Hello everyone,
I have decided to stop promoting the eBay Partner Network (ePN) to shop for many different reasons, the primary being that the program is directed by a man named Steve Hartman whom I believe to become the single most dangerous person from the partner marketing field. Hartman admits to having no experience from the industry of partner marketing yet he somehow knows how to directed a system of over 87,000 affiliates.
He is also the genius that brought usYahoo ads on eBay. Perhaps the fact that ePN and the failing Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN) is more than a strange coincidence: both claim to seem to be “partner networks” and both companies seem to seem to be allowing monkeys to run the zoo.
ePN should have and could have been the largest and most profitable commission-based program 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 affiliate accounts, approximately 90 days after the system began, to order sending low quality hits. Hartman called this traffic, “not engaged enough“. Various members argue that it would prove to be extremely difficult if not impossible to buy a new program 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 prove to 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 affiliate. This means that eBay will know whether hits that i send would have bought on eBay without your help. If they make this determination i will 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 system from 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-request-than-i-do” mentality that he can have dubbed “disruptive innovation”.
The biggest problem thinking about the eBay/ePN program 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. Various 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 to purchase 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 buy 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 days when they gave a $50 free seller account to anyone seeing an email address and sent out paper invoices that i 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 were contacted via telephone by Steve Hartman from relation (or retaliation) to a private email sent to the College of the President, John Donahoe. These calls were sent regarding my concern through eBay censoring negative forum posts. Donahoe’s office assigned “Michelle” to correspond in consideration of me and wendi said that my issue had “drawn the attention of the President” and that wendi wanted to get additional info 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 is sharing not become sent to ePN because they have a history or retaliating against affiliates that speak negatively about the network. Michelle violated that confidence and forwarded the emails 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 since 408-967-6000 and immediately began to berate me about contacting Donahoe’s college and about posting negative comments on forums. We spoke to order 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 affiliate marketing experience, contends that the traffic that I am sending is of low features and/or not properly engaged understanding 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 + from Seller revenue. If i 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 in the next six months. If this hits is not engaged then what is?
What is “engaged” hits?
From talking observing Hartman I was able to glean on thought of information. eBay is not looking to buy 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 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 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 order 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. Experienced publishers come to eBay looking to purchase one thing and then search to shop for 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 one can be 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 message from IP address 216.113.175.152, informing me that the only way that I would prove to be allowed to stay from the ePN system was 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 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 can have been proven that eBay hates negative publicity. So now they request my forum accounts so that they can hire tools to publish “warm fuzzies” from the same forums. Read: eBay censors forums
* Full disclosure of any history observing other affiliate networks
OK, so now Steve Hartman wants me to tell him what other partner program I am using? Why? So that he can try to get me “expired” 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 in my forum activity and my friends than in the quality 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 additional info negative publicity incidents, threats of disconcerting publicity, etc., or we’re not finding full disclosure on the above, then this is not the good relationship we’re working to have in consideration 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 view something lonesome awry and say nothing? Right, sure, youbetcha…
Then there is this little jewel, “One last point knowing regards to communication, from purchase to make our overall network scalable, we need to manage the relationship in consideration of i 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 need “affiliates of my size” to contact the ePN staff? What size supplemental hydrogen can improve fuel mileage an affiliate have to become 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 knowing 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 from eBay and additional info 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” thinking about 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 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 unpleasant consumer 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 beneficial relationship understanding me and i chose to try and get me to rat out my associates from some thinly veiled offer of possibly remaining from a wrecked program. My trust and integrity are worth far detailed information than that. I have created 6000 variations of this reply and they will be posted 24/7 to the very same network that produced the non-engaged, low-quality hits 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 additional info far-reaching than that.
Steve, if you would like to publish 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.
