I guess that would all depend on how you define an expert. Do you call someone an expert if they have been working successfully in affiliate marketing for 6 or 7 years? Do you call someone an expert because they ran on-site advertising for a large company? Do you call someone an expert because they went to business school and were appointed to a high-ranking corporate job? In my opinion the experts within eBay are the sellers and affiliates who with the sweat of their brows have built a successful business for themselves and for eBay. John Donahoe is not an expert because he fails to understand that you cannot destroy your product core and maintain a successful business. Steve Hartman is not an expert in affiliate marketing because he has no experience and very limited understanding of how the affiliate model works. I offer you this as one of the best analogies I have read on the subject:
Complex subjects often require a graduate-level education as a requisite, but simply having the knowledge (MBA, PhD, etc.) does NOT in itself make anyone an expert. Expertise is gained by aquiring an in-depth understanding of one's chosen specialty. IMO: eBay would be wise to replace Mr. Hartman with someone who is proven to have this understanding of large-scale affiliate program management.
You are kidding, right? There are huge problems with ePN. Try ongoing commission tracking and reporting issues. Releasing tools to affiliates before they are tested and properly functioning. Using flawed data and metrics to expire accounts. Allowing greed, indifference and inexperience to guide decisions that negatively impact the lives of people that have been promoting eBay for years. Total lack of trust or respect from the affiliate marketing community. Affiliates leaving and taking millions of buyers to other sites. Yes, I would say that they have a significant list of problems. Any time you depart into a new direction there is a learning curve. That is expected and acceptable. What is unacceptable and detrimental is that Steve Hartman knows that he does not know what he is doing yet he continues to make one stupid mistake after another. I am not sure if he fears losing his job if he admits openly he is on over his head. The problem could be that Hartman is an egomaniac like Donahoe and can't admit failure. I have had private exchanges with Hartman and I do not think he is like Donahoe. I think he is indoctrinated into some of the same wrong-headed thinking that seems to be rotting the collective minds at eBay but I really think Hartman is one that could be swayed to champion the cause of the ePN members - if here were close enough to the pulse to know what is needed AND if he had the experience to know when his actions were working and when they were doing harm it would be different.
It just keeps getting stranger with ePN. On Oct-16-08 ePN reported on their forum that they had data reporting problems on the 14 through the 17. To this point the average click action to reporting time has been 3 days on all of my ePN accounts. That means that if someone places a bid on the 1st of the moth that commission posts to my account on the 4th. The commission for the past 2 days has dropped by an average of 91.2% on both of my accounts. I believe this drop can be traced back to the reporting errors mentioned on the ePN forum. I have long believed that ePN has been missing sales and failing to credit commissions to affiliates. This recent drop sums it up for me.
I was searching The Google for posts on and about ePN and found this: http://www.thirtydaychallenge.com/f...u-trust-your-affiliate-program.html#post64099 Anyone know if this is true?
This was just posted on the ePN forum and I am reposting it here because I am sure that it will get deleted there. http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?threadID=520036768&tstart=0&mod=1224721950159 The guy had to create a new account name to post because he does not trust ePN not to terminate his account for speaking out about his concerns. Wow! You talk about a program with NO TRUST!!!
Do you mean that almost every affiliate in the ePN has a problem or do you mean that every affiliate in the world has a problem?
It should be painfully obvious by now that ePN (eBay) has no intention of changing it's new-found ways. I predict the next scandal to be sometime next month when hundreds (or thousands) of affiliates currently receiving $25 per ACRU discover their accounts have been downgraded to a much lower amount. When this happens, there will be no more logical reason for the smaller affiliates to continue promoting eBay. Currently ePN pays 50%-60% of the sellers FV (final value) fees. And this doesn't apply to many big-ticket items like Real Estate and Automobiles. Other programs pay a percentage of the actual sale price. When you do the math, it works out to about the same with most programs. Once the ACRU incentive is gone, why would any reasonable person continue to put their time and effort into ePN while having to live under the constant fear of being "expired" for not living up to some "secret" expectation.
What you are going to see happen is that the November ROI for many affiliates will drop due to the new ACRU quality scheme. These affiliates will pull millions of visitors from eBay and push them toward other sites like Amazon; all of this just in time for the Christmas buying push. I have been involved in affiliate marketing for well over 7 years and I have never seen a company or program on a self-destructive course like eBay is on today. It is like a train wreck. You don't want to be too close to the impending carnage, but you can't stop looking. The thing that I don't understand is why Google has not thrown their hat into the auction ring. Knowing that eBay is coming unraveled at the seams should be enough to stimulate them to fill this opening vacuum.
Stop depending on eBay and start your own 'niche' auction site. With eBay's high fees and restrictions on sellers, it's easy to lure them (sellers) over to your side. Then just use the same techniques you already use to send buyers to eBay and re-route them to your auction site. If you are already successful at collecting buyers for eBay, you should have no problem collecting them for yourself.
Did I mention that I hate ePN and Steve Hartman? I hope to see him and his entire team standing in a soup line, or at least at the next industry event. Remember that the best revenge is to just Stuff eBay!
DING DONG THE WITCH IS DEAD! I hate to bump an old thread, but Steve Hartman has left ePN for a stimulating career in the mini-storage rental business. Seriously! He has gone from being in charge of the largest, albeit worst run, affiliate marketing program on the internet to doing marketing for U-Store-It, a company that rents space to store junk that you could not sell on eBay. Can anyone say, "Less-than-lateral career move"?
and you would be happy to know that your thread now appears on Google's first page for "epn problems" and is nearing a 100,000 views....