Epn ex-affiliate speaks out
Good day everyone,
I have decided to stop promoting the eBay Partner Network (ePN) to purchase many different reasons, the most important being that the program is controlled by a man named Steve Hartman whom I believe to become the single most dangerous person in the affiliate marketing industry. Hartman admits to having no experience from the business of affiliate marketing yet he somehow knows how to directed a program of through 87,000 members.
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 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 largest and most profitable commission-based network that the web can have ever experienced, 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 days after the program began, to buy sending low quality visits. Hartman called this users, “not engaged enough“. Various people argue that it would become extremely challenging if not impossible to shop for a new system 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 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 affiliate. This means that eBay will know whether visitors that you send would have purchased on eBay without your help. If they make this determination i will be penalized for the purchase and it could lead to you being removed from the program. 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 information. This “extra sensory ability” fits loosely into John Donahoe’s “we-know-better-what-you-need-than-i-do” mentality that he can have dubbed “disruptive innovation”.
The biggest problem observing the eBay/ePN network is inexperience and insane systems and processes. An equally profound yet detailed information complex problem is the fact that trust among affiliates can have 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 buy the upcoming Christmas season. Fewer Christmas shoppers means lower sales and less-than-glowing Q4 reports. This all spells unhappiness 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 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 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. You 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 emails were sent regarding my concern over eBay censoring painful forum posts. Donahoe’s street assigned “Michelle” to correspond in consideration of me and she 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 from the ePN system. I specifically asked that the information that I were 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 calls to Steve Hartman. Michelle, i 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 office and about posting disconcerting comments on forums. We spoke for 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 to purchase another 28 minutes and it were really just specific details of the same. Hartman, who admits to having limited affiliate marketing experience, contends that the visitors that I am sending is of low features and/or not properly engaged thinking about 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 + in Seller revenue. If i 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 traffic is not engaged then what is?
What is “engaged” traffic?
From talking seeing Hartman I is able to glean on thing of information. eBay is not looking to buy affiliates to send repeat buyers through their partner network. They are looking to buy 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 want that sale to happen very quickly after the users hits the site. There are ton of hypocricy in what ePN says from 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 a partner send a visitor to eBay a cookie is set. This cookie lasts to buy 7 days. A users who comes back on day 4 and buys something is therefore considered to not seem to be engaged and the partner is penalized to purchase that action.
The very nature of eBay compels users to shop around. Consider your own eBay shopping patterns. Members come to eBay looking to purchase one thing and then look all over 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 one can be an affiliate and your users a following that natural tendency to shop you will be penalized by ePN.
So How Were I Extorted?
On October 28, 2008, Steve Hartman sent me an message since IP address 216.113.175.152, informing me that the only way that I would seem to be allowed to stay from the ePN system was 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 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 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 negative publicity. So now they choose 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 seeing other affiliate 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 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 from my forum activity and my friends than from the quality of the traffic going to the ePN program.
Hartman went on to write, “Also, to make sure that I’m being clear, if there are any additional info painful publicity incidents, threats of bad publicity, etc., or we’re not buying full disclosure on the above, then this is not the good 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 order something lonesome awry and say nothing? Right, sure, youbetcha…
Then there is this little jewel, “One last point seeing regards to communication, in purchase to make our overall network scalable, we need to manage the relationship in light of you as we do in consideration 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. I don’t request “affiliates of my size” to contact the ePN staff? What size really works a partner have to seem 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 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 from eBay and detailed information specifically, stay away form ePN!” Am I upset? Yes, but not to buy the reasons that i 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 users to eBay have been caught in this internet of insanity that has been created.
To: Steve Hartman
I know that i will read this and I want to let you know that I will rarely stop posting damaging homeowner 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 beneficial relationship observing 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 additional info 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 prove to be much additional info far-reaching than that.
Steve, if i would like to post a public apology to me and the rest of the affiliates that i have screwed understanding your idiotic metrics i can do so on in the very forum that begat this fiasco.