Easy2Earn Dollars

Recently my good friend Jim Kukral made a video expressing his concern and annoyance with affiliate networks on the “BIG” networks, such as Commission Junction and Linkshare. Jim wanted to promote an offer through BestBuy, which is run through Commission Junction. Unfortunately CJ likes to automatically delete accounts once they go inactive for a couple months. The happened to Jim’s account, so he had to make a new one. Once signing up again, he had to apply to the BestBuy affiliate program and had to wait four days to get a response back… and the response was, “your application was not approved”.

I can relate to how Jim feels and I have experienced the same thing several times over. I have not used Commission Junction or Linkshare for nearly three years now because I hate the way their networks are setup. Back when I first was starting out running my own affiliate programs, I had several merchant accounts on CJ and one master affiliate account. Through CJ I had paid out several hundreds of thousands over the course of around two years. In addition to paying out a ton in commissions, I was also earning a ton too. My affiliate account had earnings in the six figure range… but apparently that didn’t matter to CJ. Once I stopped using that affiliate account for a few months, it was deactivated. I contacted CJ and they told me to create a new account. So what about all my data and awesome stats!?.. they didn’t care, it was now lost.

Several years later and I have experienced the same thing multiple times. I find a new offer that is through CJ that I want to check out, then I post a few links here and there, then log in a few months later and my account is deactivated again. I think my latest account with them is my fifth.

So last night I was setting up my new office room and it has a lot of furniture in it from Bombay Company. I decided to check out the site and saw they have an affiliate program, through LinkShare. I really wanted to join the program since I would promote the offer and also buy some furniture through the site as well. It’s been a while since I logged into my LinkShare account, but it was nice to see they didn’t delete my account like CJ does. I logged in, found the offer and and applied. I also added ZacJohnson.com as a new site to my profile, thinking any affiliate program would obviously see my site and how it says “Super Affiliate” and would easily accept the application.

This morning I received a response from Bombay Company’s affiliate manager, and (not) to my surprise, they have denied my account, stating my web site was one of the following: Inability to access Web site, Web site not yet live, Traffic levels too low, Inappropriate material on site. I assume they did find relevant content, as none of the above apply. It’s a shame to have affiliate management in place that would deny a site which states it’s a “Super Affiliate“, and has a previous post showing $10k in earnings with another network.

In Jim’s video he talked about how he just wanted to go to BestBuy and other large companies directly. I completely agree, but unfortunately most site and companies do not have the management or knowledge to do so… so they pay too much and outsource to larger networks and miss out on possible opportunities to work with big players like Jim and myself, just because they don’t know better, or provide better and more personal support. The moral of this is posting is that no matter how big or small your branding name or company is, you can always improve your affiliate management and support. As for other large affiliate networks out there, I’m sure deleting accounts saves you some costs on data storage, but deleting accounts of big earning affiliates is just ridiculous. I’ve been in this game long enough to understand how things should be run and so many companies out there are way under par.

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Your domain is a very important part of your business… heck, it is your business! Without your domain you don’t have a site! Imagine if you suddenly lost your domain? What would you do? Well, this scenario is probably all too familiar for anyone that has used RegisterFly. At one point they were my main registrar for my domain portfolio, where I had up to 120+ domains at one point. I first signed up to RegisterFly a few years ago. In the beginning all was well, but then they went to hell. They basically have no more customer support, they will not renew domains, they will not help you in any domain transfer or even acknowledge you as a member… but I’m sure they will still gladly take your money!

I’ve been wanting to write this post for a while now, but wanted to try and pull away all of my existing domains with RegisterFly before doing so. Let’s first take a look at their customer support section. Here you are supposed to setup “support tickets” with any questions or problems you may have with your account. I just logged into today and saw that my last two tickets were changed to “closed”… yet they were never even answered. As you can see there are several other support tickets as well… they were also unanswered and I unfortunately lost a couple domains because of them. I especially like the section that states, “Normally support issues are handled within 2-3 hours“… a complete comedy and it usually took days… or would simply just remain unanswered.

The last domain that I had to pull from RegisterFly was an important one and I was desperately working with GoDaddy and eNom to have either of them pick the domain up anyway possible. GoDaddy was able to do so, and I praise them for it. When I logged into my RegisterFly account today to pull more information for this post, I also noticed a new update to in the “Customer Service Center”. A screenshot from the customer service center is shown below, along with the notice that was on the following page.

Looks like RegisterFly is getting enough complaints to actually do something for their customers. (By the way… good luck trying to conact them through their support system!) RegisterFly had recently become their own registrar and was no longer a reseller of domain registration to other networks. Everyone on RegisterFly has had problems and the other domain registrars were also well aware. Even GoDaddy and some of the other networks were running promotions specifically targeted towards unhappy RegisterFly customers. You can do a simply google search for “RegisterFly Sucks” and you’ll see over 27,900 pages come up. Just type in “RegisterFly” into the search and the adwords advertisers are well aware of the frustration on RegisterFly customers.

For a while GoDaddy was a big boaster of getting RegisterFly users to move over and had a special promotion on their site. I went to the site just now, planning to show you the ad copy, but they have already adjusted to the new transfer flow of RegisterFly users onto their network. Right on the main page at the top it shows “Welcome RegisterFly Users! Your domains are safe with us.”… Never did I think I would see “RegisterFly” and “Safe” used together and actually believe it! I have been using GoDaddy for a while now and have no complaints with them, they actually call you weeks before a domain is expiring, so you can renew! RegisterFly customers will think they died and gone to heaven with the new support offered by GoDaddy. (eNom has also been a great help during the domain process and I highly recommend them as well!)

In the end, after months and month of stresss and the loss of a few domains, I now have my remaining domains safe and secure with GoDaddy and eNom. (GoDaddy even has an affiliate program through Commission Junction if you want to promote their service and make some money.) Domains are precious and if lost can turn a company from making millions per day, to nothing the next. Make sure you track and renew all of your domains cautiously and keep them with a well known host. As for the future of RegisterFly?… it will be hard for them to re-brand themselves as a reliable company with such a horrid reputation from past customers.

A lot of Malaysians have been scammed by the Hong Kong Lottery Scam. Check out the Star article.Don’t be fooled if someone calls to say that you have won a Hong Kong-based lottery.

In the latest scam, the recipient would be asked to deposit money as “service tax” into a bank account in order to claim the winnings.

Sarawak acting commercial crimes head Deputy Supt Stanley Jonathan Ringgit said the perpetrators, who spoke Mandarin, would call people randomly to inform them they had won a lottery in Hong Kong.

“From January to June this year, nine cases were reported in Sarawak involving losses of RM236,370.

Check out Kenny Sia video who has survived the HK scam.