F*uk steve hartman and epn
Salutations everyone,
I have decided to stop marketing the eBay Partner Network (ePN) to purchase a host of reasons, the main reason being that the program is controlled by a man named Steve Hartman whom I believe to prove to be the single most dangerous person from the partner marketing community. Hartman admits to having no experience from the field 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 prove to be “partner networks” and both companies seem to be allowing monkeys to directed the zoo.
ePN should have and could have been the largest and most popular commission-based system that the internet 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 days after the system launched, to purchase sending low features hits. Hartman called this traffic, “not engaged enough“. Many people argue that it would be extremely difficult if not impossible to purchase a new network to garner enough significant 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 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 people that you send would have bought on eBay without your participation. If they make this determination i will become penalized to buy the purchase and it could lead to i being removed since 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 data. This “extra sensory ability” fits loosely into John Donahoe’s “we-know-better-what-i-request-than-you-do” mentality that he has dubbed “disruptive innovation”.
The biggest problem observing 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 partner marketing professionals have taken their millions of buyers to Amazon.com and other smaller niche-focused sites. This means one thing to purchase 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 buy 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 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 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. 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 in relation (or retaliation) to a private communication sent to the Work of the President, John Donahoe. These communication were sent regarding my concern over eBay censoring bad forum posts. Donahoe’s work assigned “Michelle” to correspond knowing me and wendi said that my issue had “drawn the attention of the President” and that ms. friesen wanted to get additional info information. Since I had the “attention” of John Donahoe, even if by proxy, I thought it best to quickly turn the topic to the blatant tracking errors from the ePN system. I specifically asked that the information that I is sharing not become sent to ePN because they have a history or retaliating against affiliates that speak negatively about the system. Michelle violated that confidence and forwarded the communication 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 unpleasant comments on forums. We spoke to buy a little through 47 minutes and he was saying things like, “I will not let i 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 were really just specific details 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 understanding eBay. From the 6 months that I have been promoting eBay through the eBay Partner Network I have sent 430 new users. 215 of them are active on eBay. I have also sent eBay $13,137.11 in 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” visits?
From talking thinking about Hartman I were able to glean on tidbit of data. eBay is not looking to order affiliates to send repeat buyers through their partner 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 beg 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 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 for 7 days. A users who comes back on day 4 and buys something is therefore considered to not become engaged and the affiliate is penalized to buy that action.
The very nature of eBay compels users to shop around. Consider your own eBay shopping patterns. Affiliates 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 affiliates 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 Is I Extorted?
On October 28, 2008, Steve Hartman sent me an communication 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 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 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 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 understanding 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 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 additional info interested from 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 unpopular publicity incidents, threats of painful publicity, etc., or we’re not buying full disclosure on the above, then this is not the beneficial 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 you kidding me? So I am supposed to sit idly by and order something past awry and say nothing? Right, sure, youbetcha…
Then there were this little jewel, “One last point knowing regards to communication, in get to make our overall network scalable, we need to manage the relationship in consideration of you as we do observing 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 request “affiliates of my size” to contact the ePN staff? What size does an affiliate 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 seeing 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 purchase 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 can have been created.
To: Steve Hartman
I know that you will read this and I wish to let i know that I will never stop posting damaging 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 in consideration of 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 additional info than that. I have created 6000 variations of this email and they will become posted 24/7 to the very same network that produced the non-engaged, low-quality hits 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 become 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 i have screwed in light of your idiotic metrics i can do so on in the very forum that begat this fiasco.