Performancing ads sure has a communication problem.  Take a great idea, blast it across the Internet, then screw things up and make changes while keeping silent about the whole thing. 

I love the concept.  People selling ad space while getting exchange credits for running ads when their ad space isn’t sold directly.  Set your own price and never have to touch the code again.  What could go wrong?

Issue #1: The ads themselves started looking strange.  One day I saw white space there.  Next day I get a letter saying the ad space was sold for $0.00.  A week later the ad vanished.  Turns out those were the exchange ads.  Looks like their coder has their head up their posterior.  You’d think an ad agency run by such noted bloggers who put their name on the product might take 5 minutes to write one sentence on their blogs like “Performancing ads is experiencing server issues, please bare with us while we resolve the problem”.  Nope.  This is BS.  Since their affiliate program pays after 30 days of showing ads, all they have to do is show porn ads on day 29 just to screw over all the affiliates.  Would they intentionally shoot themselves in the foot?  Who knows.  Clearly the network is unprofessional.  I had at least one person who signed up under me take down their ads thanks to their blank space crap.  I can only guess how much money this coding fiasco cost me.

Issue #2:  Their Affiliate Program promises a lot, but tells you nothing.  I signed up 43 people, have 26 bookings, sold 3 ads of my own, and yet have seen nothing in the form of a check.  Not even a scheduled payout.  Forget transparency, this is invisibility.  Get real or get out of the business.

Issue #3:  Site navigation is a joke.  I accidentally deleted my Turnipofpower.com account there today.  The page that says “cancel” has two buttons.  Guess what, no matter which button you pick deletes your site!   Button one links to ”/site/delete/id/xxxx”, button two links to “/site/delete/id/xxxx”.  You would think after 3 months one of their admins would have caught the error.  Just one more method of screwing over their affiliates who had a signup accidentally delete before 30 days.

Response: So I emailed performancing ads, twice.  The second time I got a response.  I will post it here because it answers many questions I’m sure other affiliates are asking.

“Payouts will be made on October 1st to all people who meet the following conditions:

1. Have earned the minimum payout threshold (which was lowered from $50 to
$10 since September, and is now user configurable from your user profile)
2. Affiliate referrals for new advertiser signups
3. Affiliate referrals for new publisher signups that have been active
publishers for at least 30 days

Best,
Ryan

Now, I still have faith that Performancing ads is a good network. After October 2nd that opinion may change. Currently I have a wait and see attitude. I suggest everyone that has performancing ads on their site keep using them until October at least.  I can’t believe an Ad Agency would willingly ruin their internet reputation by such foolishness as not paying affiliates.  Come October 2nd, expect to read about this again.