How i got screwed by lightspeed - my first drama story with a sponsor.
 

Damn, that out of all sponsors, the first one who fucked me over is Lightspeed.

Ive been hanging out with Steve and Tanker just 3 weeks ago. I hope they will understand why i post this.

Business is business and friendship is not business.

I have given them the time to solve this problem before taking it to the boards (which i only do when nothing else works anymore)
I know i will lose my credibility with them by posting this, too bad. They lost mine.

Ok, i try to keep it as short as possible:

I never promoted LS alot but had a few links up on a few old sites for quite some time sending a few hits a day.
last month (maybe 2 months now) i noticed those hits that slipped through made a few sales with decent ratios so i deceided to slowly push some traffic to LS again.

I build some galleries and started promoting LS18 and Jordan.
I copied and pasted the linking codes that were shown in my admin area of lscash, like i always do.
Submitted a bunch of galleries, i think i made 8-10 galleries total in a period of about 2 weeks.

So after a few days the tgps started listing me and traffic got sent to ls18 and Jordan.
Hits were tracked and i made a bunch of sales, nothing major but enough to buy a few big macs every week.

Now with smaller programs im not exactly a stats freak so after a while i noticed i didnt get sales anymore so i forgot about the tgp and started promoting other stuff again.

My last effort was putting a ls gallery on a paid tgp spot a few weeks ago.

So yesterday i checked my stats again, for the first time in weeks, and fuck me, that gallery on that paid spot didnt sent 1 hit.

So after giving the stats a closer look i now noticed why i had no sales for the last weeks. None of the hits i sent were tracked. So i was really confused what happened but i found it out quickly. ALL my links from the tgp pages i made over the weeks went to a 404 page. Checking my stats again learned me that after aug 15th my links stopped working.

Ok, Rochard was online so i pointed this out to him. Lane, their programmer contacted me and couldnt see what happened. He did see i was using non working links and asked me where i got them. Now im not the person that pulls links out of his ass so i told him i got them from the admin area, ofcourse. Nothing he could do about. Ok, back to Rochard. To put it simple, he said you use non working links so no soup for you. I ask him to check my stats and explain why all those galleries sent hits and signups before and went to a 404 after aug 15th. He didnt know and he doesnt care. Its an error on my side.

Even my friggin 404 page ( www.teenportals.com ) now goes to their 404, talking about targeted traffic. (edit: Lane made a redirection script so now the links go to the right site)

An error in your html link can happen. But i made several galleries, on several days, promoting several sites and every time i copied and pasted the links from the admin area in my galleries and my 404 page. This isnt a stand alone thing, were talking about a 2 week period here.

Anyway, the LS crew is not willing to work something out with me. They dont think its their problem but mine.

Ok we're talking about pocket change here, 300/400$ including rebills max, i dont care about that. I care about trusting a sponsor, getting support, time and effort in making a sponsor and myself money and not being dumped like that because they cant find THEIR error.

Now if you post a comment about this first pull your head out of your ass. We all know LS, we know they are great guys and throw great parties. Please dont mix business with pleasure in your reply. Read this and think with a clear head. I know its really easy to say fuck you, LS is the best. If you do feel like that then bash me, if you are smart you will give an honest reply.

Wooooo! Drama!

www.teenportals.com that works for me

So are you saying your links somehow became invalid? Or your links (from the admin section) were never right to begin with?

Sorry to hear this man. I know how disappointing it can be to work on a TGP project and see little-to-no results. Hope this can get resolved.

First person to post anything about sig space and/or popcorn
gets a free shoe in the ass. :)

In short, link codes that used to work stopped tracking?

I believe Lane made a redirecting script for me last night so my old links now work again. (Im not sure if they get tracked, didnt check my stats)

It's about time.... This sure is a nice change from all the ass kissing that goes on with them.... :thumbsup

:1orglaugh

But in their defense... all my links work...

they should at least try to find out what the problem was and apologize

bastards.

My links stopped working suddenly. Aug 14th and before that they worked, aug 15h they stopped working.

I dont know if the links the admin area showed me were wrong. All i didnt was copy and paste what was provided to me. And which worked for a couple of weeks.

Correct.

Really? :Graucho


See sig baby!

Yes but according to them they cant find anything, end of story. Money and time and effort doesnt seem to matter.

Lets not call em bastards.

Bastards.

As far as I can tell then on that teen domain you're linking to ls18 from you're using this linkcode:

http://stats.lightspeedcash.com/link.php?s=LSE&r=bat

I don't think that is the correct link code... I seem to remember the syntax being:

http://www.lightspeedcash.com/link.php?s=LSE&r=bat

ie. no "stats." rather "www."

Are you 100% sure you're using the right link codes?

I'm not using LS myself but have spoken to them on numerous occasions; they seem to run a dedicated and fair show over there so I really can't imagine they're out to screw you. Particularly not for that kind of money :)

To be clear:
on the 15th, did your ref links suddenly start going 404, or did they get to the tour but simply not track?

Just want to know what level of check-up is required to be sure everything is ok...

Well, was this a single occurance or were others affected by non-working links as well?

Example working link:
http://www.lightspeedcash.com/link.php?s=DA&r=slyrj

Ofcourse after checking everything yesterday i did notice my links were different than the links everybody else used.
I never paid attention to this because:

1 they were working and generating sales, proof is in my stats area
2 I copied and pasted them directly from the admin area so there was no reason for me to think those links werent correct.

Nice business attitude.

If you still have the original pages on your pc, check out if the link codes on those are different from the ones on the pages on your server. Someone may have hacked into your server...

The fact that nobody else seems to have had this problem means it's rather unlikely that their system is to blame...

404

Just checked that..
The pages on my pc have the same codes as the pages on my server.

Well, at least that is an easier error to detect...:(

Could you post the links you have on your pages vs the "right" links? That might provide a clue...

That does sound odd.

I liked the 'i dont pull links out of my ass' part. Thats the funniest shit I heard all week.

I dont know what can be made of this. Has this sort of thing happened to others? Any1 know? If its an isolated incident, I'd like to hear how such a thing like that could happen.

I already feel bad for posting this but hey, im a honest guy and i want to be treated in a honest way. Even if its about 5 dollars.

I want this solved since im 99% sure this isnt a mistake on my side.
I checked every possibility on what i couldve done wrong. I cant think of anything.

My non working link:
http://stats.lightspeedcash.com/link.php?s=LSE&r=bat

The link how it can be found in my admin area now:
http://www.lightspeedcash.com/link.php?s=LSE&r=bat

In your stats check the referal link that you were making sales off of and compare those linking codes to the ones you say are bad.

Yeah well, I'm not defending them... Matter of fact I think that any time an affiliate can be identified in an incoming link, the sponsor should give credit to that affiliate regardless of an errornous link syntax.

But I still have a hard time believing them dissing you like they did. Sounds like something CCBill support would do...

Did you test the link before using it? Always a good idea to test the links before using them... afterall.. sponsors are only human and prone to mistakes...

If the link worked from the admin pannel and not on your page then it is your error....

If it didn't work from the admin area and you still used it.. then it's still your fault...

Sorry... but face it.. it's your problem not theirs... you should have double checked and not have assumed that everything was ok.

Then it could be that they decided that the "stats." linkcode should no longer be supported... sounds weird they didn't notify you, though...

Nothing you just said compared at all to his explanation of the situation. You might want to read the thread again.

i did the same shit with triplexcash when they 1st launched, i put my triplexcash user is instead of my ccbill id in the link.... wound up takin that one but shit happens.

i havent logged into my LS admin in quite some time... have they recently changed their linking system or something?

This gallery for instance sent 79 hits between aug 1 and 15
http://teenportals.com/tgp/teen/jordan/jordan1.html

This gallery sent 94 hits between those dates
http://teenportals.com/tgp/teen/jord...rdannude1.html

In total between aug 1 and 15th i sent 700 raw hits those jordan pages with those according to them, non working links.

http://teenportals.com/tgp/teen/light2/
This gallery sent 56 hits on july 21

These are just random galleries...

I think roughly before they stopped working, those galleries sent about 2000 tracked hits with a few sales.

The links in those galleries works for me

Perhaps you mistake Ass Kissing, for satisfied customers.We never ever had any problems with them, on time everytime.Always treated with respect!:2 cents:

Yes, as i posted above, lane made a redirection thingy so since today my non working links get redirected to the right sites. Which is nice...but 5 weeks too late.

Knowing the guys i was amazed by Rochards answer.

I can post some icq logs but feel that should stay private...unless its really necessary...we'll see.