Like many others in the WordPress community, in recent years I’ve been a great fan of WPCandy, enjoying the news, comment and quality reporting it has been bringing to the WordPress community.
So — back in September 2011, when Ryan Imel (the guy behind the whole WPCandy show) launched an invite-only super-duper bespoke WordPress ad service, Pressed Ads, I was naturally interested.
At the time my site WPShout was running BuySellAds and whilst those ads brought in a reliable income, the ads took up a lot of space in the site’s sidebar and switching to something which brought me the same income but took up only a tiny bit of space looked like a very attractive option.
So I was ready for a switch.
In October 2011 I sent Ryan an email asking if he was looking to add to any publishers to PressedAds. He replied a couple of days later:
Unfortunately we just added a handful of sites to the network for November — but we could have a look at WPShout for inclusion in December. Could you ping me about it later this month just in case I forget? I’m prone to do that sometimes 🙂
I emailed Ryan back at the start of December and we went over some of the details. I was undecided and said I’d get back to him. At the start of February I was looking at redesigning WPShout, so it seemed like a good time to make the ad-network switch from BuySellAds to PressedAds. I sent this email on 1st February:
I’m going to refresh the WPShout design over the next couple of months and I’ve come over to your side; I’d like to cut down on advertising space, so would I be able to switch to PressedAds at the start of next month (or even before then)?
After not getting a reply, I followed up two weeks later. Ryan then replied on 4th March:
Still interested in switching to Pressed Ads? Did you have any specific questions?
If you’d like to switch over to PA right away, just let me know and I’ll get it set up and send you over the ad code.
We were getting somewhere — yes, I very much wanted to join PressedAds! Just need the code and we’re good to go. On 6th March I had an email which said:
Sounds good, I’ll send you the details when I sit down to do Pressed Ads work today. Looking forward to having you on board!
As was the pattern, it was another month until Ryan replied, and on 9th April I was sent various code I’d need to get PressedAds running. At this point it was my turn to take a month to respond to emails, although to be fair, I was about to take my final college exams, so I had slightly more pressing things to worry about.
Either way, though, on 6th May I got PressedAds up and running on WPShout.
So at this point it’s essentially taken me eight months to get some ads on my site. Arguably I should’ve suspected something wasn’t entirely right, but Ryan’s a well respected member of the WordPress community and I was prepared to let it slide.
I’d assumed that there was some sort of automated payment system in place, so wasn’t really worried about the irregularity of emails.
Sadly, this wasn’t the case. It took three emails and another month to get an account for the PressedAds dashboard so I could see earnings, and at the time Ryan told me:
Payments are processed and paid out monthly, via PayPal (though I can use other systems if you prefer, just let me know).
That was the last email I’ve had from Mr Imel. I never received any payment for having PressedAds on my site. Between that last email in May and October 2012 I sent eight emails asking to have payment, and in October I essentially gave up and removed PressedAds from WPShout.
I took a screenshot from the PressedAds dashboard on 7th October 2012 showing the monies I was owed, and the grand total was $560.75. I’ve uploaded a simplified version of that screenshot below, showing the important information:
I’m a student; I’m on my gap year at the moment. $560 is a lot of money to me. John asked my opinion on the matter after I left a comment on his post “What the Heck Happened to WPCandy?” mentioning I still had some monies owed which resulted in this post here.
Up to that point I’d held off from publishing something in the hope this could be resolved nicely and privately — without the need for lengthy blog posts.
Clearly my emails aren’t getting anywhere, so — Ryan — could you contact me as soon as possible to sort this out please?
Many thanks,
Alex.
[Update: Unfortunately there were some communication issues surrounding this post, and Ryan had got in contact with me via email before the post went out. I was at work so I didn’t see the message, meaning I didn’t pass it to the editorial team before the post went out. When I did see Ryan’s email, shortly after the post was published, I immediately asked for the post to be removed, but the WP Daily team refused this request, citing the discussion building around the post. I’ve written a comment further explaining the situation, but I’m very happy to report we’ve been able to make some progress towards sorting this out, and it was some very unfortunate circumstances
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