Warning! Don't Trust BlogKits!

UPDATE [08/09/2007]: Early this morning, Jonathan Miller, the CEO of Forge Corporation, became aware of the situation and took immediate action. Full commission payment was made, and he personally apologized for the whole incident (in email as well as a comment on this post). It appears the whole issue was an administrative error, and it has been resolved. If anyone else has not received payment, Jonathan has asked that you contact him personally (you can get his address in his comment below). I hope OfferForge has resolved the issue with employees (like Junaid Moerat) not responding to emails as well. The "non-response" issue is the whole reason I posted about this in the first place.

I have no reason not to believe him as I have had no issues with anyone from OfferForge or BlogKits except Junaid Moerat.

I am sitting here beside myself this evening, ready to spit nails. I am quite pissed, as I have been used and taken advantage of. I am going to call out the company that did it, so please bear with me.

Last year, I dropped out of the Google Adsense program because I wasn't making enough money from it. I wasn't making much from the ads on my sites, and I felt as though the adspace was "dead space", so I dropped them.

I cannot remember where I first heard about BlogKits, but wherever it was, they promoted the idea that with BlogKits, sites like mine could make more money than we were with the Adsense program. So I decided to give them a try and I signed up for their affiliate program on December 15th of last year.

Initially, I was quite impressed and received emails stating,

"I just wanted to take a personal opportunity to welcome you to the Blogkits/OfferForge affiliate network. My team and I take enormous pride in the relationships we build with our publishers and affiliates and I look forward to working with you to grow your and our businesses together."

and

If you haven't started earning yet, hang in there, it can take time, but eventually you'll make a sale and it'll all be worth it!

Now, before I forget and for comparison later in this post, I will state right now that it took over one year to make my first (and only) $100 with Google Adsense.

By May 1st, almost 5 months since joining BlogKits, I had made a mere $9.00. I was, in fact, making less money with BlogKits than I was with Google Adsense. So much for that promise. While I had no preconceived notions that I would make a killing with BlogKits, I honestly expected them to perform better than Google Ads. I had every intention of cancelling my BlogKits account that month, but seven days later I received an email which stated (emphasis mine),

We’ve heard you and are responding rapidly! The BlogKits adpools are getting a revamp. Loads of new ads will be up from Wednesday through Friday! During the last week we’ve been running reports that have indicated overwhelmingly to us that sites running the 'support this blog' line of ads that were initially the cornerstone of BlogKits ads – are not making money.

This however is NOT YOUR PROBLEM. You run the ads and you deserve to get paid for them. So read on………

I'm not sure if it’s got something to do with people's innate aversion to "tipping" or being seen to be overtly supporting or being coerced into purchasing – but we've found that contextually relevant ads without any specific references to 'support this blog'; are far outperforming the old style ads initially favoured. My guess is that your visitors just simply don’t want to feel like they have to support you by buying something – they’d do that anyway if they liked the product!

Well, this week proved to me that the death-knell of ‘blog-support’ ads has proven. By Friday we’ll have removed all the ads with those words off BlogKits and replaced the ads with more generic ads for contextually relevant offers. You may have seen more of these ads making their appearance in your ad-pool anyway.

So, we know that BlogKits has traction. We know that aggregated bloggers can deliver real value and can deliver actual sales and leads. We’ve had some great success stories in the past 4 months of bloggers far outperforming their Adwords earnings. However, for those of you that were running our ‘support this blog’ adpools – you trusted us and the ads we ran did not deliver for you so it’s only fair we pay you anyway!

We’ll be crediting each under-earning BlogKits publisher with a special bonus in the amount of $0.10 per click as recorded in our interface for the period 1 March 2007 through 15 May 2007. This means some of your will get $10, others as much as $1200. We hope this’ll go some way to helping you keep the lights on and show you that we’re as serious about partnering with you to drive sales and earnings from your blogs as you are!

So why’d I do this? We know BlogKits is a winner. I believe that if we change the creative and run ads that appeal better to your visitors your earnings will naturally improve – hopefully dramatically! I would really value any feedback and opinion you would be willing to share.

Please visit our blog to comment on what you think of us offering to pay you 10c per click:
http://www.blogkits.com/blog/?p=117

At this point I decided to wait and see where the numbers fell, and they appeared to fall in my favor. I had made $64.30 for the month of May. $49.30 from the "special bonus" their email spoke of, and $15 from additional sales from the ads I was running. So, at the end of May my balance stood at $73.30.

When I did not receive payment at the end of May, I waited a few weeks, because I was not sure when the commission payment date was supposed to be. On June 19th I emailed them to find out. My email was quite simple and basically asked when I should expect the commission payment for balances earned in May.

Here is the reply I received from Ilze Britz that same day,

Payment usually run on the 25th of the month following the month in which the commission had been generated. You can probably expect payment at the end of June for commission made in May.

Hope that clears it up for you. Please let me know if there is anything else!

Please make note of the word probably. It was much more relevant than I thought it was going to be.

I was jazzed. At the end of June I would be getting paid $73.30, which at six months into the program was far more than I was making with Adsense. At this point, I was getting ready to roll out my "SloboNet" and decided to give BlogKit ads the prime placement on each site, since I stood to make some good revenue with them. Then June 25th came and went with no payment. None. Nada. Zilch.

Being the guy that I am, I gave them the benefit of the doubt. I thought maybe, just maybe, they didn't actually credit the "special bonus" from May until June 1, which would put those earnings in June and make the applicable payment date July 25th. So I waited. Contrary to popular belief I can be patient when I want to be. I also made an additional $6 in sales during the month of June, which brought my total to $76.30.

Just like June 25th, July 25th came and went. Again there was nothing. Nada. Zilch. No dinero. Zero.

So I fired off an email on July 27th reminding them that my balance was $76.30 and that I had not received payment on July 25th. I simply asked them if I would be receiving a payment this month and if so, how much it would be.

The reply I received on August 1st, from Junaid Moerat stated,

Hi

Sorry for the late reply. I have looked into the matter and you should receive payment within the next 2 weeks…

Sorry about the misunderstanding…

Thanks

Now, I could have sat around with my thumb up my ass and waited for 2 more weeks, but why would I? I believe I had been very patient. I was due this money in June and here it was August 1st. So I sent a nice reply (emphasis mine):

Junaid,

I don't understand. Why is it going to take an additional two weeks?

As of June 30th, my balance stood at $76.30. According to my records (as well as the statistics on the OfferForge website), I made the following amounts:

01/2007 – $ 3.00 (from the FreeDebtAssessment campaign)
03/2007 – $ 6.00 (from the FreeDebtAssessment campaign)
05/2007 – $64.30 ($49.30 – Blogkits Affiliate Services, $15.00 – FreeDebtAssessment)
06/2007 – $ 3.00 (from the FreeDebtAssessment campaign)

I can fully understand why the amounts earned in January and March were not paid before May, as the terms and conditions clearly state that payment is not made until a $25.00 minimum is reached in commissions.

On June 19th, after inquiring as to why I had not yet received a commission payment, I was told (by Ilze Britz) that payments usually run on the 25th of the month following the month in which the commission had been generated.

I fully expected a commission payment on the 25th for the $73.30 I had earned up to that point. But it never came.

Now, July 25th has come and gone, and I did not receive a commission payment. I have gone to great lengths to place OfferForge ad campaigns in some of the most valuable spots on my sites, and I have done so in good faith that I would be paid the commissions earned from those ads.

In June I was told I would be paid on the 25th, and it never happened. Now I am being told I should receive payment within 2 weeks, pardon me if I am a bit skeptic about believing that response as well.

I have monetized all of my blogs, and the only affiliate program that has failed to meet my expectations is Blogkits. Every other program pays their commissions in a timely manner without error or excuse.

Please explain why I was not paid at the proper times for the commissions I earned from the campaigns I ran on my site, and why there was a "misunderstanding" as you mentioned in your email. I also expect payment immediately, not in two-weeks.

I look forward to hearing your response.

I received a reply 12 minutes later that stated:

Michael

Sorry about this…

I checked your account and the payment threshold says $50… you have reached $50 so you must get paid, that I totally agree with. I think there was just a mix up in the system somewhere because the blogkits payment had to be done manually, so the system did not pick up that you reached the payment threshold…

I said two weeks but it should be paid within the next couple of days… Hope you understand…

Thanks

As I said, that exchange occurred on August 1st. I figured, since I finally got someone's attention, and he agreed with me that I was due a payment. I could wait two days for that payment. Again, that was August 1st.

On August 6th, 5 days later, I still had nothing. Nada. Zilch. Zero. So I sent the following email during my lunch hour yesterday:

Hi Junaid,

It's been 5 days since I was told it would be a "couple" days. Just wondering what's going on.

Michael

I received no response. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. At his point I have had enough of BlogKits, their very poor customer service, and their lack of response when it comes to commission payments. I had been very patient up til now, but I had to draw the line somewhere. So today, I sent the following email, figuring I would wait until 10pm this evening to post this entry.

Junaid,

I am quite disappointed that I have not received a response from you. As the emails quoted below clearly show, you promised payment "in the next couple of days". It has now been 6 days since you stated that, and I have yet to see my payment.

I have removed all BlogKits and OfferForge ads from all of my sites, and I be posting about this experience, along with these emails, so others will know that while they may in good faith place campaigns on their sites, they may not actually get paid for them.

What a shame too, as I thought BlogKits and OfferForge were a lot more respectable than this.

So here I am, I still haven't received a payment, and that's my story about BlogKits and how they have thus far failed to pay me for commissions earned by ads I placed on my sites, through their program, in good faith.

Do they do this to everyone? I do not know. But I wouldn't recommend signing up with them to find out if I was you.