Goodbye ebay partner network
Friday, October 31st, 2008Hi everyone,
I have decided to stop marketing the eBay Partner Network (ePN) to purchase many reasons, the main reason being that the network is controlled by a man named Steve Hartman whom I believe to seem to be the single most dangerous person in the partner marketing industry. Hartman admits to having no experience in the business of affiliate marketing yet he somehow knows how to directed a system of over 87,000 marketers.
He is also the genius that brought usYahoo advertisments on eBay. Perhaps the fact that ePN and the failing Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN) is detailed information than a strange coincidence: both claim to become “partner networks” and both companies seem to prove to be allowing monkeys to run the zoo.
ePN should have and could have been the largest and most profitable commission-based network that the internet can have ever experienced, but due to the ineptitude of Hartman and the “disruptive innovation” of his boss, eBay CEO John Donanhoe the system is on a path of certain failure. On August 20, 2008, ePN cancelled hundreds of partner accounts, approximately 90 times after the system launch, to buy sending poor quality traffic. Hartman called this users, “not engaged enough“. Various experienced publishers argue that it would become extremely difficult if not impossible to buy a new network to garner enough meaningful data in 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 visitors that you send would have bought on eBay without your participation. If they make this determination you will prove to be penalized to shop 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 in 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-you-beg-than-you-do” mentality that he has dubbed “disruptive innovation”.
The biggest problem in light of the eBay/ePN network is inexperience and insane systems and processes. An equally profound yet more 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 buy eBay Sellers:fewer buyers for 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 buy less that $14 per share even in light of 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 thinking about an communication address and sent out paper invoices that you 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 telephone by Steve Hartman from relation (or retaliation) to a private message sent to the Company of the President, John Donahoe. These calls were sent regarding my concern through eBay censoring painful forum posts. Donahoe’s office assigned “Michelle” to correspond knowing me and ms. friesen said that my issue had “drawn the attention of the President” and that ms. friesen wanted to get specific details 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 was 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 since 408-967-6000 and immediately began to berate me about contacting Donahoe’s frat and about posting negative comments on forums. We spoke to purchase a little over 47 minutes and he is saying things like, “I will not let you threaten the company that I work to purchase…” 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 is really just detailed information of the same. Hartman, who admits to having limited partner marketing experience, contends that the visitors that I am sending is of low features and/or not properly engaged observing eBay. From 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 you do some conservative estimates on this i can clearly see that I could have sent the Sellers of eBay from 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 in consideration of Hartman I were able to glean on bit of information. eBay is not looking to purchase affiliates to send repeat buyers through their partner network. They are looking to purchase 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 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 an affiliate 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 prove to be engaged and the partner is penalized to buy that action.
The very nature of eBay compels users to shop around. Consider your own eBay shopping patterns. Bloggers come to eBay looking to buy one thing and then search to buy 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 i will be penalized by ePN.
So How Was 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 seem to be allowed to stay from the ePN program were 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 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 system 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 bad publicity. So now they want 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 with other affiliate networks
OK, so now Steve Hartman wants me to tell him what other affiliate system I am using? Why? So that he can try to get me “cancelled” form those. Again, not gonna happen!
* Improve quality 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 more interested from my forum activity and my friends than in the features of the hits 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 painful publicity, etc., or we’re not getting full disclosure on the above, then this is not the positive 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 order something past awry and say nothing? Right, sure, youbetcha…
Then there is this little jewel, “One last point knowing regards to communication, in order to make our overall network scalable, we need to manage the relationship observing i 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. I don’t want “affiliates of my size” to contact the ePN staff? What size does a partner have 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 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 for 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 visitors 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 request to let you know that I will never stop posting damaging homeowner 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 good relationship knowing me and i chose to try and get me to rat out my associates from some thinly veiled offer of possibly remaining in a wrecked program. My trust and integrity are worth far additional info than that. I have created 6000 variations of this response and they will become posted 24/7 to the very same network that produced the non-engaged, low-features visitors that you abhor so much. If my experience causes one person to think twice about buying from an eBay Seller or about joining ePN then I feel that I have done my job, but I think my words will be much more far-reaching than that.
Steve, if you would like to post a public apology to me and the rest of the affiliates that you have screwed seeing your idiotic metrics i can do so on in the very forum that begat this fiasco.



