Shit List
Blacklisted Sponsors...
AdultFriendFinder.com (Various, Inc.)
It's been a long time coming, but after giving them several chances to redeem themselves, I feel an obligation to the adult webmaster community to add AFF to the blacklist.
AFF's parent company, Various, Inc. (which is now owned by Penthouse Media Group) operates many other dating sites including; Cams.com, iCams.com, StripShow.com, ALT.com, BDSM.com, GetItOn.com, NoStringsAttached.com, Passion.com, LesbianPersonals.com, OutPersonals.com, Penthouse.com, Bondage.com, AsiaFriendFinder.com, Amigos.com, SeniorFriendFinder.com, FriendFinder.com, FastCupid.com, BigChurch.com, MillionaireMate.com, FilipinoFriendFinder.com, GayFriendfinder.com, IndianFriendFinder.com, GermanFriendFinder.com, KoreanFriendFinder.com, FrenchFriendFinder.com, ItalianFriendFinder.com, JewishFriendFinder.com, Breakthru.com, and GradFinder.com.
I could almost write a novel about the number of ways I've been screwed by AFF (and others in the network), but in the interest of brevity here are some of the lowlights...
Years ago, I had been making some decent money promoting the Various sites on a Pay-Per-Click basis, when I was contacted by my Affiliate Manager, going by the name "Andre Wendt," who suggested that I add an additional AFF creative to some of my TGPs.
I expressed concern to Andre as I was pretty sure that sending traffic from my TGPs would drag down my conversion rate. This was several years ago and the details are a bit fuzzy, but he promised me something (I don't remember what) if I would do it, so I relented and added some banners.
As suspected, my conversion percentages fell dramatically and a short time later, I started getting ominous warning emails from AFF that they intended to convert my account to a percentage account. I angrily forwarded the messages to Andre, but he assured me that if I changed my link codes to the Per-Member-Order payout model, I would be covered.
So, I did as Mr. Wendt suggested and actually saw the next few payouts increase (they were paying pretty well for a sale at the time) until... they went ahead and converted my account to a percentage account anyway!
Again, I sent more angry emails to Andre. His only explanation was standard crap about conversion ratios, etc. He offered no apology for giving me bad advice and made no mention of compensation for lost traffic.
It was around this time that I started hearing bad things about Various, Inc.'s involvement with Zango and so I started shopping for another dating sponsor.
In the mean time, I changed some of my links to promote Various's new site, "NoStringsAttached.com." As my percentage ban was not network-wide, I used the PPC model. The results? Exactly what you would expect from such a shady program. Converted to percentage again!
Now, you may be thinking, "So what! A lot of sponsors will convert you to percentage if your conversions don't match the required ratio," and you would be correct. The difference is that most honest sponsors will pay what you earned under whatever program you were promoting first, then convert your account to percentage if warranted. As far as I'm concerned, this type of tactic is nothing more than a revised bait-and-switch scam!
Basically, the AFFN took my traffic (up to 1.6k+ hits per day), allowed me to think I was earning money, took the money back and said, "Sorry about your luck."
Opinion: Adult Friend Finder sucks!
P.S. Interesting side note: I've since received an email from Andre Wendt spamming for a different company that he is working for called "Traffmatics.com." I have not even looked at the site, as personally, I will have no dealings with any company that Andre Wendt is associated with.
NewNudeCash.com
Operating such sites as Hegre-Art.com, GalleryCarre.com, NewNudeCity.com, and FmTeens.com, NewNudeCash has forced me through its lack of support responsiveness, to add them to the Shit List.
Fact - The first check owed to me by NewNudeCash never showed up. Despite the fact that several emails went unanswered, I continued promoting them as they seemed to be converting at a decent rate and I thought I'd wait to see if I got the next check.
I did get the next check, but it was worthless to me. NewNudeCash's check processor issued the check with Canadian-type routing numbers.
As an American webmaster, I have received several Canadian commission checks. With the exception of my bank charging me $5 to do it, I've not had any problems depositing them. This is because the check processors for those sponsors have enough sense to issue the checks with American-type routing numbers on them.
NewNudeCash's processor issues them with Canadian-type routing numbers with a message stating that they are payable through their agent in New York. Huh??? What do you do if you don't live in New York? They should at least be warning potential affiliates of that fact before signing up.
So far, I've had no luck in getting ANYONE to accept these checks. And have had NO REPSONSES to several emails sent to NewNudeCash support. Either they don't have time, or they don't care. As far as I'm concerned, they still owe me hundreds of dollars!
Opinion: NewNudeCash.com sucks!
ClickThruCash.com
At first I thought ClickThruCash was a pretty good program and even actively promoted their affiliate program on this site. But after a few days of having their banners up on four (4) TGP's, I began to suspect that the click-through rates were not matching what I was accustomed to seeing for banners in the same spots.
Googling them only got a handful of negative reports, so I decided to conduct my own test...
Like many PPC sponsors, ClickThruCash's TOS regulate that the link structure not be changed. Ignoring that, I changed the links on one of my TGP's so that the TGP script would count all clicks on the ClickThruCash banners and let it go for about a month.
Guess what? ClickThruCash is a skimming, shaving, cheater!
The TGP script consistently reported 10-30 clicks per day, yet my ClickThruCash stats showed only 0-8 clicks per day... for ALL FOUR TGP's! And in case you were wondering, I noticed NO changes in the reported clicks after changing the link structure and never received notice that I was violating the TOS.
If I had actually monitored all of the clicks from all of the sites where I had their banners in place, I would estimate that I was actually sending 40-60 clicks per day while the ClickThruCash stats showed an average of just 1.8 clicks per day for the duration.
Opinion: ClickThruCash.com sucks!
Update! ClickThruCash appears to be out of business. Good for you, you thieving fucks!
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