I joined an ad network to try and generate some more dough to keep my web sites up and running and cover my dedicated server costs. I’m a small time, shoe string operator. Every penny counts. I was convinced to try out a certain new golf ad network. That was August. To date I’ve logged over 629,000 ad impressions (527,311 “paid impressions”) for some pretty fancy advertisers on this network.
Not One Red Cent
The payout for said 527,311 impressions? Not one red cent, ever. Their current (and final balance, since I’ve now removed their ads) is $1,002.53.
Contacted Them Several Times
To date I’ve contacted several different people at this network and complained, asked nicely, got on my knees and begged them to settle up their account. I’ve done this on several occasions and was assured I’d get a payment in November, and then again in December, 2009. It is now January 12, 2010 and not a peep or payment.
I’d even deleted an ad campaign on my blog which was paying me on a monthly basis, and replaced it with this ad network’s ads. I find it to be a bad business move to remove campaigns which pay and replace them with ones which don’t.
Nothing But Excuses
I get excuse after excuse about accounting problems, vendor problems, moon spot problems, solar flare problems, dog ate the accountant’s homework problems etc.
Here are a couple:
10.28.09 “payments from June onward have been delayed as we have yet to receive payment from advertisers for these months. It is most likely that we will resolve these accounts within the next month and be able to send your payment in the November billing cycle (you would receive it at the end of November).”
Oh really? Didn’t get a payment of any kind in November. Actually I’ve received no payment of any kind, ever. Here’s another good one:
10.28.09 “We can provide you some more detailed reports shortly- our system is momentarily down.”
Aw shucks their system is momentarily down. Darn it anyway.
11.23.09 ME “I’m weary of running any ads from xxx-slimeball-company at this point, since I have yet to be paid and I’ve been running your ads for over three months now. I’ve sent numerous emails into you guys about this yet nobody has even responded.”
11.23.09 THEM “I am very sorry to hear that my team has been unresponsive. A number of late advertiser payments forced us to push publisher payment back. You will receive payment for August and most likely September as well at the end of December.”
One more, just for fun!!!
12.03.09 “You should have been paid by now so its probably a simple administrative fix…”
I’ve got your administrative fix right here. It is called sending me a check.
I was even told on the phone that they secured “X” zillion more dollars in investor money to pay their advertisers. If they could get x-zillion dollars from their investors, they could probably send me the .00000000001% of that dough to settle up with me.
Filling out their stupid “report cards” does nothing
I get emails from this company asking me to fill out a “report card” so they can “know how to improve.” Under the fields communication, responsiveness and payment I grade them an “F” every time. Then in the text field at the bottom it asks “How can we improve?” I usually type in something really hard to understand like “pay me” and I’ll bitch about not getting paid, ever. Obviously nobody reads their stupid report card surveys, or if they do they choose not to do anything about the complaints.
Lowering The Boom SOON…
If these inconsiderate aholes don’t take care of their balance with me pronto, I’ll be plastering their name all over my golf sites and letting everyone know that they’re deadbeats. Anyone Googling them to see if they want to work with them will surely find my posts about how they don’t pay, and stay away. I would.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to have a martini.
HOGWire – Golf Industry News
