A Costly Mistake, Advertlets

I was/is/am horrified by what just happened. I saw some posts regarding Advertlets domain being expired and not renewed. Oh great, being curious I went on their site and indeed it is true. The domain had expired and Josh (owner of Advertlets, I think) did not renew it! To make it worst, whoever had Advertlets advertisement code within their site would be redirected to the holding site for the domain. Great, now people who went on to my site the past few minutes (luckily) thinks my site is merely a scam or in-active crappy virus site. This mistake is HUGE. Forget the $1 ruckus made by Nuffnang, forget the support tickets not being answered, and forget the cheques not being delivered or signed. Why? Because this is way WAAAY more serious than the past few mistakes and problems. Who would be angry? Both the publishers and the advertisers. And if you add both of them up you get everyone. Everyone gets affected and everyone ought to be angry with Advertlets.

Why would Publishers be angry?

Why shouldn’t they be angry when their sites get redirected to some holding scam like page? Publishers’ own visitors themselves might lose trust in the site they go to. This especially applies on new visitors. What about the big sites that publishes Advertlets? Within minutes a few hundreds if not thousands of visitors would have been redirected. I’m happy my site isn’t too established yet if not this mistake made by OTHERS would have cost me my site, my reputation and my viewers’ trust.

Why would Advertisers be angry?

They pay for what they do not deserve. That is why. But I doubt it is much of a problem most probably because Advertlets would extend their advertising period for free or refund them the lost during the period whereby their advertisements are not displayed.

Last Words

Some thoughts I have on the issue. You cannot go far if you make such mistakes especially when you have strong competitors. Such mistakes may seem so small and insignificant but the effects and aftermaths are great, greater than what you think or expect. Small sites will not be affected much but for the more popular and famous sites the damage created is huge and painful. With such an event happening Advertlets may have to build the site a few months again before they can regain trust from the bigger publishers. Well perhaps I am making a mountain out of a molehill but for me this is a mistake that made me lose all my trust in them. It is just renewing a domain, how difficult can that be? If you can even forget to pay for your own fees, what more about issuing publishers their payout?

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