Fcuk steve hartman and epn
Hi everyone,
I have decided to stop promoting the eBay Partner Network (ePN) to shop for a variety of reasons, the paramount reason being that the network is directed by a man named Steve Hartman whom I believe to become the single most dangerous person in the partner marketing community. Hartman admits to having no experience from the community of partner marketing yet he somehow knows how to controlled 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 specific details than a strange coincidence: both claim to become “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 profitable commission-based program that the interweb can have 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 cancelled hundreds of affiliate accounts, approximately 90 days after the system began, to order sending low features traffic. Hartman called this users, “not engaged enough“. Various members argue that it would seem to be extremely challenging if not impossible to buy a new system to garner enough meaningful 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 a partner 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 i send would have purchased on eBay without your participation. If they make this determination you will seem to be penalized for the purchase and it could lead to you being removed since the program. That is a pretty amazing and unbelievable feat considering no other system from the history of the world has been able to extract this information. This “extra sensory ability” fits loosely into John Donahoe’s “we-know-better-what-i-want-than-you-do” mentality that he can have dubbed “disruptive innovation”.
The biggest problem seeing the eBay/ePN system 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. Many 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 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 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 purchase 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 days when they gave a $50 free seller account to anyone in light of an email 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 was contacted via telephone by Steve Hartman from relation (or retaliation) to a private message sent to the Street of the President, John Donahoe. These calls were sent regarding my concern over eBay censoring disconcerting forum posts. Donahoe’s fraternaty assigned “Michelle” to correspond observing me and wendi said that my issue had “drawn the attention of the President” and that she wanted to get detailed information 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 program. Michelle violated that confidence and forwarded the messages to Steve Hartman. Michelle, you broke our trust and you 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 fraternaty and about posting bad 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 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 from an hour.
I called him back and we spoke for another 28 minutes and it was really just more of the same. Hartman, who admits to having limited affiliate marketing experience, contends that the visits that I am sending is of low features and/or not properly engaged with eBay. In 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 i 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 from the next six months. If this hits is not engaged then what is?
What is “engaged” traffic?
In talking understanding Hartman I is able to glean on tidbit of info. eBay is not looking to shop for affiliates to send repeat buyers through their partner network. They are looking to purchase 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 request to pay affiliates commission after the first sale and they request 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 from 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 seem to be engaged and the affiliate is penalized to purchase that action.
The very nature of eBay compels users to shop around. Consider your own eBay shopping patterns. Bloggers come to eBay looking to purchase one thing and then surf for 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 you are an affiliate and your users a following that natural tendency to shop i will seem to be penalized by ePN.
So How Were I Extorted?
On October 28, 2008, Steve Hartman sent me an email from IP address 216.113.175.152, informing me that the only way that I would prove to be allowed to stay in 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 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 network director. That will Never happen!
* Full disclosure of all accounts on ePN boards
* Full disclosure of all accounts on other boards
It can have been proven that eBay hates unpleasant publicity. So now they beg 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 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 “cancelled” form those. Again, not gonna happen!
* Improve features of partner visitors
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 in the features of the visitors going to the ePN program.
Hartman went on to write, “Also, to make sure that I’m being clear, if there are any detailed information painful publicity incidents, threats of unpleasant publicity, etc., or we’re not finding full disclosure on the above, then this is not the good 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 you kidding me? So I am supposed to sit idly by and watch something gone awry and say nothing? Right, sure, youbetcha…
Then there were this little jewel, “One last point in light of regards to communication, from order to make our overall network scalable, we need to manage the relationship knowing i as we do seeing 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 choose “affiliates of my size” to contact the ePN staff? What size does a partner have to prove 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 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 specific details specifically, stay away form ePN!” Am I upset? Yes, but not to buy the reasons that you might think. I am not upset that the “relationship” in consideration of ePN did not work out. I am upset that hundreds if not thousands of honest affiliates working earnestly to send hits to eBay have been caught from this interweb of insanity that can have been created.
To: Steve Hartman
I know that i will read this and I want to let i know that I will rarely stop posting disconcerting client complaints about i and about your flawed metrics and about the comedy of errors that you call a business. You had the opportunity to build a beneficial relationship thinking about me and you chose to try and get me to rat out my associates in some thinly veiled offer of possibly remaining in a wrecked system. My trust and integrity are worth far specific details 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 traffic 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 become much detailed information far-reaching than that.
Steve, if you would like to post a public apology to me and the rest of the affiliates that i have screwed seeing your idiotic metrics you can do so on in the very forum that begat this fiasco.