Fcuk steve hartman and epn
Good day everyone,
I have decided to stop marketing the eBay Partner Network (ePN) to order a host of reasons, the main reason being that the system is directed by a man named Steve Hartman whom I believe to seem to be the single most dangerous person from the partner marketing community. Hartman admits to having no experience in the business of partner 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 failing Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN) is specific details than a strange coincidence: both claim to prove 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 system that the web 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 times after the system began, to buy sending poor features visitors. Hartman called this users, “not engaged enough“. Various experienced publishers argue that it would become extremely difficult if not impossible to purchase a new program 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 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 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 you will prove to 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 program from 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-i-ask-than-you-do” mentality that he can have dubbed “disruptive innovation”.
The biggest problem observing the eBay/ePN system 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. 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 order 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 buy 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 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 stages when they gave a $50 free seller account to anyone observing an message address and sent out paper invoices that i 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 is contacted via telephone by Steve Hartman in relation (or retaliation) to a private message sent to the Street of the President, John Donahoe. These communication were sent regarding my concern through eBay censoring negative forum posts. Donahoe’s college 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 in 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 program. Michelle violated that confidence and forwarded the calls to Steve Hartman. Michelle, i 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 frat 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 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 in an hour.
I called him back and we spoke to purchase 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 quality and/or not properly engaged knowing 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 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 hits is not engaged then what is?
What is “engaged” users?
In talking thinking about Hartman I was able to glean on tidbit of information. eBay is not looking to buy affiliates to send repeat buyers through their partner 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 affiliate and continues to buy. This means that they (eBay) do not request 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 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 order 7 days. 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 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 scour to shop for 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 one can be an affiliate and your users a following that natural tendency to shop you will prove to be 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 seem to be allowed to stay from the ePN network is 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 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 Never happen!
* Full disclosure of all accounts on ePN boards
* Full disclosure of all accounts on other boards
It has been proven that eBay hates unpleasant publicity. So now they need 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 observing other affiliate networks
OK, so now Steve Hartman wants me to tell him what other affiliate program I am using? Why? So that he can try to get me “expired” 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 in my forum activity and my friends than from 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 specific details disconcerting publicity incidents, threats of unpopular publicity, etc., or we’re not selecting full disclosure on the above, then this is not the productive 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 i kidding me? So I am supposed to sit idly by and see something gone awry and say nothing? Right, sure, youbetcha…
Then there was this little jewel, “One last point seeing regards to communication, from order to make our overall network scalable, we need to manage the relationship in consideration of 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 need “affiliates of my size” to contact the ePN staff? What size works very well an affiliate 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 in light of 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 from eBay and additional info 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” 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 in this web of insanity that has been created.
To: Steve Hartman
I know that you will read this and I ask to let you know that I will seldom stop posting unpleasant homeowner 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 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 network. My trust and integrity are worth far specific details 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-quality hits 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 i would like to publish a public apology to me and the rest of the affiliates that you have screwed thinking about your idiotic metrics i can do so on from the very forum that begat this fiasco.