The is a guest post submitted by Wong Tech Jung, a blogger on duller.kuluchew.com. The original Chinese blog post is available at here. All content and opinions belong to the author.
I (Wong Tech Jung) am a Chinese blogger. In October last year, I decided to use Advertlets over Nuffnang. This decision is due to the amount of Nuffnang and earning I received from Nuffnang is too low, and lots of Malaysian Chinese blogs are using Advertlets as well. However today I gave up Advertlets and changed back to Nuffnang again.
The decision of abandoning Advertlets is simply because they can’t pay to the publishers. After using Advertlets for two months (since October 2007), my blog was affected by its domain name expiry in January. Due to Josh and his colleagues Alzheimer, they allowed their domain name to expire and this is the worst thing that could happen for an online company. However I still wanted to give it a try.
After Advertlets settled its domain name expiry issue, it decided to pay more to the members who continued to use Advertlets. During that time, I have a pretty good earning. Some time later, I discovered Advertlets actually paid differently to bloggers with same traffic and advertisement (shown in image below).
I requested for a cashout in February and March as I reached RM 100 in both months. As Advertlets earning is just peanuts compare to other service, such as Google Adsense and Text Link Ads, I simply forgot the existence of Advertlets in my blog and didn’t bother to check back Advertlets earning again.Until May when someone asked me about Advertlets, I realized that I haven’t received any cheque from them. So I wrote in to Advertlets (10 May 2008):
Hello,
I had request a cash out on feb 20, 2008 but until now I still haven’t receive any payments from you yet. It had been more than 2 months for fist payment to be processed, but it is stated that all cashout request will be process in 30 to 40 days time. Please tell me whether I can receive this payment or not, so that I need not to waste any space for advertlets hanging in my blog earning virtual money.
Thanks.
Josh replied me immediately and promised that the payment will be processed within two weeks:
Hi,
Some of the remaining February cashouts (including yours) will be processed over this weekend, and you should get it within the next 2 weeks.
Apologies for the delay, and thanks for supporting Advertlets so far.
Cheers,
– –
Josh Lim
After two weeks, I still hear no news from Advertlets and the status of the cashout is still not being processed and sent. So I wrote in again (24 May 2008):
Hi,
I’m writing here regarding to the payment you promised to send to me 2 weeks ago.  I was told by you that I should get it within the past two weeks, however it is still “processing†status in the cashout page.Hope to hear from you soon.
On the same day they replied:
Hi Wong,
It will be sent out this coming Monday, so you should receive it shortly.
Thanks.
Regards,
Advertlets Support
Then I didn’t bother to check Advertlets anymore. On 5 June 2008, I received an email from Advertlets saying that the cheque had been sent. It also stated that “Please note that your February 2008 Cashout has already been processed and should reach the address registered in your profile between the 28th of May 2008 to the 15th of June 2008†So that meant I could receive my payment by 15th of June 2008. However until today(July 2008) I still haven’t RECEIVE ANY PAYMENTS FROM ADVERTLETS.
I checked my profile page, and there is nothing wrong. So I sent in another email inquiring the payment on 30th of June 2008:
Hi,
I had cashout in Feb and March, and the status shown was “sentâ€. However up until today, I still haven’t receive the payment.  I checked all the details I provide in my profile and everything is correct. Can you please look into the matter?  Thanks.
Advertlets told me to give the cheque a bit of time to arrive:
Hi,
We’ve done what we need to from our end, give it a bit of time to arrive.
Please let us know if it doesn’t arrive to you within a week.
Regards,
Advertlets Support
As I had already given Advertlets not only a bit of time, I replied:
It’s not a bit of time now, it has been several months! That’s why I’m letting you know about the issues.
Then Advertlets frustrated me with this reply:
Okay. We’ve checked, your payments were processed last week and should arrive shortly. Apologies for the delay.
What? My payment was only processed last week and it had been written “SENT†in my cashout status for more than a month. Here is another email sent by Advertlets:
Hi,
The sent status reflects when your payment has already been processed from our end (eg account already audited and due to be received), and is subject to postal delays from the postal service or cheque management from the bank.
We note that you are in Sibu. As we send our cheques from West Malaysia, it may take a while to arrive to you. Delays of 2-3 weeks have happened. However, we’ve checked and some of the other bloggers from Kuching have received theirs – we will check on the status of your cheque, and reissue if needed.
The cheque will be in a white envelope, marked with the HSBC logo. Please let us know if you still do not receive it by the 15th of July and we will reissue as needed.
Sorry I haven’t received any white envelope. A lot of publishers contacted me telling me that their December 2007 Cashouts were not paid as well (even though Josh said they were trying to nail down fraud clicks that cause the delay, and he claimed he had sent out all the payments). There’s another Chinese blogger (who I can’t tell his/her name) used to cashout RM 500 from Advertlets but Advertlets only sent him/her RM 300. He/she tried to request back the RM 200 from Advertlets but didn’t get any reply from Advertlets.
Josh (founder of Advertlets) had been sponsoring lots of events, including Malaysia Chinese Blogs Awards and Malaysia Chinese Blogs Society. With the amount less than RM 300, Josh can’t pay to the publishers. Rumors have been spreading around saying that Advertlets have fund managing problems. I urged my readers to stop using Advertlets ad several Chinese blogs had taken it down since then. I hope more people will give them pressure.
The is a guest post submitted by Wong Tech Jung, a blogger on duller.kuluchew.com. The original Chinese blog post is available at here. All content and opinions belong to the author.
Update: Josh, founder of Advertlets, responded to this post.
So is this a scam? Sounds like one! Stick to the ol Google Adsense. Safest and hassle free. :)
Sorry to hear that Wong, i’m also one of the victim but that was long time ago. I have RM150++ in Advertlets that can’t be cash out. I stopped using it immediately because for me it was a very unsteady advertising company.
I also have two pending payment from Advertlets which cashout on 31st March & 31st May 2008. I still put Advertlets and Nuffnang Ads (more than 6 months earning RM50+) on my blogs and my other website like http://www.ModelFreelancer.com simply because to support Malaysian’s Company :) Ah but then hope not to delay payment for too long, you know inflation sky high nowadays and domain price also increase! foreseen hosting cost will hike in soon future!
Luckily I drop Advertlets after their domain expire blunder.
Although Nuffnang pays slower, still it’s better than they manage to send the cheque over rather than telling lies like Advertlets.
I agree with CLF, ditched Adverlets long time already when they had domain blunder.
As for now, I will stick with Nuffnang. They do really pay you :0
As for WTJ, I kind have similar experience with Nuffnang for my first cash out. Cheque is not coming even the status is sent. But they keep emailing me to update my problem status. It turns out, my previous cheque lost in mail. They reissue and showed a picture of my cheque and after 2 weeks I received it.Then I blog about if of course :)
I will write the same story like WTJ with different advertiser if nuffnang’s cheque did not arrive at my mail box hehe
Finally you speak it !! I also hate advertlets. My site receive about 3000 page view a day ( about 500 unique visitor from Malaysia per day) , but Advertlets pay me Rm0.05 only. I drop Advertlets ads now !!
Oh , forgot to said : Advertlets , you are fired too !!
same here.. I drop Advertlets before their domain expired
I used to work with Josh for a while..and trust me, He is good at nothing except going out telling how good he is. He is no skill but a mouth. you guys should file a lawsuit to him
shot….I am using them at my website… i will stop when I reach RM100 cashout to see if the pay.
My payout seem to be in the lower range too…:(
Dear Liew
I am yr blog subscriber. I am a victim of advertlets in CJ7 prizes but not earnings. I won a prize on ‘the post … alien at your backyard’. Till todate nothing despite emails after email. Josh replied that the prizes will be sent next week but the next week never arrived. Lousy management, kinds in prizes also cannot fulfill, what’s more cash. Expereinced Bro and Sis out there, should I continue to chase or give up. Please Help. Still angry and even more angry when I read this post.
This is Josh Lim from Advertlets, and this is our response to the items raised here:
1. Earnings are derived from not just the number of impressions you have, but also your traffic mix – which countries your traffic is coming from. For example, 1000 impressions from Malaysia will be more than say, 1000 impressions from China.
This is due to the number of ads available in existing countries. Ad size and number of ad placements are also factors in determining earning factors. As of such, the comparison mentioned in the article is based on misleading assumptions.
2. Those with outstanding cashout issues are urged to contact us at info@advertlets.com. Please make sure that your e-mail address is contactable and your payment details are filled in for us to issue your payment.
3. To Wong, as you have mentioned yourself, we do sponsor Chinese blog related events, and there are a few more in addition to the ones you mentioned. We’ve even done two events in East Malaysia itself. And you may notice some specific Chinese language ads targeted to only Chinese language blogs.
I think you can see that we definitely value the community. Unfortunately, you seem to be getting the idea that we are for some reason, doing this on purpose to you and making all sorts of conclusions from what is really, a postal delay or loss. From our records, I can assure you personally that we have done all we can on our side, followed up on your enquiry, and in fact, reissued some of the payments – and even, gave you an other option to resolve the situation.
Seriously la. It’s quite unfair that you conveniently left out the latest update on your case. The last e-mail to you where we notified you that if you still do not receive it, we can resolve it in an alternate manner given the nature of your situation. As of such, we are puzzled as to why you choosed to stop communicating with us, and instead wrote this blog post?
Of note: your twitter update, where you acknowledge receipt of our last email:
“Alternatively, if it still fails to reach your address we will arrange a direct bank in via MEPS transfer to your account. ” advertlets (05:06 PM July 11, 2008 from web)
http://twitter.com/nikewong/statuses/855398309
As of such, we hope for your cooperation to help us resolve your situation. Thank you, and best wishes :)
Cheers,
Josh Lim
Advertlets.com
Im a small time blogger. Justr earning around 1- 2 USD per day thru adsense while advertlets n nuffnang few cents each day
So i dumped both of them, saved some space in my blog,replace with Adsense , now earning about 20/30 % more then earlier :)
Advertlets tidak ada apa-apa jika bukan blogger yang perkenalkan, bila blogger dah naikkan Advertlets, dia lupa pula nak bayar blogger. tak boleh pakai punya advertlets
wow. Josh Lim in the House….
liar liar, so where is Callie’s prize?
oh ya forgot to mention.. Josh, you’re fired!!!
stop putting your comment here and there.. just shut up and do your job.
saya sudah lama tak publish iklan advertlets. better guna nuffnang. still paid until today.
proof – check my blog
Josh oh Josh!
If one person is in doubt of your company’s service he may be wrong. But when there are so many people against your company I think there is something really wrong. You should take this seriously and work on it.
It is no use sponsoring this and that event if you can’t even pay your customers on time. If there are frauds in the system then improve it. At this relationship era, CUSTOMERS ARE KING. If you do not do anything to improve this I am sure your company won’t go far.
To Josh Lim,
Come on. Don’t always play the same trick. It’s lame.
There’s only 1 problem of Advertlets – Not willing to pay.
With “Not willing to pay” concept in your mind, you like to delay any payment with all the unacceptable reasons.
I bet this is not the first case happened in Malaysia. Just merely being friendly in emailing doesn’t help your reputation. We all would like to see the sincerity of being an online advertising network.
If you don’t know how to run the company, please take a look at what Google is doing. They pay in time and they ban publishers with enough proof.
Click frauds happen anywhere. A calculated risk and loss must be included in your business. Such a simple economic theory, takkan you don’t know.
Last but not least, PAY THE MONEY!
No Cheers,
Kent
Another victim of Advertlets
erm…my site and it is not a blog..is comprise of mostly 80-90% malaysian users still payout badly…don’t think that argument make its stand
I hope this is resolved now….
advertlets – Taking the ‘bang’ out of ‘bloggers’
So many people said the same thing, I guess it is a matter of time before Adverlets close shop.
My earning with Adverlets is simply too low compare to Nuffnang. I dropped it long long time ago.
By the way, do you ever BELIEVE it takes 2-3 weeks to send a little piece of cheque from West Malaysia to East Malaysia? I am wondering what kind of courier service do they used?
guys..don’t waste your time with Josh…don’t fall to his trap again..wake up…
Josh, you need to practice your EQ and sincerity. I bet you’re using traditional way to calculate the payment or else why the hell it takes you 6 months to process a payment??
My advice: Give up the abacus and start to learn how to use DB. (OK, at least M.Excel)
Ooo interesting.
I have some friend working in The Star & Utusan Melayu ………I think they are interest with this topic.
why do i keep reading the same replies from their support team whenever someone post about pending payments? it’s like… they already have a template to delay it? Just an opinion though. Might or might not be a fact. :)
Anyone is going to throw a pie on Josh Lim in this coming BarCamp?? I would like to sponsor those pies.
Hi Wong,
It seems that you’re from Sibu. I’m from Kuching. Base on my experience, we in EAST MALAYSIA always get our payment LATE, regardless from the A or N company. Those company promise to give our payment, say within 30 – 60 days, but still there’s delay all the time. The A company loves me less, before their domain expire issue, I got really less income from them, after that I decided to move their ads to my alternative blog. So, I never reach RM100, and never cash out from them before.
As for the N company, I’ve cashed out once, which is RM50 and it took me almost 3 months before I received the payment. Sooooo slow. If your blog has potential traffic, just drop both of the ads from the A or N company and stick with adsense. It’s not worth putting up ads from local advertising company when adsense can offer you more. :)
What the drama..?
Hi
I have left a comment earlier on. Good news for all. I have received my prizes yesterday, 6.45pm thru Skynet. Tks Liew and All. Thanks Josh. Josh, Get more staff to lighten your tasks. You want workers, contact me.
Hi guys, just stop complaining here. Focus on your blog content. Get traffics with your quality original contents. Drop both of them, change to Google Adsense.
Complaining here and there will only waste your time and worst is, it is not good for health :)
Maybe we could turn this into a Cerekarama…
Very interesting leh…
Or …. KISAH BENAR…
This room is busy. ;-)
yc
Woah… this seems like a bash of bloggers against Josh/Advertlets… would the 1-time rival, Nuffnang care to join in the showdown? Since Josh will be at (and sponsoring) BarCamp, I wonder if NuffNang guys/gals will be there too…. After all, I could be mistaken but when I asked Sun guys, they said the won’t come near BarCamp if Microsoft (RT) is going to be there…
Cool drama! It’s getting HOT in here, just like Anwar-Shabery/PR-BN here…
Anyway, cheers for Josh for boldly going everywhere… (although, I’ve never pasted one of their ads so far). Need to work on some good PR fixing strategies, eh?
Maybe we should bring this up to MCMC… tech company scamming bloggers!
Josh , I know you will look at this post.
Here I want you to send the payment through SKYNET. On the day you send the cheque , please email us the Skynet tracking code , so that we can track where the hack is the cheque took damn so long to arrive at our house.
We do the tracking , because you are busy.
Josh , the way you reply to Liew on this post is very bad. I dont like the way you talk. You are not the king , ok ? We grow money for you , Understand?
If I were Liew , I will stop communicate with you as well.
You know what is Good customer service ? Its to reply within 24 hours. How many hours you have took to reply Liew?
Josh , go back to school and learn how to be nice with your gold mine , yes , we are your gold mine . Treat us well. Or you will fail. Malaysia is so small , your name and Advertlets will blacklisted by blogger by soon.
haha….
Advertlets still owes me RM500 since november 2007. Guys, ditch Advertlets and move on.
Typical Malaysian company.
Advertlets/Josh Lim is also holding my payment. The status of the payout has been showing “processing” for months and my emails to him went unheeded.
It’s time to fired Advertlets. This is not the first time I heard about the delayed in payment and nonsense excuses.
So far I got all my 4 Advertlets cheque of more than RM$1K++, no probs for me. Location S’pore
But I do agree- the turn-ard time to send out cheques can be improved. It’s far too long eg. 3-4 months waiting time
As Mr. Wong, give it some time, confirm get one dude. Good luck :)
This comment is not about late payment. In fact, I have been paid by Advertlets before once last year but that’s the last payment I’ve ever received.
From the dashboard it seems that something has been done to reduce the overall income per impression and per click. So much so that it was reaooy hard to reach 10 cents after one month! Take note this is the same amount of traffic that allowed me to get my first cashout. It’s frustrating with the same amount of traffic I can never reach RM 100 cash out again after the adjustments were made. All this is only my observation and Advertlets have every right to adjust their ‘algorithm’ but personally it’s all too fishy for me.
So I’ve dropped it from almost all my major blogs already.
so far i have not much comment on this, I will still stick to advertlets, and hope they can improve all related issue that blogger complain on.
As wong said, the earning really become good after just after join their titan, but after that, the earning drop again like economy crisis at 1997, and the earning is maintain low all the time until now.
I hope the high figure there on that moment not just to entertain blogger to be more happy after join them back only…
Something interesting to read – Do you know how Advertlets define click fraud?
Josh, probably time to invest a calculator :)
Hey guys.. Thanks for the heads up. I’ll definitely stay away from Advertlets.
If there are any payment delays even for a single month for an internet revenue-sharing advertising company, it’s a red flag already.
this super mutha**ker joker will not pay you !!
he and advertlets sdn bhd owed me RM900 from last year and yet don’t have guts to pay..
this guy always play tricks and he is so smart dum* *ss for not to pay the bloggers.
btw, he is so busuk when dealing with the media agency. they spread bad bad story to NN guys which had to do nothing with them.
stay away from this parasite..most of the ads are free ads and he involved in such scandalicious scenario..
go to h*ll josh and it’s investor (do you know his investor?)
You know they are in big trouble when the founder of an internet company has go post directly in blogs and post his replies. Means no one is listening….
Advertlets?Seriously , liewcf you mean advertlets in this post?
Oh no thats SCAM
Uh uh, I have just started using Adverlets!
advertlets paid, but too late, too many questions, requirement before they want to pay even as low as Rm100. It’s competitor works well..so it’s time to move on! (I sudah tukar lamaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa dah)
wasted my time with advertlets.
Seems like there are a lot of bad news about payment from advertlets.
Recently, I put it back on my “hot spot” after the new campaign started. But guess I got to think twice now!
It’s not worth the wait and frustration of chasing for a small payment for months I suppose?
We note that this situation has been resolved (1-2 weeks after the initial complaint), and the blogger has received the reissued payments. The issue was due to the blogger’s delivery address being in a remote area of East Malaysia. We noted that postal loss has been a common occurrence when sending to East Malaysia.
As of such, to prevent delayed payments, we now offer an option for bloggers to receive the money banked directly into their local bank account via wire transfer. We endeavor to improve our services further, so do let us know if you have any queries or outstanding requests. We can be contacted at info@advertlets.com