Text Link Ads Refuses To Pay Me This Month!
ADVERTISEMENTSDue to the recent PageRank drop I faced by selling text links on this blog, I decided to remove Text Link Ads and let TLA team know about it by sending them the following email:
Dear Text Link Ads Team,
I will stop using Text Link Ads at the beginning of next month (November
1st) due to the recent PageRank drop I faced by selling text links on my
blog (johntp.com).My blog had a PageRank 6 and now its dropped to 4.
I will be uninstalling the Text Link Ads plugin next month (November 1st).
Regards,
JohnTP
and they replied back that they had refunded all the advertisers, meaning the advertisers had almost one month of FREE advertising on my blog!
John,
You can go ahead and remove the script now, I had to refund all of the
advertisers.
I send them a mail asking why they had refunded the advertisers
Dear Text Link Ads Team,
Why were all the advertisers refunded? I said that I was going to remove TLA only next month, and I deserve the $170 since the text links were on my blog for 25 days and I had no intention of removing them until next month! All I wanted was to let TLA team know that I was removing the TLA plugin next month and therefore prevent the advertisers from paying for next month.
Regards,
JohnTP
and here’s their response
John,
I have to refund the clients if you want the ads removed. This includes the last 30 days the ad has been live. I cannot refund him AND pay you. We would be out of business. Since you wanted them cancelled we are then breaking the contract with this advertiser and therefore we have to refund the advertiser.
I replied back stressing that I never wanted my text link ads removed this month and that I wanted my money back
Dear Text Link Ads Team,
I did not want the TLA ads removed this month, only next month. I had let you know clearly that I was going to remove TLA only next month, check my first mail to you:
Dear Text Link Ads Team,
I will stop using Text Link Ads at the beginning of next month (November
1st) due to the recent PageRank drop I faced by selling text links on my
blog ( johntp.com).My blog had a PageRank 6 and now its dropped to 4.
I will be uninstalling the Text Link Ads plugin next month (November 1st).
Regards,
JohnTPI let you know early so you can prevent the advertisers from renewing their ads for next month. But now you refunded the advertisers and they get almost 1 month of advertising FREE on my blog??
I don’t mind giving the advertisers their links for the rest of this month, but I deserve the $170!
TLA team has not replied back to my last email so far and I feel that they did not refund the advertisers and took the money themselves!
I have always liked the TLA team and their service and have always recommended Text Link Ads to my readers and friends, but I regret doing it now and will never recommend it to anyone unless TLA pays me my money.
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Posted on October 26th, 2007 | Category: Personal |
Maris
October 27, 2007 at 12:40 am
How do you think John does it means that they are experiencing some problems with huge loss of publishers? Because I think many bloggers will stop using TLA including me because of Google PR drop.
JohnTP
October 27, 2007 at 12:59 am
Maybe they are experiencing huge loss of publishers due to the PR drop, but I still want my money, lol
Novice SEO
October 27, 2007 at 2:02 am
I would think that this would be the time they would go above and beyond with customer service. If this PR slap affects many of their advertisers then they do stand to lose some business. In order to keep what they can, they have to show they will go the extra mile. As an added note I also cancelled my TLA account last week but did not have any dollars involved.
Who knows…. we may be seeing the beginning of the end for TLA and other link brokers.
Ben Cook
October 27, 2007 at 2:20 am
I think this is probably just a communication problem. I had a similar issue with them earlier this month and got very frustrated with them but in the end they figured out what I was talking about and everything was fine. I’d suggest giving them a call and discussing it over the phone, I’ve found that to be much less confusing.
Be sure to update us when they respond.
Mike
October 27, 2007 at 2:52 am
I’m shocked by this, to be honest. Like you, John, I’ve always liked the TLA guys although I’m starting to question whether I should continue using them myself.
I asked Patrick Gavin a couple of months back whether they were looking at revamping their business model based on Matt Cutts’ statements regarding paid links and I got a very brief email back saying they had stuff in the pipeline. As far as I can see, TLA are not doing anything to protect their clients or their publishers.
I guess the moral to anyone reading your post is to cancel AFTER they’ve paid for the previous month.
Hope it works out for you and they recognise the mistake they’ve made.
Etienne Teo
October 27, 2007 at 3:26 am
Putting a rel=Nofollow tag seems to be what matt cutts earlier posted about on his blog, you can try experimenting it for a while, that is what many are doing..
Dustin
October 27, 2007 at 3:29 am
“I have to refund the clients if you want the ads removed. This includes the last 30 days the ad has been live.”
Doesn’t that one sentence explain why you won’t be getting paid for october? November 1st minus 30 days gets you back to october 1st.
Egonitron
October 27, 2007 at 3:42 am
I’ve had similar problem with TLA, they seem to be a bunch of jack-asses.
Everton
October 27, 2007 at 5:05 am
you should have checked before removing John. Not a nice result, but imagine the pain they would could be facing if everyone did the same. For us it’s a bit of extra cash, but there are jobs at stake and people’s livlihoods.
Jeff Finch
October 27, 2007 at 6:00 am
I had TLA on my site last month and all the sudden all my money was taken out of my account. And they emailed me saying that I was banned… Sorry bout the pagerank drop. I wasn’t selling links on my site so I stayed the same
Keith Dsouza
October 27, 2007 at 7:29 am
you have a full time job and a network what about probloggers? What is their full time job and where does their income come from? Would you have reacted the same if you were a problogger with no network?
As per me John checked before removing ads next month means next month how can TLA suspend ads on the base of an email, would you do that without getting back to the client first?
Would you do refund money without asking why you are doing this? There are questions that need to be answered and its not funny.
If I tell Google AdSense to close down my account will they refund back the money to the advertisers?
Think about it dude and tell me.
Everton
October 27, 2007 at 7:34 am
Not sure what you mean about the network Keith. Just becuase I have a full-time job doesn’t mean I don’t now rely on the income coming in from the site, or have plans for it in the future i.e. to quit my job and do other projects (which is my plan). If this reduction does impact my earnings (I’ve fallen from a 6 to a 3) and my SERPS fall then my plans will need rebasing and my ‘dreams’ will take longer to be a reality.
But, I still refuse to let Google dictate terms to me and all this has done is increased my desire to find other ways to grow my site.
Keith Dsouza
October 27, 2007 at 7:37 am
Also there was no question about checking before removing, If you have read the article it clearly stated that the ads would be removed on November 1st thus saving the clients from paying TLA the said amount.
Isn’t this honurable in the first place, telling someone that you do not put in any money on this site because I do not want to use the service you use. I appreciate John for what he did, it takes guts to tell someone how many others have not informed TLA and still taken their sites off, do you have a count of it?
Keith Dsouza
October 27, 2007 at 7:40 am
Everton Can you tell disagree with me that 50% or more of your traffic comes from Google.
Everton
October 27, 2007 at 8:06 am
Keith -
re #7 John has edited the article since I left my initial comment. Before it gave the impression that he’d removed the links and TLA then said they had to refund advertisers. I don’t get your last sentence as at no point did I imply that John shouldn’t have written this post and not shared his news.
re #8 The last time I checked about 70% of my traffic comes from Google. That was the point I was making is that if my SERPS do fall from Google’s recent activities, my plans and dreams will take longer to materialise, and trust me, having to delay the plans I have made will hurt big time. But I still refuse to be dictated to by Google - why should they be allowed to say how everybody has to operate? Far too much power, and they are not handling it well.
Keith Dsouza
October 27, 2007 at 8:19 am
Well what I did intend to say was now subtract the 70% percent of your traffic if Google bans you and then what?
90% of adsense and other ad clicks come from there so if publishers disregard that then it could lead to pro bloggers having no job at all.
Just tell me if you agree or disagree with this?
Everton
October 27, 2007 at 8:23 am
I think you are missing my point Keith. Yes, I would be able to fall back on my day job but the loss of income in the short-term would seriously hurt me.
But the loss of my dreams and the plans I’ve laid already for next year, which I’m not prepared to share but include a lot of personal changes as well like emigrating, will be just as devastating to ME
Keith Dsouza
October 27, 2007 at 8:30 am
Yes I Do Everton, I am a full time worker too and have my own aspirations. I have infact launched my network but will popularize it when I can. But my only concern was what you said there are jobs at stake when you drop someone? I wanted to know what job security a problogger has when someone like Google takes on them?
I do not want to argue I was just pissed off with the jobs thing you commented about.
Techlicious.tv
October 27, 2007 at 10:59 am
Its easy to get your money back. Just shoot an email telling them that you’ll sue them for cheating. It works in 99% of the cases!
JohnTP
October 27, 2007 at 12:07 pm
Everton- I have not edited this post. I wrote it at night and just woke up now!
Vijay
October 27, 2007 at 1:35 pm
John, is there any rule at TLA that states you need a one month notice or something before issuing a termination.. Do check TLA’s guidelines for that. If that’s not the case then you have every right to fight for the money..
Also, you could have tried the cancelling after being paid for the month..
Aseem N
October 27, 2007 at 1:53 pm
The did a similar thing to me for one of my sites. I asked them to remove off one link that I didnt want to continue because it was paying much lesser than the latest links i had. i asked them to remove it off from the next month as there were just a couple of days left for the month ending.
They removed the link before the month would end and deducted my payments
EarnMoneyOnline
October 27, 2007 at 2:27 pm
It’s bad to know. Google is decreasing all bloggers PR , who are using TLA . So what you decided now, what will you use for revenue from blog?
————-
http://paidforwritedown.blogspot.com
JohnTP
October 27, 2007 at 2:38 pm
Vijay - Yea, I could have tried the canceling after being paid for the month, but I tried to be nice!
Aseem N- Now I know TLA does this to all of their publishers!
http://mesothelioma-symptoms-diagnosis.blogspot.com
October 27, 2007 at 3:46 pm
Hi dear
your Pr is Pr 3
Very sad
:((
what to do no now tell me more thingss about .. i got Pr 3 Pr my two blogs…
Everton
October 27, 2007 at 4:49 pm
Hmm John must have been me speedreading then and assuming that what had happened is the same as me. It was very late my time when I left the comment - apologies.
My situation was that I asked them to cancel certain ads once at the end of the month and they cancelled immediately and then refunded advertisers all money, even though ads had run for abotu 20 days.
Vijay
October 27, 2007 at 8:52 pm
Pretty prompt service, eh Everton? They are just waiting for an excuse to not give us the money I guess!
Ronald
October 27, 2007 at 9:25 pm
John - I agree with cook — that’s probably just a communication problem because TLA team’s is stressed with the latest situation. May you can email and appeal them again to pay your advertising cost with total amount of $170
blogrtools
October 28, 2007 at 1:51 am
john,
it would have been better if you have not informed TLA about it.
what google has done is for good.
-blogrtools
http://blogrtools.blogspot.com
CypherHackz
October 28, 2007 at 5:36 am
It is sad. $170 is a lot of money man.
hafreze
October 28, 2007 at 6:51 am
for me, I won’t care about pagerank. TLA do give me a lot of money compare to adsense. no matter what, I’m still supporting TLA. just a green indicator doesn’t make sense to me. instead, another blog of mine just staying a it’s current pr although actively selling tla.
my 2 cents,
saoirse
October 28, 2007 at 11:01 am
Hi, JohnTP. I get help from Deep through your website. My pagerank has gone back to normal after the updates, guess yours will be the same pretty soon.
Aakash
October 28, 2007 at 1:33 pm
John,
My pagerank gone up by 1. I was not using TL ads. I think these guys should work hard on their ads system.
Vijay
October 28, 2007 at 2:02 pm
I don’t think they will be refunding, John. A quote from Lithman.net
Many bloggers are facing the same problems..
Michael Woo
October 28, 2007 at 4:00 pm
Hmm.. why would you want to remove your TLA? I don’t think tLA is 100% why your PR dropped.
Mike
October 28, 2007 at 9:52 pm
Incidentally, isn’t it only fair to remove your review from the banner as well as taking the affiliate link off the money makers page? I just think it’s a bit misleading to anyone new visiting the site who is unaware of your current spat with TLA.
Ex TLA user
October 29, 2007 at 10:52 am
After a 30 day notice to TLA, I removed my scripts, and received the usual “your scripts aren’t running” notifications… I then get an end-of-the-month notice that I’ve been paid for the previous month (even though it’s been over 30 days since any TLA ads ran on any of my sites, this is one month LATER. I refunded the payment. TLA needs to get their billing and payment act together…
Neo
October 29, 2007 at 11:09 am
Sad to hear that. So, do you still suggest we remove TLA in the hope PR will at least maintain?
ron
October 29, 2007 at 9:26 pm
John, read your post and it prompted me to write in response to this if you care to read. We’re just like TLA and anyone that pulls their ads are falling into the trap google is setting!
Here’s my post
Either way you go, good luck to you. But whatever you do, don’t let another company dictate how you earn money!
A Giant Turtle
October 29, 2007 at 11:18 pm
Folks, I have several “blogs” that have increased one level in PR and one of them has TLA, so people may be jumping the gun on all of this. Is it just suspected that Google has done this because of TLA and the like or was there some official statement made?
Vikram
October 30, 2007 at 2:55 am
Hi John,
This is a huge concern. For bloggers text links were a major source of pre-defined income, unlike Adsense or other CPM/CPA ad networks, where you never know, how much you would make.
We need to understand what needs to be done, whether to run programs like TLA anymore, or to increase/retain the PR or our Blog, stop TLA kinda programs, and look at alternative means of revenue??
Please, let us know your approach!!
JohnTP
October 30, 2007 at 2:16 pm
Darren in this post said
Even I feel that Google dropped this blog’s PR for selling text links, so I removed TLA and other other paid links from direct advertisers.
And then requested a reconsideration from Google using the tool in .
You may remove TLA and other paid links from your blog or wait and see if my PR is restored. Its your choice
If you decide to remove TLA, do it after this month ends, or TLA wont pay you too!
Vikram
October 30, 2007 at 5:58 pm
Thanx for the tip john. Would keep this in mind. I am pretty sure that after reconsideration your PR would be restored. It was a warning shot by google, wont do permanent damage!
Law Student Blog
October 31, 2007 at 10:25 am
Ouch - rough situation there John with the TLA.
Aahz
November 2, 2007 at 12:50 am
You were clearly wronged, here John. And not by Google lowering your PageRank. TLA is violating their own terms of service if they’re refunding the advertisers. My full opinion on your situation is at http://www.philaahzophy.com/20.....-link-ads/ but the question becomes, are you willing to sue to get your $170?
Bhanu
November 2, 2007 at 1:44 am
TLA is acting like you are idiot and their reply is as bad as their policies
Michael Woo
November 3, 2007 at 12:55 pm
I got a site which deals with links esp TLA but luckily nothing happened to it
Al
November 5, 2007 at 12:59 am
John, you shouldn’t have expect TLA to be nice. They are in for the money of course and not to make us all happy. I am pretty sure that they do not refund the advertisers and they just get mean with people deciding to stop using their service to save their blogs. A desperately mean move to get back from Google… or something.
The one eye (the G eye) is on TLA now. As for us bloggers, I think we should all learn our lessons and start to love the Penneys Adsense pays. Or we can all kiss our PRs good bye.
Ok, I know some of you may find the above a little bit agressive, but I never meant it to be. I just hate it, and I am sure everyone else does, to get caught between the fires of 2 internet companies who are enormously different in the size and magnitude. you know who’s gonna win, who’s loosing, and you know who’s gonna be lost in the battle.
Vijay
November 5, 2007 at 9:30 pm
I got paid by TLA for october and then I pulled the plug on TLA ads on my site..
Noorizam Shah
November 7, 2007 at 7:51 pm
so what do you think.. may i run text link ads?
Tom Barr
November 9, 2007 at 4:28 am
I bought some TLA for one of my sites and PR wasn’t hurt but SERPs dropped. I am not sure if I was just enjoying high ranks temporarily because of the newness of the site before they went away but I decided to not pay for TLA links. They are too obvious as an attempt PR tool. They may be OK as a link for humans but they can be filtered by the bots.
Pro
November 14, 2007 at 3:53 am
I have to agree with one of Everton’s comments. I have had one of my blogs PR drop due only to TLA on the site. While not totally a restraint of trade, google is effectively killing off a large amount of TLA’s business.
Just another example of what happens when you get a company with the power of google. This harps back to the olds days of MS when it went after all opposition, no matter how small.
I have not removed TLA from my sites yet. I don’t really want to, but I guess I will have to evaluate that should it start to impact too significantly.
BN
December 1, 2007 at 11:03 pm
Thanks John. I’m looking at Text Link Ad to see if I can get any money. But your pagerank 6 site make only $170/month and they do trick on you. So let’s forget it for now.
Did you email them about this post? I guess they maybe loosing too much and so they keep the money to prepare bankruptcy.
SciFiDrive
March 2, 2008 at 11:49 am
I just joined TLa and was looking around for some feedback about TLA’s service.
I’m hoping for some revenue from them and maybe won’t get burned in the process.
I’m using Adsense and TLA. The site’s all about science fiction.
QuickFact
September 2, 2008 at 8:55 am
TLA sucks, they cheated me for $500. I got banned just before the payment. I’ve emailed them so many times, no respond. I guess this is how they make money after Google start to punish website running Text Link Ads.
Think twice before run TLA on your site.