Life, the Universe and the Internet

Bizarrely I was turned down today for an affiliate account with Dixons for use on my digital entertainment site. The reason I found it bizarre is that I already have am affiliate partnership with Dixons for exactly the same site. Now it might sound strange that I would want two but the one I have is for the price finder facility on the site and the profit is shared with another company. So I wanted one of my own for other promotions.

I always find it strange that a company would turn down a website for affiliation unless that website is clearly offensive, illegal or represent a bad image in some way. How will that company know if the site is going to make them any more money if they don’t even give the site a chance.

I think I will email the affiliate company and see if they can tell me why I was rejected, just for my own curiosity if nothing else.

I’ve had a google adwords account for a while now and now and again I have run some PPC campaigns on various sites. About a month ago I decided to try and start using it again for some promotion. I had one particular valentine’s promotion I wanted to run and a few other general things as well. The problem was that there was no actual funds in my google adwords account.

No problem I thought I’ll just upload some money, it was a couple of weeks before valentines day so there as still plenty of time. Now I’m not sure if this is the same for all customers but for me, the only option I have for sending them money is to make a bank transfer, which they say can take 5 to 10 days to clear. So I duly uploaded the money directly from the bank account and waited, and waited.

Valentine’s day approached fast and no funds appeared. Valentine’s day passed and frustratingly no money appeared. Contacted google and they said they could see the funds but they hadn’t yet appeared. So I waited, time passed no funds appeared, I contacted Google again, they started investigation the missing funds and suggested I send another transfer while I wait for the investigation to finish.

Time passed, no funds appeared. So now here I am, two transfers to Google, me down in the bank account and no means to run any ppc campaigns to get some money back. As I’m sure you’ll understand I am pretty frustrated by the whole thing. The thing that annoys me though is not that the funds haven’t appeared, it’s the fact that a company as huge as Google with Adwords as it’s primary source of income by far has no other facilities for me to send them some money. Why can’t I just pay with a credit/debit card, or even send them a bloody cheque for Christ’s sake.

Actually I suspect that there are indeed other options for sending in money, but they’re just not available to small fry little spenders like me. So please, please Google, let me send you some money!!!