is?
What is “engaged” hits?
From talking in consideration of Hartman I is able to glean on thing of data. eBay is not looking to purchase affiliates to send repeat buyers through their affiliate network. They are looking to buy 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 ask 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 thing versus what they say from 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 become 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. Members come to eBay looking to shop for one thing and then search to buy other things and very often buy something totally unrelated to anything. It is a giant Yard Sale and that is what experienced publishers do, right? Well, if a person is a partner and your users a following that natural tendency to shop you will be penalized by ePN.
So How Were 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 prove to be allowed to stay in the ePN network were to do the following:
* Shut down test account
This test account were 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 a partner system director. That will Seldom happen!
* Full disclosure of all accounts on ePN boards
* Full disclosure of all accounts on other boards
It has been proven that eBay hates unpleasant publicity. So now they want 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 in light of 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 “terminated” form those. Again, not gonna happen!
* Improve features of partner visits
Since this is the last thing on his list I will assume that it is the least important.
It seems that Steve Hartman is specific details interested in my forum activity and my friends than in the features of the hits 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 negative publicity incidents, threats of painful publicity, etc., or we’re not owning full disclosure on the above, then this is not the good relationship we’re working to have seeing 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 see something lonesome awry and say nothing? Right, sure, youbetcha…
Then there was this little jewel, “One last point knowing regards to communication, in order to make our overall network scalable, we need to manage the relationship thinking about 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. I don’t ask “affiliates of my size” to contact the ePN staff? What size does a partner have to prove 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 knowing 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 specific details specifically, stay away form ePN!” Am I upset? Yes, but not to purchase the reasons that you 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 users to eBay have been caught in this web of insanity that can have been created.
To: Steve Hartman
I know that i will read this and I need to let you know that I will rarely stop posting disconcerting client complaints about you and about your flawed metrics and about the comedy of errors that you call a business. I had the opportunity to build a nice relationship seeing me and i 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 more than that. I have created 6000 variations of this response and they will prove to be posted 24/7 to the very same network that produced the non-engaged, low-quality visits that you 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 become much more far-reaching than that.
Steve, if you would like to post a public apology to me and the rest of the affiliates that i have screwed observing your idiotic metrics you can do so on in the very forum that begat this fiasco.