Ebay
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 program is controlled by a man named Steve Hartman whom I believe to be the single most dangerous person in the affiliate marketing industry. Hartman admits to having no experience in the field of affiliate marketing yet he somehow knows how to directed a network of over 87,000 marketers.
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 prove 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 network that the interweb has ever seen, 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 affiliate accounts, approximately 90 days after the system launched, for sending low quality hits. Hartman called this visitors, “not engaged enough“. Various experienced publishers argue that it would be extremely challenging if not impossible for a new program to garner enough accurate 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 affiliate. 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 for the purchase and it could lead to you being removed from the network. That is a pretty amazing and unbelievable feat considering no other network from 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-i-want-than-i-do” mentality that he can have dubbed “disruptive innovation”.
The biggest problem in consideration 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 can have all but disappeared. Various experienced partner marketing professionals have taken their millions of buyers to Amazon.com and other smaller niche-focused sites. This means one thing for eBay Sellers:fewer buyers to 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 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 shop for less that $14 per share even seeing 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 knowing an communication address and sent out paper invoices that i paid by paper checks. I can’t even buy since Sellers on eBay and pay by check anymore. eBay is forcing PayPal, their electronic payment processor down the throats of both Buyers and the dwindling pool of Sellers.
UPDATE: ePN and Steve Hartman Extortion Attempt
Yesterday, October 27, 2008, I is contacted via telephone by Steve Hartman from relation (or retaliation) to a private communication sent to the Work of the President, John Donahoe. These emails were sent regarding my concern through eBay censoring disconcerting forum posts. Donahoe’s frat assigned “Michelle” to correspond in light of me and wendi said that my issue had “drawn the attention of the President” and that wendi wanted to get more information. Since I had the “attention” of John Donahoe, even if by proxy, I thought it best to quickly turn the topic to the blatant tracking errors from the ePN system. I specifically asked that the information that I 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, you broke our trust and i have proven to be a person of low character. I hope your Mother is pleased.
On October 27, 2008, at 3:42 PM CST, Steve Hartman called me since 408-967-6000 and immediately began to berate me about contacting Donahoe’s company and about posting disconcerting 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 to shop for…” and “I am running a business here…” I explained to Hartman that I had a client waiting and that I would call him back in an hour.
I called him back and we spoke to buy another 28 minutes and it is really just additional info of the same. Hartman, who admits to having limited affiliate marketing experience, contends that the users that I am sending is of low quality 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 in bid revenue and an estimated $100,000.00 + in Seller revenue. If you do some conservative estimates on this i can clearly see that I could have sent the Sellers of eBay in excess of a quarter of a million dollars from revenue from the next six months. If this visits is not engaged then what is?
What is “engaged” users?
From talking in light of Hartman I was able to glean on tidbit of information. eBay is not looking to purchase affiliates to send repeat buyers through their partner network. They are looking to shop for 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 need that sale to happen very quickly after the users hits the site. There are ton of hypocricy in what ePN says in one joint 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 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 shop for that action.
The very nature of eBay compels users to shop around. Consider your own eBay shopping patterns. Affiliates come to eBay looking for one thing and then look all over 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 one is an affiliate and your users a following that natural tendency to shop i will prove to be penalized by ePN.
So How Were I Extorted?
On October 28, 2008, Steve Hartman sent me an communication from IP address 216.113.175.152, informing me that the only way that I would prove to be allowed to stay from the ePN network 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 network 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 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 in consideration of other affiliate 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 “expired” form those. Again, not gonna happen!
* Improve features of partner 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 more interested in my forum activity and my friends than from the features of the visits 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 unpleasant publicity, etc., or we’re not selecting full disclosure on the above, then this is not the beneficial 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 i kidding me? So I am supposed to sit idly by and find something gone awry and say nothing? Right, sure, youbetcha…
Then there is this little jewel, “One last point understanding regards to communication, in purchase to make our overall network scalable, we need to manage the relationship in consideration of you as we do with 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 ask “affiliates of my size” to contact the ePN staff? What size can help people break fromm from the bonds of high fuel prices 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 consideration 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 since eBay and additional info specifically, stay away form ePN!” Am I upset? Yes, but not for the reasons that i might think. I am not upset that the “relationship” thinking about ePN did not work out. I am upset that hundreds if not thousands of honest affiliates working earnestly to send users to eBay have been caught from this net 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 unpopular 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 positive relationship in consideration of me and i chose to try and get me to rat out my associates in some thinly veiled offer of possibly remaining in a wrecked program. My trust and integrity are worth far detailed information than that. I have created 6000 variations of this message and they will seem 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 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 more far-reaching than that.
Steve, if i would like to publish 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.