I have had the most frustrating problems with ad networks lately.
First, Chitika. This is one of the harder networks to get into, and, according to everyone who is in it, can pay very very well. If it works. I was approved literally 1 1/2 years ago and have never been able to get it to work. I’d put the ad code up, it would show ads, and I wouldn’t earn a penny.
I finally put forth the effort to email them asking if this was normal, and the reply I got was:
First and foremost, my apologies. It looks like your site had not yet been added to our list of approved domains. I will have your site added as soon as possible and your ads will begin functioning properly very shortly.
Seriously? That’s it? You’ve been showing ads on my site and making money without paying me and all I get is a “oops”? Grrr..
Next, OpenX. This isn’t really a network, but more of a platform. Basically you add in your normal banners (like AdSense), set a minimum price, and OpenX will show their own ads if they can beat it.
So I signed up and went to log in and got a bad username/password error which was odd because I just signed up. So I tried to recover my password, but it said my email address wasn’t in the system. More odd. So I tried to signup again but it said my username and email address were already in the system. What? Am I in the system or not?
So I shot off an email to their support team. Literally 41 days later they get around to emailing me back:
Hi. Apologies for the delay in responding back to you. There was an issue when your account was created and it has now been fixed.
Not exactly encouraging that it takes over a month for something as basic as a login issue to be fixed.
So today I got around to trying to set OpenX up. This wasn’t exactly easy because all of their “help” pages appear to have been written by a marketer (read: completely useless and full of crap). So with Google’s help I get it all set up and realize they never asked for my tax information, so I went hunting for the tax form.
I finally find it, and am greeted with this wonderfully helpful message:
You are currently logged into another OpenX service with an account that does not match the account you used to sign up for OpenX Market
To access OpenX Market from here, please log out from all other OpenX services by clicking the link below. Then log back in with the account used by this OpenX installation to sign up for OpenX Market.
Seriously? Another login issue? I can’t get paid until this is fixed, so I sent another email to their support team to get some help with this, so maybe sometime in April or May I’ll actually be able to use their product.
Maybe I’ve just been spoiled by AdSense and its remarkable ability to do what it says it will do without any hassles, but these issues seem completely ridiculous to me.