I am just not having a good time with advertisers lately. There’s always the chance that someone will lowball you or string you along without providing you with whatever price or product was agreed upon. lots of people just flake out, and I’m not always the best at keeping up with email. (The lack of posts isn’t because I have half a dozen toys/books ready to write a review about or anything…) But I recently went through my inbox to catch up on messages about reviews and potential advertising and thought I was doing a pretty good job as an adult.
This is where I realized, however, that the representative from Tacky Sex Toys had never actually come through with their side of the agreement in regards to my sex toy store profile/review. Since the communications had been positive, I figured it was an honest mistake. I, too, had not been on the ball. Except my return email bounced back and the site doesn’t even exist anymore? Yesterday, it was a directly, today’s it’s a 500 error.
I mean, the dine-and-dash doesn’t even make sense in this context because the post I put up simply links to nothing, so it’s not like they’re reaping the benefits.
But it gets more frustrating. Another representative from a different site wondered if I could naturally slip a link into an existing post. Listen, we all know how “natural” any sponsored content is most of the time. It was my bad for even accepting it after seeing the link text, which was as unnatural as it gets. But after slipping the link into the requested post, the rep decides this post isn’t suitable.
C’mon, now! I can’t do what you want and then have you back out. In the meantime, the link’s on my site while this person tries to figure out my crap. I don’t particularly like it. I haven’t been paid. I’m starting to realize while I let all those emails pile up to begin with. I’m wondering if this is just punishment for me agreeing to work with such shady people in the first place.
So it’s a bit my fault, sure, but i feel like the nature of the Internet means I deal with more flaky people and more fly-by-night companies than ever before, and I’m just kind of sick of it.
[edit]
As soon as I posted it, someone else followed up that they couldn’t pay for a sponsored post. Um, what? You already agreed that was fine?! Ugh.