Performancing Ads Scammed Me, Others
Written on October 4th, 2008 by Grey
*Note: This post was not written by an Entrecard employee, moderator, or administrator, but rather an active member of the Entrecard community. Entrecard has never used Performancing Ads and is in not position to give an “official” statement on our experience with respect to their payouts and the legitimacy of their service.
Many of you know Performancing Ads, but what many of you don’t know is that they’re scamming bloggers like me. They are run by Splashpress Media. They are backed by Ryan Caldwell, Damian Manifold, Chris Garrett, Sean Hickey and Randa Clay. Here is how they scammed me. They took up valuable adspace on my blog’s sidebar, never paid me for the ads I did sell, and then had the audacity to place their own affiliate ads and from what I can tell, never distribued my ads through their “ad exchange”. Thus I can draw no other conclusion than Performancing Ads is a scam. They claim I have to wait a full thirty days after I’ve reached a $10 payout, but in reality, they never paid me. Here’s what happened to me:
Performancing Ads sells ads in your sidebar and they take a cut of the profit. You sell a $5 ad, they take their cut and you get your cut. At least that’s what they “promise”. So I took my fantasy baseball site and signed up for Performancing Ads late July and sold an ad right away. $10 for a week. Nice. I was thrilled. Then I signed up a few people. Each signup is $10. So I’m way above their payout threshold before you can even say, “Performancing Ads is a scam.” Then a funny thing happened after that first sidebar ad expired. A random affiliate ad showed up in my sidebar. So someone bought a $10 ad for their affiliate ad? Not quite. Performancing Ads has what they call an ad exchange. From what I gather (and they are about as vague as can be with their FAQs), Performancing Ads has affiliate ads that pay them money and they put them on every site in their network that isn’t running an ad. So if you’re not running an ad, you are making Performancing Ads money. They claim your ad will circulate throughout their network, but they have hundreds of sites and they don’t tell you where your ad is. I do not believe for one second my ads were actually being “exchanged.” So I was already disappointed and wanted out. This was in the beginning of August!
I found something in the fine print on Performancing Ads site (again, the site is a nightmare in navigation) that said you must pass $10 one month prior to being paid out. Okay, I planned on taking Performancing Ads down on September 1st. This would give me one month after $10 was reached and it wouldn’t give them an excuse like, “You don’t have them in your sidebar. Sorry, no payment.” (BTW, I still have them in my sidebar. The sidebar of a site that has an Alexa of under 45,000 and 50,000+ pageviews a month. A sidebar I have cluttered with these ads rather than sell other ads. Does this help explain my frustration?) Anyway, guess what happened on September 1st? Nothing. I was now owed more than $70 and I had not received $1. Let me say this again, in case anyone from Performancing Ads is reading because they are obviously slow on the uptake, I was due more than $70 and I had not received one dollar. Got it? Swell.
So then I looked around the internet. Could I be the only one thinking Performancing Ads is a scam run by a bunch of scam artists? Turns out I was able to find one site that shared my frustration. eWritings had a post called Is Performancing Ads a Sham? As you can see from the comments, I, StanHayes, was more than happy to find a person who shared my frustration. In the comments, I wrote this on September 12th:
I’ve had Perf. Ads on my site for two months and I have the exact same problems as you. They have no information upfront. Their exchange ad system is a hall of mirrors and it actually makes sense compared to their aff. system. I think it’s a clear case where they had too many sign ups and they don’t have money to pay people. I had sign ups over a month ago and never received any payment from them. I think people should be readying their attorneys.
After I spammed Ryan Caldwell’s blog with a link to Is Performancing Ads a Sham?, I was finally able to get a response from Performancing Ads. I’m not going to reiterate everything they said — the comments are in the post, Is Performancing Ads a Sham? — let me just say, Performancing Ads promised I would be paid. So over the next few weeks of September, my sidebar ads were selling like hotcakes. I presume Performancing Ads were buying ads from me to try and appease me. I was fine with that. And I was willing to wait until October 1st for payment. Guess what today is? October 3rd. Guess if I’ve been paid yet. Go ahead, I’ll wait for you to guess. Don’t wanna guess? I have not been paid one dollar from them.
Why am I the only one warning you? The only answer I have is all “pro” bloggers get paid a major commission to hawk a product. No matter how damaging it is. Or what kind of scam it is. John Chow stopped eating lunch to promote Performancing Ads and ProBlogger endorsed Performancing Ads. (BTW, before writing this, I contacted John Chow and ProBlogger to ask them to step in and do something about my (and presumably others’) issues with Performancing Ads. I still haven’t heard back from them. To be fair there is no way they could have known at the time about Performancing Ads’ unethical and deceitful business practices -but they should certainly do the right thing and alert their readers if a company is scamming or deceiving their readers.)
The true travesty in all of this is you, the small-time blogger, you are getting ripped off by Performancing Ads. I’m sorry I had to tell you Performancing Ads was a scam because I know many of you are waiting for payments from them. But I wouldn’t keep waiting, friends. It’s not coming.
Yours,
StanHayes
Razzball.com
October 4th, 2008 at 9:43 am
I guess that makes another reason to invest $37 into getting OIOPublisher. They don’t take a cut and you receive payment from the buyer directly and immediately.
October 4th, 2008 at 10:03 am
After I applied for performancing ads, I put the ad box up for about 3 days and after that I got a funny feeling that there seems to be something not right with the whole setup and I took it down after that.
Now I know fro sure that I had made the right decision. I am sticking to Project Wonderful for now as they have paid me before.
Cheers!
October 4th, 2008 at 10:49 am
@EntreBlast — Yup.
@Shaxx — You did make the right decision. Good move.
October 4th, 2008 at 11:23 am
Thanks for the warning I am sure it will be well heeded.
October 4th, 2008 at 11:27 am
I took performancing ads off a few days ago to replace them with the OIO (buy an ad space for $10 or 10,000 credits on my blog, btw!).
I had bookings on it, but they weren’t showing. So I figured if I just delete the region they would get their money back (or so I hoped). Well a couple days past and I get an email stating (We haven’t detected your code for 2 days, if you do not reinstate your blog the advertisers will automatically be refunded). So I thought, cool. That is exactly what I want. Another day passes, I get the *exact* same email. Except this time it says (We haven’t detected your code for 3 days, if you do not reinstate your blog the advertisers will automatically be refunded).
I’m wondering if tomorrow it will say the exact same thing, but change the 3 to 4. This is ridiculous. They need to get their crap together.
October 4th, 2008 at 11:36 am
@Josh – I hope so. I hate to see people get away with thievery.
@Gary — I have numerous stories like this too, but I didn’t want to go on too long in the above post. I “sold” numerous ads. Was “paid,” according to my account, then no ads ever showed. I removed them yesterday. I’ve given up on trying to get the $75.
October 4th, 2008 at 12:22 pm
There should be some path of recourse for bloggers in this situation..
October 4th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
I’m glad i didn’t bother with posting them in any regions of my sites. I usually give a 2 month benefit of the doubt. But jeez, when so many are saying the same thing then it’s pretty obvious.
October 4th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
I’m glad to see somebody sticking up against scamy advertising networks. I was tempted to join PA but did not due to their high percentage cut as well as $10 per affiliate was too high to be true, so i thought.
I feel that the probloggers who endorsed such a product such as John Chow should at least step forward and take some responsibility for it if PA is a scam so to speak. They got the gains for promoting it, they should share in some of the problems when they arise as well.
October 4th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
Wow,
I though it was just me. I put PA on my site and i smell a dirty fish, so I took it off after 3 days. Thank god I didn’t keep it on and try to get advertiser. It would have been the biggest waste of time.
With PW, even though the pay out is low, at least they paid you!
October 4th, 2008 at 1:26 pm
Hey StanHayes,
you saved my money and lot of time. I was above to put their ads on my blog. Thanks for Stopping me
I am still thinking of buying OIOPublisher, but not sure with my thinking.
October 4th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
Thanks Stan,
I signed up yesterday. Nice to know there’s no need to bother with it as I don’t need the headache.
October 4th, 2008 at 2:49 pm
I think it’s a coding screwup combined with a lack of information. I received a payment from them on Oct. 3rd, one day after promised. I have also received answers to some followup questions I have been asking them. I plan on making a post on my blog once I receive answers to some new questions, probably Monday.
October 4th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
One day after promised? Weren’t you promised money 30 days after you sold ads/signed people up? That’s not the next day. Didn’t you also receive only one-fourth of your money after you wrote a post on your site about it and that post was dropped into the owner’s own blog?
October 4th, 2008 at 5:23 pm
I’m quite surprised to see a big name like that “scamming” I guess you have to be careful nowadays when you join advertising networks no matter how many A Listers are backing them.
October 4th, 2008 at 5:57 pm
I was going to put them on my blog now i am not going to!
October 4th, 2008 at 5:57 pm
For me I figure: If John Chow supports it, I don’t get involved.
I’ll stick with ProjectWonderful for now. Never a problem with payouts.
October 4th, 2008 at 5:59 pm
While I think it’s a service to be avoided, do you think that instead of scamming it’s possible they are just really unorganized?
October 4th, 2008 at 6:07 pm
@Tom — That’s what I believed last month when they said I would be paid. A month later I think they’re a bunch of scammers.
October 4th, 2008 at 7:56 pm
Post like this will make them realize how disgraceful behavior has been theirs! Scammer….
October 4th, 2008 at 8:18 pm
Great article Stan. You’re absolutely right, people need to know what they’re doing or rather, not doing over there.
October 4th, 2008 at 10:27 pm
Damn them, i removed it after 1 day as I did not think it was a good service but why John Chow and other big blogger sticked to them.
October 4th, 2008 at 10:54 pm
They owe me $$, too. I’ve been wondering why nothing has shown up in my PayPal account.
Off to remove the ads . . .
October 4th, 2008 at 11:01 pm
Thanks, everyone. Too bad no one from Performancing Ads felt the need to address any of your concerns. I suppose they have better things to do.
October 4th, 2008 at 11:03 pm
Thank for the head up Stan.
I should have done this right after they answer me about my Ads Prize is $2/week. lol.
I put my Ad price $5/week from the beginning.
Damn them!!.
Give it to you my $1.2!! lol
October 4th, 2008 at 11:07 pm
I should wrote about it last month. They owe me some dollars too. At least 2 referrals and $2 adv.
I promoted PA since mid August. Only in a week, I got 2 referrals.
After I read that they won’t pay it, and yes, they didn’t send the money, I removed the sidebar on early Sept.
October 4th, 2008 at 11:10 pm
Sure, Indocontest.
BTW ******EVERYONE SHOULD REPORT THIS ON THEIR OWN BLOGS. SAVE YOUR FELLOW BLOGGERS.
Also, use no follow tags, so these idiots don’t get the backlinks.
October 4th, 2008 at 11:48 pm
for what it is worth – I can’t find any email from anyone telling me about this (there is a chance that it didn’t get through my gmail account which has a few bugs with filtering at the moment) but I am happy to shoot them an email to see if they’ll comment. I’ve not had or heard any problems with Performancing Ads this time around but am happy to see if there’s anything I can do to get to the bottom of it.
October 4th, 2008 at 11:49 pm
I should also add that I got my first payment from Performancing Ads in the last 24 or so hours – so perhaps it’s just been resolved?
October 4th, 2008 at 11:50 pm
@Stan
Don’t link to them in the first place, link to this blog post here!
October 5th, 2008 at 12:00 am
@Darren — It was sent two days ago and then I tried to just leave a comment on your site asking for assistance. That comment never saw the light of day. My business is fantasy baseball, not blogging resources. This really shouldn’t be a story that I’m breaking. As you can see form the comments on this post:
http://www.ewriting.pamil-visions.com/2008/09/08/performancingads/
This has been an ongoing issue. In that post, I’m StanHayes and Ryan is the rep. from Performancing Ads.
October 5th, 2008 at 12:07 am
Stan – sorry to hear about it. As I say, I’ve emailed my only real contact at Performancing to see what he can do/says. Of course it’s the weekend and I’m not sure how long it’ll take to get a response but will keep an eye open for it.
btw – digging back through my inbox on gmail and still can’t see the email but will check my spam box incase it got filtered in that direction.
October 5th, 2008 at 12:08 am
was the email via my contact form and did you use your name ‘Stan Hayes’ in it? really can’t find it anywhere – very bizarre.
October 5th, 2008 at 12:10 am
Yeah, it was with StanHayes and I also posted a comment in one of your front page posts. Check you Askimet because I put links in there to try and brief you on the situation.
October 5th, 2008 at 12:17 am
unforutnately the akismet comments get deleted every day so that one won’t be there any more – we have to do it because i’m getting tens of thousands of spam comments a day and unless we delete them daily it slows down the whole commenting system. It sucks because usually there’s a 15 day period where you can go and find old comments but if we left it 15 days we’d have 150,000 comments sitting there
We’ll get to the bottom of it though hopefully. Will let you know what my contact at Perf says.
October 5th, 2008 at 12:29 am
Darren, I have an email interview lined up with Chris Garrett to answer some of the questions I’ve heard re: PerformancingAds, just waiting for his replies and I’ll get it online.
October 5th, 2008 at 3:34 am
Hi Stan, and everyone else
I stepped in to organise Performancing Ads on 1st of October and my first priority was to make sure everyone got paid, taking into account what was set in their minimum payout in their account. So if you had accrued more than your minimum you SHOULD have been paid.
If this is not the case then we need to know.
All I can say is I know there have been severe technical and communication issues, that’s why I have stepped in, and I am doing my best to make sure things are fixed.
October 5th, 2008 at 4:23 am
Ben – Ok – I’ll let Chris get back to you. He’s the one I was getting in touch with. Sounds like you’ve got it all in hand, Chris is an upright guy and I trust him completely.
October 5th, 2008 at 6:22 am
An interview with Chris Garrett is now on my blog, discussing what went wrong with PerformancingAds and what’s being done to address the issues raised. It’s only fair to look at both sides of the story
October 5th, 2008 at 8:45 am
I found out they are not scammers, i sent and email to problogger and here is the reply he gave me!
Hi Sean – I have been talking to Chris Garrett about this – he’s just taken over Performancing Ads and is on top of it. i trust this guy completely (I cowrote a book with him).
from what I hear he inherited a system with problems but is working hard to improve it.
October 5th, 2008 at 10:48 am
HI Stan, Darren, Chris, et al.:
I am happy to report that after reading your article yesterday, I checked my acct. Still no pmt. So I sent a request for pmt. via PayPal and within a couple of hours, the pmt. arrived.
This morning I had an email from Chris checking to see if I received the pmt.
So I am going to restore the ads to my site and give them an opportunity to work out whatever kinks they have encountered.
Thanks, Chris, for your quick response and best of luck with the venture.
JHS
October 5th, 2008 at 11:24 am
I’m so happy that it seems like people are getting paid now and you guys are on top of it. In the end, that’s really all I wanted.
It is unfortunate that I needed to write a blog post about this. (I write fantasy baseball, not this shizz!) I really wish it didn’t have to come to this post. As seen here:
http://www.ewriting.pamil-visions.com/2008/09/08/performancingads/
In the comments, this could’ve been cleared up three weeks ago. Anyway, life’s too short. Cheers for taking care of it now.
October 5th, 2008 at 11:24 am
I’m so happy that it seems like people are getting paid now and you guys are on top of it. In the end, that’s really all I wanted.
It is unfortunate that I needed to write a blog post about this. (I write fantasy baseball, not this shizz!) I really wish it didn’t have to come to this post. As seen here:
http://www.ewriting.pamil-visions.com/2008/09/08/performancingads/
In the comments, this could’ve been cleared up three weeks ago. Anyway, life’s too short. Cheers for taking care of it now.
October 5th, 2008 at 5:16 pm
um sean…. do you have a habit of publishing people’s private emails? While I didn’t explicitly say it was off the record I’d have appreciated knowing you were planning on publishing my response
Best to clarify this kind of thing with the person you ask questions of.
October 6th, 2008 at 10:29 am
Of the names you list I only know Chris and that does nto sound like him. It would be a shame if it was true and I don’t have reason to doubt you. Unfortunate that we can do tings to get back at people like this. Like someone and you can drive traffic to her site. Dislike someone and we can blog about him, and most people just think the complaint is just a complaint.
Sad.
October 6th, 2008 at 1:18 pm
There is a class system in blogging when your a “nobody” all these people don’t give a damn but once your name is known people snap
to attention, Welcome to the real world of Blogging
Stan it was awesome for you to have the nerve to speak the truth
many of these companies exist cause they brown nose the well known
people and dis the little guy and he stays quiet.
People only get involved to try to preserve their own reps
they could care less if you got paid.
October 6th, 2008 at 1:42 pm
@ John Sullivan — Thanks for the vote of confidence.
October 6th, 2008 at 3:43 pm
Thanks, Stan, for speaking out about this. That was very brave of you. Glad to see someone trying to fix the problems at P.A. now.
October 6th, 2008 at 5:35 pm
Thanks, Sonya.
October 6th, 2008 at 9:22 pm
I’m not into selling ads yet and thanks for this alarming info. Good reference for my plan of selling ads.
October 7th, 2008 at 11:36 pm
I’m glad all you guys who use Performancing Ads are starting to get your money back.
I’m sorry if I have to raise this issue here but I work in public relations and this post is officially under Entrecard’s blog and it would be very unprofessional if we keep the title of this article as “Performancing Ads Scammed Me, Others”.
I suggest we tame it down a little as it does little to help Entrecard’s official business relationship on a business-to-business level. I am not in anyway connected with the Performancing people but I am a member of Entrecard.
There is a disclaimer in the beginning of this article but I believe it is not enough. Just my opinion as it now also involves Entrecard’s reputation.
October 9th, 2008 at 12:05 am
well nice information thx for the post now i will be aware of these facts….. thanks for saving me from falling to pitfall.
November 12th, 2008 at 1:01 am
Thanks for theis article!
I was wondering about Performancing ads..
July 19th, 2010 at 4:25 pm
Am i allowed to make a recommendation? I think you have got a little something good here. But let’s suppose you added in a couple links to a website that backs up exactly what you are saying? Or possibly you might give us something to take a look at, anything that would associate what youre declaring to some thing tangible? Just a suggestion.