Once again Nuffnang was the main topic among bloggers from Singapore and Malaysia, with 2 camps of bloggers at each other’s throat. Over at 1 end are Nuffnang’s supporters - those that had ads campaign send to their blogs and are earning money out of it. At the other end, we see the majority bloggers who have displayed Nuffnang’s ads but have not yet earn a single cent from it. Besides this 2 groups of bloggers, I had yet to see anyone who belong to the 2nd group speaking out loud for Nuffnang.
The hype created when Nuffnang first started blew out very fast. Many had in fact removed Nuffnang default ads unit and replaced them Advertlets ( another blog advertising company from Malaysia. ) Why did the tide went against Nuffnang?
Trouble started brewing when bloggers started complaining that ads was not being served even when they met the requirement of 20 unique visits per day. From there, many started to realize that it had been months and the ads were not coming in. No ads = no money and that was not what people signed up for. A few started to compare Nuffnang with Advertlets and that was when all hell broke loose.
Then came the final straw when Nuffnang started charging a transaction fee of $1 for cashing out without any announcements. No doubt Nuffnang did try to explain the situation but it just didn’t go down too well with the bloggers. By pushing back the implementation of the transaction fee to the 1st Nov and refunding those that were affected didn’t help the situation at all. The damages had been done.
I did not take the transaction issue very well at all. $1 was not a big deal as many bloggers stated in their blogs but the lack of communication between Nuffnang and the bloggers was. In fact that was how Odex became the No. 1 public enemy overnight. The lack of communication. If Nuffnang had come clean and announce the implementation of the transaction fee, this issue might not have being blown out of proportion in the first place.
The winds had brought this issue to TechCrunch and they wrote an entry on it. So right now it had gone world wide. Josh Lim from Advertlets had made a few sentiments regarding this issue but till now nothing had came out of Nuffnang. Were they looking at their options right now or just simply keeping mum at all this and wish everything would be well in the morning?
Paddy Tan from Bak2U wrote some interesting suggestions on his blog to get Nuffnang out of its predicament.
I like this point.
Lastly, identify who should be the PR guy from the company to handle all these feedbacks. It is not so simple to just reply and hope that everything will just rest down. It is really tricky as it is one person, one company against the entire internet ‘world’. They can swallow you up, wipe out everything that have been invested and built over the years. No one is perfect for this PR role, but take it as hitting the walls to learn something and then come back stronger. Learn to swim with the ’sharks’.
I submitted 3 request for an update of my blog url and it took Nuffnang quite awhile to get that done. How hard was it to update my url? Nuffnang had to take 3 request before such a simple thing could be done? This was my first experience with Nuffnang and it sure left an unpleasant after taste.
Will all this signify the fall of Nuffnang?
I had no idea but the situation did look quite bad. Unless something was done to savage the bad PR, you could see more bloggers pulling out.
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Is either slow or no response from Nuffnang.
I’m still waiting for my Ratatooeee movie tickets.
Nice post. Question now… what IF Nuffnang never even had the intention of addressing the issue at all?
Thank you for quoting me. I believe that the statement ‘when they met the requirement of 20 unique visits per day’ were used as a marketing statement that somehow went wrong which probably they didnt expect it too.
Hitting 20 unique visits is not that difficult, anyone with a Pagerank 1 can hit that very very quickly and that puts about almost everyone in that category too.
Paddy
BAK2u.com
This is not exactly the kind of limelight anyone would be interested to be in.
@Patrick Quek
Still waiting? Wasn’t that movie off the screens long time ago?
@ED
That was what I am thinking as well. Any company would do some damage control when they were under any kind of fire but Nuffnang seems to be kind of quiet.
@Paddy Tan
20 unique visits were not hard to achieve. It’s waiting for the advertising company to chose you that was difficult.
@DK
Bad advertising is still a kind of advertising. You don’t see Advertlets getting this kind of “free” publicity on TechCrunch with the title Advertlets on it. Nuffnang would be coming back stronger than before if they managed to clear up the mess. After all, look at widgetbucks now. Aren’t they getting better with more blogger signing up?
Yup, as I said it may be a miscalculation on their part and somehow now unable to fulfill that perceived value stick to the 20 unique visit. Now paying the price when bloggers turn the table around. And it made worse when no one step out to give a proper explanation that the bloggers like to hear.
I do hope that all these can be addressed properly on Nuffnang website so that it will show that they are looking to solve these hiccups and give them a chance to come back again.
Dont ever turn your partners (to me bloggers are not the customers, the customers are those companies that pay money to feed the banners) into ’sharks’ coming to bite you on the ass. This is the worse PR situation any big or small companies want.
Hi there,
As far as I concern, the most dangerous man in this world is Josh Lim. He wrote something to TechCrunch to provoke about the withdrawal fee.
Fee is needed when you did a cash out if you did not charge the bloggers you will end up as a losers as you can’t pay your publisher like what Josh did to most of the bloggers.