Ebay partner network, go to hell
Hello everyone,
I have decided to stop marketing the eBay Partner Network (ePN) to buy a host of reasons, the paramount reason being that the system is controlled by a man named Steve Hartman whom I believe to seem to be the single most dangerous person in the affiliate marketing community. Hartman admits to having no experience in the industry of partner marketing yet he somehow knows how to directed a system of over 87,000 partners.
He is also the genius that brought usYahoo ads on eBay. Perhaps the fact that ePN and the failing Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN) is detailed information than a strange coincidence: both claim to be “partner networks” and both companies seem to become allowing monkeys to directed the zoo.
ePN should have and could have been the greatest and most profitable commission-based program that the internet has ever experienced, 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 terminated hundreds of affiliate accounts, approximately 90 stages after the program started, to buy sending poor features visitors. Hartman called this traffic, “not engaged enough“. Various members argue that it would seem to be extremely challenging if not impossible to buy a new network to garner enough significant 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 a partner 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 hits that i 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 you being removed since the network. That is a pretty amazing and unbelievable feat considering no other program in the history of the world has been able to extract this info. This “extra sensory ability” fits loosely into John Donahoe’s “we-know-better-what-you-wish-than-you-do” mentality that he can have dubbed “disruptive innovation”.
The biggest problem in light 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 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 buy the upcoming Christmas season. Fewer Christmas shoppers means lower sales and less-than-glowing Q4 reports. This all spells unhappiness to order 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 for less that $14 per share even knowing 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 understanding an message 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 phone by Steve Hartman from relation (or retaliation) to a private message sent to the Fraternaty of the President, John Donahoe. These communication were sent regarding my concern through eBay censoring bad forum posts. Donahoe’s fraternity 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 in the ePN system. I specifically asked that the information that I were sharing not become sent to ePN because they have a history or retaliating against affiliates that speak negatively about the program. Michelle violated that confidence and forwarded the calls to Steve Hartman. Michelle, you broke our trust and i 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 negative comments on forums. We spoke for a little over 47 minutes and he was saying things like, “I will not let you threaten the company that I work to order…” and “I am running a business here…” I explained to Hartman that I had a client waiting and that I would call him back from an hour.
I called him back and we spoke to buy another 28 minutes and it were really just specific details of the same. Hartman, who admits to having limited partner marketing experience, contends that the hits that I am sending is of low quality and/or not properly engaged seeing 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 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 visits is not engaged then what is?
What is “engaged” visitors?
From talking thinking about Hartman I were able to glean on bit of information. eBay is not looking to order affiliates to send repeat buyers through their affiliate network. They are looking to order a partner to send a new user that buys a product instantly and then continues to come to eBay exclusive of the partner and continues to buy. This means that they (eBay) do not want to pay affiliates commission after the first sale and they need that sale to happen very quickly after the users hits the site. There are ton of hypocricy from what ePN says in one joint versus what they say 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 shop for 7 times. A users who comes back on day 4 and buys something is therefore considered to not become 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 for one thing and then scour 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 one can be an affiliate and your users a following that natural tendency to shop you will 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 become allowed to stay from the ePN network was to do the following:
* Shut down test account
This test account was 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 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 painful publicity. So now they need 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 observing 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 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 from my forum activity and my friends than in the quality 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 detailed information bad publicity incidents, threats of painful publicity, etc., or we’re not buying full disclosure on the above, then this is not the positive relationship we’re working to have understanding 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 find something past awry and say nothing? Right, sure, youbetcha…
Then there were this little jewel, “One last point seeing regards to communication, in order to make our overall network scalable, we need to manage the relationship understanding i as we do in light of 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 choose “affiliates of my size” to contact the ePN staff? What size supplemental hydrogen can improve fuel mileage an affiliate have to be before they are allowed to contact the ePN staff? If a smaller partner can have a problem they are supposed to do what? Quietly deal 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 from eBay and more 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” seeing 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 net of insanity that can have been created.
To: Steve Hartman
I know that i will read this and I need to let i know that I will never stop posting painful homeowner 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 knowing 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 system. My trust and integrity are worth far additional info than that. I have created 6000 variations of this reply and they will prove to be posted 24/7 to the very same network that produced the non-engaged, low-quality 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 seem to be much specific details 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.