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Originally Posted by SimpleDollarz
I heard she had some reversals, apparently this is her answer to it. Shut the site down, pay pennies on the dollar on the withdrawals, and run with the rest of the money.
common freaking sense tells you, if you have reversals, reverse the offers from the people who did them if that lie is even true, don't go screwing every member who withdrew money on your site. thats the most screwed up part about all of this.
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Yep. Totally agreed on all of the above.
You just don't say "OK, I'm closing, everyone come cash out ASAP and I'll pay out as quick as I can", and then turn around AFTER all the withdrawals come in and decide oh, I can't pay that.
To be honest, I don't know Kelly THAT well, but we have had some discussions in the past (ironically discussions which came about after the wrongdoing of others) that, as a result, are another reason this whole thing surprised and shocked me.
And, we live not only in the same part of the country but the same state, and where she lives is not all that unlike where I grew up until I left home for college. There's sort of a dynamic and understanding around folks in small/smaller towns in this part of the country - you're only as good as your word. She knows that as well as I do, whether she chooses to ignore that or not. That's another reason I'm hoping some of this might turn around and the right things be done.
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Originally Posted by simpledollarz
MissMoneyHunter, i have no clue who you are, but i am sure if you did what you did for other sites, on simpledollarz, I guarantee you'd be taken care of. I take care of the people who do the extra work to get refs and stuff on my site. I may only be one person but if I can make any type of difference in the gpt industry aside from what I have seen from others, I will be more than glad to do it.
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I'm nobody special. I had two paying jobs two years ago and lost one unexpectedly (economy, yada yada) back then, and not long after that was when I wound up on GPT/PTC/PTR sites to try and make ends meet (and find good deals on some stuff, which I have many times, so it's not like these advertisers are advertising for naught). That was working out nicely so I just started reporting how things were going and recommending to others, and in turn referring new folks. Which has helped me, AND helped them, and helped some owners... at least until people stop getting paid what they worked after totally in good faith believing what owners told them they'd get paid.
I'm just really (finally) fed up. I haven't gotten burned for hundreds of dollars like many have, most of my losses have been under ten bucks, but this is the third or fourth time - and then there's some questionable ones, like owners who closed without lowering cashouts to $5 or so when I was still over $10, but under $20 cashout minimum, and things like that.
Right now I kinda feel like just telling people "Don't join anywhere, don't bother wasting your time, you might not get paid", and taking my recommendation lists down. But I don't want to do that to the owners and sites I still can't help but feel are trustworthy. I'm going to have to think about it, but pretty soon my recommendation lists may be nothing but a handful of GPTs and PTCs and the old standbys (ClixSense/Matrix/WordLinx/etc).
And it's not just me and my referrals - in a lot of cases, I have signed up under one or another person intentionally, so those folks are getting gypped out of their referral earnings on me and mine too.
I don't know how many folks are signing up, and I haven't had time for a while to go around and look at my referrals everywhere, but I'm getting several hundred hits a month from one ad the last several months so I'm assuming I've had at least somewhat of an increase across the board at most of the places I have recommended. And I just don't know that I want to keep sending people to places that might up and pull this stuff at any moment. <--- (which, yes, is the kind of thing that winds up hurting ALL site owners as a whole)
It's not MY fault when an owner decides to cut and run or sort of, no. But I still feel like crud when I know I have sent people to that site who've probably lost something.
One thing I'm definitely going to change is giving sites that are teetering on the edge the benefit of the doubt anymore. Take Cartoon-Clicks, for example. John & Laurel almost destroyed that site & the others they dropped at the same time. It's now on a THIRD owner since they sold it, and every time new owners make all these promises and say they're in it for the long haul and yada yada, and I've kept sending people there through it all. Hopefully the current owner will do well by the site and its members and keep things going good, but in all honesty I should have pulled that site from referring people after the first sale rather than sending people there when it's been so on the edge.
Most of the ones I support now and send people to will probably stay on the list (GPT sites anyway, some of the PTC sites I joined this year may have to go, after I think about it a while). And Simple, I remember I was going to venture over to yours and just hadn't had time, you may be the only new site I add if I do. I'm too fed up to keep fooling with any other new (or new to me) site, which stinks because the newbies are the ones that need new members the worst.
When it comes down to it, for me, it's really not about me or my earnings at all. I'm just not going to keep sending people to places where their time could end up being wasted. And honestly I don't think most in my current recommendations are - GPT site wise anyway - but you never know, after all I wouldn't have expected this of Kelly either. But there are a few sites I don't have a payment history with and am not really acquainted with the owner (so again, they're no one that frequents GPTB), so I'm going to have to think long and hard about whether I'm not only going to continue to spend any more of my time at those places, but more importantly not sending other people to them to potentially wind up wasting their time in the end.
I have bitten my tongue time and time again over the past year and a half, and yeah, times are tough and things are tough all over, but one thing I'm sick to death of is the excuses and sob stories that come out when a PO decides to close all of a sudden.
When I say I've bitten my tongue, that's to say I haven't usually said things about the fact that I have not seen my regular paycheck since October 2008 - or what was both my regular paychecks since the fall of 2007 - and that while some months and some weeks are better than others, more often than not I'm trying to stretch out $10 for a whole week or more's worth of food or absolute necessities.
I'm very busy lately trying to do some things to make my situation go in the other direction from this lack of paycheck for a year, or else I probably would be doing more actively on the sites than I do, and the absolutely necessary expenses are somewhat miraculously getting covered (tho I'm 1-3 months behind on a lot of them and have been for ages), but what little "extra" I manage to bring in is what pays for things like groceries, gas, and necessities these days.
My every-other-month payment from Gomez PEER will usually buy me enough to eat one sandwich day (which I can get by on, shrug) for a week or two. $5 from here or there will usually keep gas in my car for most of the month. That $2.70 could have almost covered three packs of 88-cent toilet tissue from Kroger, but that's OK.
I don't now stop biting my tongue and say all that for sympathy. I bring that up to point out why when the excuses start coming out in this community, I HAVE to bite my tongue. Honestly, if you're not trying to eat on a buck a day or feed your household for ten bucks a week, you're doing better than me most of the time.
Point being - *I* didn't put up a site and try to get members to come work it so I could make income, and members flocked to those sites and spent their time and effort on good faith that they'd get paid.
I'm tired of hearing how this or that happens and everybody should just understand. Site members shouldn't HAVE to keep standing for all this stuff and putting up with it time and again. If you're going to start a business that's paying people money, then grow up and ACT like a business person and have a contingency plan in place to get those people paid if you can't pay them or you want to close, or just don't bother starting a site at all.
Most importantly, though - and the more major point - don't TELL people you're going to pay them and then change your mind when everyone's ready to get paid. That's the worst thing about this whole mess.
Honestly, I look at every place on my list that owes me money now knowing that there's a good chance that I'll never see a lot of those earnings due to potential situations similar to this and eh, oh well.
But number one, it's a shame anyone would even feel that way - and incidents like this are the 100% direct cause of that. And #2, none of those other sites said "hey come get paid" and then changed their mind a couple days later (yet).
It's one thing to know your earnings may never come to you, but it's a whole other kettle of fish for someone to say "come get paid, I'll pay you around X date" and then suddenly say "Oh, sorry, I can't pay you". At that point, when I'm told payouts will be (X), I've already made plans for that money. And if you suddenly decide you can't pay it a day or two later, there are just not a whole lot of excuses that I can't top when I'm eating on a $1 a day and trying to make $5 or $10 stretch out to a week's worth of groceries. Sorry, I got no sympathy left in that regard.
And I don't really wanna hear about illness or health issues either. I have spared you all the story of what I deal with with that type thing (biting my tongue for months now) too, I've just chosen to bite my tongue when everyone else goes for that kind of thing as a reason they shouldn't have to pay members or that they have to close/sell their site immediately.
If you run a business where members, i.e., workers, are paid money, then you should have a contingency plan, and if the chips are down and you can't pay people, then the right thing to do is get a loan by however means possible and get people paid and close up shop.
And if you don't have a contingency plan, then you're a hobbyist, not a business owner, and shouldn't be running a site as a business where people are owed earnings.
Sorry. I'm going to stop now, but I'm just seriously fed up this time, and really I'd bitten my tongue long enough about my personal issues vs. some of these owner's personal issues, I'm fed up enough now I didn't feel like biting my tongue anymore. It might be a case of "my stuff is worse than your stuff", but still, I'm not the one going around opening sites asking members to join and earn money for me.
And those I've sent to some sites basically telling people they're good sites and they'll get paid (or PROBABLY get paid) - I'm just going to have to rethink all that and probably get a lot more pickier and choosier about who I'm sending people to.
Bah.
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