LiewCF Tech Blog

The is a guest post submitted by Wong Tech Jung, a blogger on duller.kuluchew.com. The original Chinese blog post is available at here. All content and opinions belong to the author.

I (Wong Tech Jung) am a Chinese blogger. In October last year, I decided to use Advertlets over Nuffnang. This decision is due to the amount of Nuffnang and earning I received from Nuffnang is too low, and lots of Malaysian Chinese blogs are using Advertlets as well. However today I gave up Advertlets and changed back to Nuffnang again.

The decision of abandoning Advertlets is simply because they can’t pay to the publishers. After using Advertlets for two months (since October 2007), my blog was affected by its domain name expiry in January. Due to Josh and his colleagues Alzheimer, they allowed their domain name to expire and this is the worst thing that could happen for an online company. However I still wanted to give it a try.

After Advertlets settled its domain name expiry issue, it decided to pay more to the members who continued to use Advertlets. During that time, I have a pretty good earning. Some time later, I discovered Advertlets actually paid differently to bloggers with same traffic and advertisement (shown in image below).

I requested for a cashout in February and March as I reached RM 100 in both months. As Advertlets earning is just peanuts compare to other service, such as Google Adsense and Text Link Ads, I simply forgot the existence of Advertlets in my blog and didn’t bother to check back Advertlets earning again.Until May when someone asked me about Advertlets, I realized that I haven’t received any cheque from them. So I wrote in to Advertlets (10 May 2008):

Hello,

I had request a cash out on feb 20, 2008 but until now I still haven’t receive any payments from you yet. It had been more than 2 months for fist payment to be processed, but it is stated that all cashout request will be process in 30 to 40 days time. Please tell me whether I can receive this payment or not, so that I need not to waste any space for advertlets hanging in my blog earning virtual money.

Thanks.

Josh replied me immediately and promised that the payment will be processed within two weeks:

Hi,

Some of the remaining February cashouts (including yours) will be processed over this weekend, and you should get it within the next 2 weeks.

Apologies for the delay, and thanks for supporting Advertlets so far.

Cheers,
- -
Josh Lim

After two weeks, I still hear no news from Advertlets and the status of the cashout is still not being processed and sent. So I wrote in again (24 May 2008):

Hi,

I’m writing here regarding to the payment you promised to send to me 2 weeks ago.  I was told by you that I should get it within the past two weeks, however it is still “processing” status in the cashout page.

Hope to hear from you soon.

On the same day they replied:

Hi Wong,

It will be sent out this coming Monday, so you should receive it shortly.
Thanks.

Regards,
Advertlets Support

Then I didn’t bother to check Advertlets anymore. On 5 June 2008, I received an email from Advertlets saying that the cheque had been sent. It also stated that “Please note that your February 2008 Cashout has already been processed and should reach the address registered in your profile between the 28th of May 2008 to the 15th of June 2008” So that meant I could receive my payment by 15th of June 2008. However until today(July 2008) I still haven’t RECEIVE ANY PAYMENTS FROM ADVERTLETS.

I checked my profile page, and there is nothing wrong. So I sent in another email inquiring the payment on 30th of June 2008:

Hi,

I had cashout in Feb and March, and the status shown was “sent”. However up until today, I still haven’t receive the payment.  I checked all the details I provide in my profile and everything is correct. Can you please look into the matter?  Thanks.

Advertlets told me to give the cheque a bit of time to arrive:

Hi,

We’ve done what we need to from our end, give it a bit of time to arrive.
Please let us know if it doesn’t arrive to you within a week.

Regards,
Advertlets Support

As I had already given Advertlets not only a bit of time, I replied:

It’s not a bit of time now, it has been several months! That’s why I’m letting you know about the issues.

Then Advertlets frustrated me with this reply:

Okay. We’ve checked, your payments were processed last week and should arrive shortly. Apologies for the delay.

What? My payment was only processed last week and it had been written “SENT” in my cashout status for more than a month. Here is another email sent by Advertlets:

Hi,

The sent status reflects when your payment has already been processed from our end (eg account already audited and due to be received), and is subject to postal delays from the postal service or cheque management from the bank.

We note that you are in Sibu. As we send our cheques from West Malaysia, it may take a while to arrive to you. Delays of 2-3 weeks have happened. However, we’ve checked and some of the other bloggers from Kuching have received theirs – we will check on the status of your cheque, and reissue if needed.

The cheque will be in a white envelope, marked with the HSBC logo. Please let us know if you still do not receive it by the 15th of July and we will reissue as needed.

Sorry I haven’t received any white envelope. A lot of publishers contacted me telling me that their December 2007 Cashouts were not paid as well (even though Josh said they were trying to nail down fraud clicks that cause the delay, and he claimed he had sent out all the payments). There’s another Chinese blogger (who I can’t tell his/her name) used to cashout RM 500 from Advertlets but Advertlets only sent him/her RM 300. He/she tried to request back the RM 200 from Advertlets but didn’t get any reply from Advertlets.

Josh (founder of Advertlets) had been sponsoring lots of events, including Malaysia Chinese Blogs Awards and Malaysia Chinese Blogs Society. With the amount less than RM 300, Josh can’t pay to the publishers. Rumors have been spreading around saying that Advertlets have fund managing problems. I urged my readers to stop using Advertlets ad several Chinese blogs had taken it down since then. I hope more people will give them pressure.

The is a guest post submitted by Wong Tech Jung, a blogger on duller.kuluchew.com. The original Chinese blog post is available at here. All content and opinions belong to the author.

Update: Josh, founder of Advertlets, responded to this post.

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Tags: ads, Malaysia, money

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