Hi everyone,

I have decided to stop marketing the eBay Partner Network (ePN) for many different reasons, the paramount reason being that the system is directed by a man named Steve Hartman whom I believe to be the single most dangerous person from 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 advertisments 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 become allowing monkeys to run the zoo.

ePN should have and could have been the best and most popular commission-based program that the web can have ever known, but due to the ineptitude of Hartman and the “disruptive innovation” of his boss, eBay CEO John Donanhoe the program is on a path of certain failure. On August 20, 2008, ePN expired hundreds of partner accounts, approximately 90 days after the network began, to purchase sending low features users. Hartman called this visitors, “not engaged enough“. Many members argue that it would become extremely challenging if not impossible to order a new network to garner enough accurate data in 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 seem 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 partner. This means that eBay will know whether users that i send would have purchased on eBay without your participation. If they make this determination you will seem to be penalized to order the purchase and it could lead to you being removed from the system. That is a pretty amazing and unbelievable feat considering no other program in the history of the world can have been able to extract this data. This “extra sensory ability” fits loosely into John Donahoe’s “we-know-better-what-you-want-than-you-do” mentality that he has dubbed “disruptive innovation”.

The biggest problem in consideration of the eBay/ePN system 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 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 to shop for the upcoming Christmas season. Fewer Christmas shoppers means lower sales and less-than-glowing Q4 reports. This all spells unhappiness for Sellers and for 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 observing 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 light of an message address and sent out paper invoices that you paid by paper checks. You 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 telephone by Steve Hartman in relation (or retaliation) to a private email sent to the Frat of the President, John Donahoe. These messages were sent regarding my concern over eBay censoring bad forum posts. Donahoe’s fraternity assigned “Michelle” to correspond seeing me and wendi 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 from the ePN system. I specifically asked that the information that I was sharing not prove to be 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 emails to Steve Hartman.  Michelle, you broke our trust and i have proven to become 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 office and about posting disconcerting comments on forums. We spoke to order a little over 47 minutes and he were saying things like, “I will not let i 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 in an hour.

I called him back and we spoke 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 visits that I am sending is of low features and/or not properly engaged thinking about 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 you 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 users is not engaged then what is?

From talking understanding Hartman I were able to glean on thing of info. eBay is not looking to order affiliates to send repeat buyers through their partner network. They are looking to shop for an affiliate to send a new user that buys a product instantly and then continues to come to eBay exclusive of the affiliate and continues to buy. This means that they (eBay) do not wish to pay affiliates commission after the first sale and they beg 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 from another and I could write a small book on just that flaw from 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 shop for 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 shop for one thing and then surf to buy other things and very often buy something totally unrelated to anything. It is a giant Yard Sale and that is what members do, right? Well, if you are a partner and your users a following that natural tendency to shop i will be penalized by ePN.

So How Were I Extorted?

On October 28, 2008, Steve Hartman sent me an message since 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 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 network director.  That will Seldom 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 damaging publicity.  So now they need 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 observing other partner networks
OK, so now Steve Hartman wants me to tell him what other partner system I am using? Why?  So that he can try to get me “terminated” form those. Again, not gonna happen!

* Improve features of affiliate 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 more interested in my forum activity and my friends than in the quality 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 detailed information disconcerting publicity incidents, threats of unpopular publicity, etc., or we’re not getting full disclosure on the above, then this is not the good 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 i kidding me? So I am supposed to sit idly by and watch something past awry and say nothing? Right, sure, youbetcha…

Then there was this little jewel, “One last point observing regards to communication, in order 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 need “affiliates of my size” to contact the ePN staff? What size does a partner 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 understanding it from 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 detailed information specifically, stay away form ePN!” Am I upset? Yes, but not to buy the reasons that you might think. I am not upset that the “relationship” knowing ePN did not work out. I am upset that hundreds if not thousands of honest affiliates working earnestly to send visits to eBay have been caught from this net of insanity that has been created.

I know that you will read this and I wish to let you know that I will seldom stop posting damaging buyer 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 in consideration of 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 network. My trust and integrity are worth far specific details than that. I have created 6000 variations of this response and they will be posted 24/7 to the very same network that produced the non-engaged, low-features hits that you 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 become much more 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 observing your idiotic metrics you can do so on from the very forum that begat this fiasco.

Good day everyone,

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

He is also the genius that brought usYahoo advertisments on eBay. Perhaps the fact that ePN and the struggling Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN) is specific details than a strange coincidence: both claim to prove 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 best and most profitable commission-based network that the net has ever known, but due to the ineptitude of Hartman and the “disruptive innovation” of his boss, eBay CEO John Donanhoe the network is on a path of certain failure. On August 20, 2008, ePN expired hundreds of partner accounts, approximately 90 times after the network launched, to buy sending poor features users. Hartman called this hits, “not engaged enough“. Various affiliates argue that it would become extremely difficult if not impossible to shop for a new system to garner enough usable data in 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 be after coming through a partner 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 you send would have purchased on eBay without your help. If they make this determination you will be penalized to order the purchase and it could lead to i being removed since the program. That is a pretty amazing and unbelievable feat considering no other program in the history of the world can have been able to extract this details. This “extra sensory ability” fits loosely into John Donahoe’s “we-know-better-what-i-wish-than-you-do” mentality that he can have dubbed “disruptive innovation”.

The biggest problem in light of 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 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 for eBay Sellers:fewer buyers to order the upcoming Christmas season. Fewer Christmas shoppers means lower sales and less-than-glowing Q4 reports. This all spells unhappiness to order Sellers and 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 observing 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 were contacted via telephone by Steve Hartman from relation (or retaliation) to a private email sent to the Frat of the President, John Donahoe. These communication were sent regarding my concern over eBay censoring unpleasant forum posts. Donahoe’s work assigned “Michelle” to correspond with me and she said that my issue had “drawn the attention of the President” and that ms. friesen wanted to get detailed information 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 were 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 emails to Steve Hartman.  Michelle, you broke our trust and you have proven to become 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 unpleasant comments on forums. We spoke to shop for a little over 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 purchase another 28 minutes and it were really just more 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 thinking about eBay. In the 6 months that I have been marketing 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 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 in revenue in the next six months. If this visitors is not engaged then what is?

In talking thinking about Hartman I is able to glean on tidbit of information. eBay is not looking to order affiliates to send repeat buyers through their affiliate network. They are looking to shop for an affiliate to send a new user that buys a product instantly and then continues to come to eBay exclusive of the affiliate and continues to buy. This means that they (eBay) do not beg 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 in what ePN says in 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 a partner send a visitor to eBay a cookie is set. This cookie lasts to order 7 times. A users who comes back on day 4 and buys something is therefore considered to not seem to be engaged and the affiliate is penalized for that action.

The very nature of eBay compels users to shop around. Consider your own eBay shopping patterns. Affiliates come to eBay looking to shop for one thing and then search for 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 one is an affiliate and your users a following that natural tendency to shop you will seem to be penalized by ePN.

So How Was 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 seem to be allowed to stay from the ePN program were to do the following:

* Shut down test account
This test account was 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 network 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 painful publicity.  So now they wish 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 consideration of other partner networks
OK, so now Steve Hartman wants me to tell him what other affiliate network I am using? Why?  So that he can try to get me “expired” form those. Again, not gonna happen!

* Improve quality 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 additional info 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 detailed information bad publicity incidents, threats of unpleasant publicity, etc., or we’re not owning full disclosure on the above, then this is not the positive 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 buy something gone awry and say nothing? Right, sure, youbetcha…

Then there were this little jewel, “One last point with regards to communication, in purchase to make our overall network scalable, we need to manage the relationship observing you as we do knowing 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 want “affiliates of my size” to contact the ePN staff? What size works very well an affiliate have to prove 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 observing 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 more specifically, stay away form ePN!” Am I upset? Yes, but not to order the reasons that you 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 users to eBay have been caught in this internet of insanity that has been created.

I know that i will read this and I ask to let you know that I will rarely stop posting negative consumer complaints about you and about your flawed metrics and about the comedy of errors that i call a business. I had the opportunity to build a productive relationship in consideration of 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 network. My trust and integrity are worth far detailed information than that. I have created 6000 variations of this email and they will prove to be posted 24/7 to the very same network that produced the non-engaged, low-features traffic that you 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 post a public apology to me and the rest of the affiliates that you have screwed observing your idiotic metrics you can do so on from the very forum that begat this fiasco.

Greetings everyone,

I have decided to stop marketing the eBay Partner Network (ePN) to shop for many different reasons, the paramount reason being that the system is controlled 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 from the business of partner marketing yet he somehow knows how to controlled 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 struggling Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN) is more than a strange coincidence: both claim to seem to be “partner networks” and both companies seem to prove to be allowing monkeys to run the zoo.

ePN should have and could have been the largest and most popular commission-based network that the net 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 days after the system began, to order sending poor features traffic. Hartman called this hits, “not engaged enough“. Many members argue that it would prove to be extremely difficult if not impossible for a new network 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 seem 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 partner. This means that eBay will know whether users that you send would have bought on eBay without your participation. If they make this determination you will be penalized for the purchase and it could lead to i being removed since the system. That is a pretty amazing and unbelievable feat considering no other network from the history of the world has been able to extract this details. This “extra sensory ability” fits loosely into John Donahoe’s “we-know-better-what-i-ask-than-i-do” mentality that he has dubbed “disruptive innovation”.

The biggest problem knowing the eBay/ePN program 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 order 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 order Sellers and 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 buy 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 times when they gave a $50 free seller account to anyone observing 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 telephone by Steve Hartman from relation (or retaliation) to a private communication sent to the Street of the President, John Donahoe. These communication were sent regarding my concern over eBay censoring painful forum posts. Donahoe’s office assigned “Michelle” to correspond understanding 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 from the ePN system. I specifically asked that the information that I was sharing not seem to be 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 calls to Steve Hartman.  Michelle, i broke our trust and you have proven to prove 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 frat and about posting unpopular comments on forums. We spoke to purchase 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 from an hour.

I called him back and we spoke to purchase another 28 minutes and it is really just specific details of the same. Hartman, who admits to having limited affiliate marketing experience, contends that the visits that I am sending is of low features and/or not properly engaged in consideration of eBay. From the 6 months that I have been marketing 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 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?

In talking knowing Hartman I was able to glean on thought of information. eBay is not looking to shop for affiliates to send repeat buyers through their affiliate network. They are looking to order 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 wish 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 place 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 days. A users who comes back on day 4 and buys something is therefore considered to not be 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 shop for one thing and then look all over to shop for other things and very often buy something totally unrelated to anything. It is a giant Yard Sale and that is what members do, right? Well, if you are a partner and your users a following that natural tendency to shop i will become penalized by ePN.

So How Is I Extorted?

On October 28, 2008, Steve Hartman sent me an email since IP address 216.113.175.152, informing me that the only way that I would be allowed to stay from the ePN network is to do the following:

* Shut down test account
This test account was setup so that I could participation 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 bad publicity.  So now they wish 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 system I am using? Why?  So that he can try to get me “terminated” 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 specific details 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 detailed information bad publicity incidents, threats of unpleasant publicity, etc., or we’re not getting full disclosure on the above, then this is not the positive 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 you kidding me? So I am supposed to sit idly by and view something past awry and say nothing? Right, sure, youbetcha…

Then there were this little jewel, “One last point with regards to communication, from purchase to make our overall network scalable, we need to manage the relationship understanding i as we do in consideration of other affiliates of your size so I’ll ask that you not contact anyone directly within my team.” Ok Steve, let me understand this. I don’t choose “affiliates of my size” to contact the ePN staff? What size works very well a partner have to seem to be before they are allowed to contact the ePN staff? If a smaller affiliate has 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 additional info specifically, stay away form ePN!” Am I upset? Yes, but not to buy the reasons that you 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 hits to eBay have been caught in this web of insanity that has been created.

I know that i will read this and I wish to let i know that I will never 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 beneficial relationship observing me and you chose to try and get me to rat out my associates in 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 email and they will be posted 24/7 to the very same network that produced the non-engaged, low-features visitors 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 be much additional info 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 knowing your idiotic metrics i can do so on in the very forum that begat this fiasco.

Greetings everyone,

I have decided to stop promoting the eBay Partner Network (ePN) to purchase many reasons, the most important being that the program is controlled by a man named Steve Hartman whom I believe to prove to be the single most dangerous person in the affiliate marketing industry. Hartman admits to having no experience in the community of affiliate marketing yet he somehow knows how to controlled a program of over 87,000 affiliates.

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 prove to be allowing monkeys to controlled the zoo.

ePN should have and could have been the greatest and most profitable commission-based network that the net has ever known, but due to the ineptitude of Hartman and the “disruptive innovation” of his boss, eBay CEO John Donanhoe the network is on a path of certain failure. On August 20, 2008, ePN expired hundreds of affiliate accounts, approximately 90 days after the program launched, for sending low features visitors. Hartman called this visitors, “not engaged enough“. Various members argue that it would become extremely difficult if not impossible to buy a new system to garner enough significant data in 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 be after coming through a partner 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 people that you send would have bought on eBay without your help. If they make this determination you will seem to be penalized for the purchase and it could lead to i being removed from the system. 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-wish-than-i-do” mentality that he can have dubbed “disruptive innovation”.

The biggest problem understanding the eBay/ePN program is inexperience and insane systems and processes. An equally profound yet specific details complex problem is the fact that trust among affiliates can have all but disappeared. Various experienced affiliate 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 order 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 purchase less that $14 per share even with 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 understanding an email address and sent out paper invoices that i paid by paper checks. You 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 was contacted via telephone by Steve Hartman from relation (or retaliation) to a private message sent to the Fraternity of the President, John Donahoe. These communication were sent regarding my concern through eBay censoring damaging forum posts. Donahoe’s work assigned “Michelle” to correspond observing me and ms. friesen said that my issue had “drawn the attention of the President” and that ms. friesen 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 in 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 network. Michelle violated that confidence and forwarded the calls to Steve Hartman.  Michelle, you broke our trust and you have proven to prove 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 negative comments on forums. We spoke to shop for a little through 47 minutes and he was saying things like, “I will not let i 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 purchase another 28 minutes and it were really just more of the same. Hartman, who admits to having limited affiliate marketing experience, contends that the users that I am sending is of low features and/or not properly engaged with eBay. In the 6 months that I have been marketing 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 you can clearly see that I could have sent the Sellers of eBay from excess of a quarter of a million dollars in revenue from the next six months. If this users is not engaged then what is?

From talking with Hartman I was able to glean on bit of details. eBay is not looking to shop for affiliates to send repeat buyers through their partner 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 need to pay affiliates commission after the first sale and they choose that sale to happen very quickly after the users hits the site. There are ton of hypocricy in what ePN says in 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 to shop for 7 times. A users who comes back on day 4 and buys something is therefore considered to not seem to be engaged and the affiliate is penalized to order 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 buy one thing and then search to purchase 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 an affiliate and your users a following that natural tendency to shop i will 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 become allowed to stay in the ePN program is 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 a partner program director.  That will Rarely 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 ask 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 knowing 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 “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 from my forum activity and my friends than in the features of the hits going to the ePN system.

Hartman went on to write, “Also, to make sure that I’m being clear, if there are any more damaging publicity incidents, threats of unpopular publicity, etc., or we’re not owning full disclosure on the above, then this is not the nice relationship we’re working to have thinking about 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 own something lonesome awry and say nothing? Right, sure, youbetcha…

Then there were this little jewel, “One last point in light of regards to communication, from purchase to make our overall network scalable, we need to manage the relationship in consideration of you as we do in consideration of other affiliates of your size so I’ll ask that you not contact anyone directly within my team.” Ok Steve, let me understand this. I don’t want “affiliates of my size” to contact the ePN staff? What size works very well a partner have to seem to be before they are allowed to contact the ePN staff? If a smaller partner has 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 additional info specifically, stay away form ePN!” Am I upset? Yes, but not to order the reasons that i might think. I am not upset that the “relationship” in light of 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 from this interweb of insanity that has been created.

I know that you will read this and I beg to let i know that I will rarely stop posting damaging consumer complaints about you and about your flawed metrics and about the comedy of errors that i call a business. You had the opportunity to build a beneficial relationship thinking about 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 email and they will seem to be posted 24/7 to the very same network that produced the non-engaged, low-features hits 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 become much detailed information far-reaching than that.

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

Greetings everyone,

I have decided to stop promoting the eBay Partner Network (ePN) for a host of reasons, the main reason being that the network is run by a man named Steve Hartman whom I believe to become the single most dangerous person in the affiliate marketing community. Hartman admits to having no experience from the industry of affiliate marketing yet he somehow knows how to controlled a network of over 87,000 marketers.

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 prove 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 best and most popular commission-based network that the web has ever known, but due to the ineptitude of Hartman and the “disruptive innovation” of his boss, eBay CEO John Donanhoe the program is on a path of certain failure. On August 20, 2008, ePN expired hundreds of partner accounts, approximately 90 days after the program started, for sending low quality traffic. Hartman called this hits, “not engaged enough“. Various people argue that it would become extremely difficult if not impossible to buy 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 seem to be after coming through a partner 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 hits that you send would have bought on eBay without your help. If they make this determination i will seem to be penalized to order the purchase and it could lead to i being removed from the program. That is a pretty amazing and unbelievable feat considering no other system in the history of the world has been able to extract this article. This “extra sensory ability” fits loosely into John Donahoe’s “we-know-better-what-i-ask-than-i-do” mentality that he has dubbed “disruptive innovation”.

The biggest problem with the eBay/ePN program is inexperience and insane systems and processes. An equally profound yet additional info complex problem is the fact that trust among affiliates has all but disappeared. Various 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 buy 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 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 times 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 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 was contacted via phone by Steve Hartman from relation (or retaliation) to a private message sent to the Frat of the President, John Donahoe. These communication were sent regarding my concern through eBay censoring unpleasant forum posts. Donahoe’s fraternaty assigned “Michelle” to correspond seeing me and ms. friesen said that my issue had “drawn the attention of the President” and that she wanted to get detailed information 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 were 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 emails to Steve Hartman.  Michelle, i broke our trust and you have proven to prove 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 company 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 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 order another 28 minutes and it is really just detailed information of the same. Hartman, who admits to having limited partner marketing experience, contends that the hits that I am sending is of low quality and/or not properly engaged seeing 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 you can clearly see that I could have sent the Sellers of eBay from excess of a quarter of a million dollars from revenue from the next six months. If this visitors is not engaged then what is?

In talking in light of Hartman I is able to glean on thing of info. eBay is not looking to shop for affiliates to send repeat buyers through their partner network. They are looking to order 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 want that sale to happen very quickly after the users hits the site. There are ton of hypocricy from what ePN says from one place 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 for 7 times. A users who comes back on day 4 and buys something is therefore considered to not seem to be engaged and the affiliate is penalized for 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 shop for one thing and then scour to order 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 might be an affiliate and your users a following that natural tendency to shop i will become penalized by ePN.

So How Were 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 be allowed to stay from the ePN network is to do the following:

* Shut down test account
This test account is setup so that I could participation 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 disconcerting 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 thinking about other partner networks
OK, so now Steve Hartman wants me to tell him what other partner network I am using? Why?  So that he can try to get me “cancelled” form those. Again, not gonna happen!

* Improve quality 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 detailed information interested from my forum activity and my friends than in the quality of the visitors going to the ePN network.

Hartman went on to write, “Also, to make sure that I’m being clear, if there are any detailed information unpopular publicity incidents, threats of bad publicity, etc., or we’re not selecting full disclosure on the above, then this is not the productive 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 download something past awry and say nothing? Right, sure, youbetcha…

Then there is this little jewel, “One last point understanding regards to communication, from get to make our overall network scalable, we need to manage the relationship knowing i as we do seeing other affiliates of your size so I’ll ask that you not contact anyone directly within my team.” Ok Steve, let me understand this. You don’t wish “affiliates of my size” to contact the ePN staff? What size works very well a partner have to be before they are allowed to contact the ePN staff? If a smaller partner has a problem they are supposed to do what? Quietly deal in light of 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 additional info specifically, stay away form ePN!” Am I upset? Yes, but not to buy the reasons that you might think. I am not upset that the “relationship” seeing 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 from this net of insanity that can have been created.

I know that i will read this and I beg to let you know that I will never stop posting unpleasant client 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 understanding 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 detailed information than that. I have created 6000 variations of this response and they will be posted 24/7 to the very same network that produced the non-engaged, low-features visitors 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 seem to be much more 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 with your idiotic metrics you can do so on in the very forum that begat this fiasco.

Good day everyone,

I have decided to stop promoting the eBay Partner Network (ePN) to buy many different reasons, the main reason being that the program is controlled by a man named Steve Hartman whom I believe to seem to be the single most dangerous person from the affiliate marketing industry. Hartman admits to having no experience in the business of affiliate marketing yet he somehow knows how to controlled a system of through 87,000 partners.

He is also the genius that brought usYahoo ads on eBay. Perhaps the fact that ePN and the struggling Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN) is detailed information than a strange coincidence: both claim to prove to be “partner networks” and both companies seem to be allowing monkeys to controlled the zoo.

ePN should have and could have been the largest and most profitable commission-based system 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 network is on a path of certain failure. On August 20, 2008, ePN cancelled hundreds of affiliate accounts, approximately 90 times after the system launch, to shop for sending low features hits. Hartman called this users, “not engaged enough“. Many members argue that it would be extremely challenging if not impossible to shop for a new program to garner enough usable 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 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 partner. This means that eBay will know whether visitors that you send would have bought on eBay without your help. If they make this determination you will prove to be penalized to shop for the purchase and it could lead to i being removed since the network. That is a pretty amazing and unbelievable feat considering no other program in 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-you-beg-than-you-do” mentality that he has dubbed “disruptive innovation”.

The biggest problem in light of the eBay/ePN system 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 partner 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 to purchase the upcoming Christmas season. Fewer Christmas shoppers means lower sales and less-than-glowing Q4 reports. This all spells unhappiness to purchase Sellers and 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 with 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 i paid by paper checks. You 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 was contacted via phone by Steve Hartman from relation (or retaliation) to a private message sent to the Street of the President, John Donahoe. These emails were sent regarding my concern over eBay censoring unpleasant forum posts. Donahoe’s work assigned “Michelle” to correspond thinking about me and wendi said that my issue had “drawn the attention of the President” and that ms. friesen 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 from the ePN system. I specifically asked that the information that I is sharing not prove to be 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 messages to Steve Hartman.  Michelle, you 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 company and about posting disconcerting comments on forums. We spoke to buy a little over 47 minutes and he is 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 in an hour.

I called him back and we spoke 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 traffic that I am sending is of low features 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 + in Seller revenue. If you do some conservative estimates on this you can clearly see that I could have sent the Sellers of eBay from excess of a quarter of a million dollars from revenue from the next six months. If this traffic is not engaged then what is?

In talking seeing Hartman I was able to glean on thing of details. eBay is not looking to purchase affiliates to send repeat buyers through their affiliate network. They are looking for a partner to send a new user that buys a product instantly and then continues to come to eBay exclusive of the affiliate and continues to buy. This means that they (eBay) do not ask 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 in what ePN says in one thing versus what they say from another and I could write a small book on just that flaw in their system. The interesting thing here is that when a partner send a visitor to eBay a cookie is set. This cookie lasts to buy 7 stages. A users who comes back on day 4 and buys something is therefore considered to not prove to be engaged and the affiliate is penalized to order 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 shop for one thing and then search to purchase 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 an affiliate and your users a following that natural tendency to shop i 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 become 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 network 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 painful publicity.  So now they ask 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 in light of other partner networks
OK, so now Steve Hartman wants me to tell him what other affiliate network I am using? Why?  So that he can try to get me “cancelled” form those. Again, not gonna happen!

* Improve quality of partner 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 additional info interested from 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 damaging publicity incidents, threats of disconcerting publicity, etc., or we’re not finding full disclosure on the above, then this is not the productive relationship we’re working to have knowing 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 order something lonesome awry and say nothing? Right, sure, youbetcha…

Then there were this little jewel, “One last point understanding regards to communication, from purchase to make our overall network scalable, we need to manage the relationship observing you as we do in light of other affiliates of your size so I’ll ask that you not contact anyone directly within my team.” Ok Steve, let me understand this. You don’t wish “affiliates of my size” to contact the ePN staff? What size does an affiliate have to be before they are allowed to contact the ePN staff? If a smaller affiliate has a problem they are supposed to do what? Quietly deal observing 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 additional info specifically, stay away form ePN!” Am I upset? Yes, but not to order 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 in this web of insanity that has been created.

I know that i will read this and I beg to let you know that I will seldom stop posting bad client complaints about i and about your flawed metrics and about the comedy of errors that i call a business. I had the opportunity to build a nice relationship knowing me and you 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 more 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-quality users 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 become much detailed information 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 in consideration of your idiotic metrics i can do so on from the very forum that begat this fiasco.