Sponsored Reviews Reject Me, But Why?

Dean Saliba 21 December 2011 243 Views

I don’t like it when companies kick their customers and clients to the kerb without any sort of warning. I dislike them even more if it is a company that I have been with for a number of years and who I have actually made money for.

I have been doing business with Sponsored Reviews since November 2007, in that time I have earnt myself a grand total of $1005.55 ($20.00 of that was from bringing in referrals), when you take into consideration that they increased their share percentage to 50% well over two years ago that means they have earnt over $1000 from me as well.

I did not complain when they silently increased their share of the money bloggers earn from 35% to 50%, I actually thought it was a good idea for two reasons:

1. It would force the crappy bloggers to leave Sponsored Reviews, this meant no more having to compete with spammy blogs who scare away the decent advertisers.

2. It gave me the encouragement I was lacking to increase my prices for this blog. For a few years I was only charging $5 a sponsored post, with the 50% share put in place I was forced to take the plunge a lot sooner.

This morning I was looking through the current sponsored post offerings and I noticed that none of them were available for this blog, when I checked my list of blogs that I applied to Sponsored Reviews with I noticed this blog was missing. I checked the “rejected blogs” list and there she was all on her own feeling cold, miserable and lonely.

I fired off a quick email to their support service (I use that term in the loosest possible way):

Hello.

My PR5 blog has suddenly been taken off my blog list and placed in the rejected blog list. I received no warning and reason about this.

Can you please explain to me why makemoneylessons.com was moved to the rejected blog list?

Thank you.

To their credit they replied within several hours with the following information:

Hello

The template of your site doesn’t meet our requirements. It doesn’t have a blog archive section, also all blog posts must be located on the homepage with links going to the advertisers site.

Regards,

Judy

I was slightly confused because if you check my navigation menu you will see I have an entire page for my archives, and it has been there since 2007. I was also confused as to why they would now insist on me displaying ALL my posts on the homepage.

Hello,

Thank you for your speedy reply. I have listed the reasons ‘Judy’ gave and I have given my answer after them.

“It doesn’t have a blog archive section.”

My blog DOES have an archive section, in fact it has an entire page just for the archive section – http://makemoneylessons.com/archives/ – it has been like that since 2007 and has NEVER been removed so I don’t know why you would claim I don’t have one.

“All blog posts must be located on the homepage with links going to the advertisers site.”

2. Are you insane? You expect me to show 447 (at the time of writing) posts on my blog home page? Do you have any idea how horrible that would make the blog look and how slow that would make the blog load?

I have been a member of your network since 2007 and I am deeply disappointed that I was not even given a warning that my blog would be taken down, let alone for VERY shaky reasons.

Please explain this because I don’t understand how you have come to the two explanations in your email.

Thank you,

A couple of hours later I received this reply:

Hi Laurence, (DON’T CALL ME LAURENCE! – Dean)

I apologize for not contacting you. I do see the archive section. We definitely do not require all posts to be on the homepage at the same time. We do require the post to be placed on the homepage for a minimum of 24 hours with at least one link to the advertisers site. Then it must be archived.

I have re- approved your site. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Thank you,

Judy

So I am going to ascertain by that reply that whoever rejected my blog did not look at my blog before rejecting this blog. I’m not sure why I was lectured either as I haven’t written a sponsored post on this blog since November 23rd.

Hi Judy,

Thank you for re-approving my blog.

I would like to know who rejected my blog because whoever it was is definitely not doing their job properly as it is painfully obvious they did not even scan my blog let alone look at it for any length of time.

I’m also not sure why you would feel the need to lecture me on the practice of leaving your sponsored posts on the homepage for 24 hour. I’m well aware of this and have always stuck with this ruling.

If this is the real reason why the blog was rejected then I would like to point out that I have not written a sponsored post for you with this blog since November 23rd 2011.

I thank you for putting my blog back and sorting the error out quickly.

Dean Saliba

I had obviously annoyed her because she replied within 30 minutes with this beauty of a reply:

Hi Dean

There is a QA process for all blog sites, they are continually monitored. There is a negative rating by an advertiser that stated links were not posted on the homepage, that is why the site was disapproved.

Once again I apologize and your site is currently available.

Thank you,

Judy

I had a quick check and found the rating she was talking about: