We note that also, some of you may not have received your cheques yet, please read more if you have a pending cashout that has not reached you yet. Thanks.

When can I expect to receive my payment?

Why have I not received my payment?
If you have not received your payment, it can be due to either one of the following factors:

1. The payment was sent, however, was not delivered successfully to your address. Please let us know if your payment was scheduled to be arrived (according to the table above) but has not arrived.

2. Your payment has been processed & sent, and has yet to arrive. Please be patient, and consult the schedule above to gauge when your payment should arrive. If it is delayed (and beyond what is stated on the schedule), please contact us.

3. Your name & address details were incomplete/erroneous, and the cheque was not delivered successfully, and was returned to Advertlets. Or, the cheque has yet to be sent due to your full name not being filled in. Please make sure to whitelist the e-mail address “info@advertlets.com” in your e-mail application to make sure that the support team will be able to contact you regarding these matters.

4. Your payment has not been processed yet due to click fraud. If your cashout is marked “Unpaid/DENIED”, please cooperate with the Advertlets Support team to determine the legitimacy of your earnings, and whether an audit or ban is forthcoming. If you believe there may be sabotage, please provide details.

5. Your payment is not due to be processed yet. Our usual payment terms are 30-45 days from the end of the month which you cashed out.

What could be the reason for the delay?

Several factors that contributed to the regrettable delay were:

- An upgrade in the integration of our cheque processing system to our publisher database. This was a necessary upgrade due to an increase in the amount of people cashing out faster each month due to the lauch of the Advertlets Titan program that offers higher payout rates. Hence, this upgrade will enable more cheques to be processed simultaneously in future.

- An upgrade to our click quality auditing mechanisms. The new system is more accurate in auditing click quality, however, in its earlier stages, its processing efficiency was lower, hence the delay in verifying earnings. We have now rolled out a faster build, and you should not face such delays in future for all legitimate cashouts. However, those that engage in fraudulent activity are now even more likely to have their earnings invalidated.

What is not allowed? What is fradudulent activity?
The following can be determined as part of click/impression fraud, which is attempting and will invalidate your Advertlets account & earnings. This applies to all our ad formats.

- Auto refreshing your page excessively to generate more impressions
- Clicking on your own Advertlets Ad Units
- Obscuring the Advertlets Ad Unit through use of layers
- Animating/scrolling the Advertlets Ad Unit through the use of javascript/AJAX
- Hiding the “Ads by Advertlets” tab on your Advertlets Ad Unit
- Exhorting your site visitors to click on your own ads, through the use of pleading/misleading/manipulative text/images, whether on the blog itself or other mediums

Generally, if you’re concerned about what is prohibited, the general rule of thumb is just think about it this way: If you were an advertiser on Advertlets, would you be pleased if someone did that?

If you require further details/clarification on what defines fraudulent activity or regarding the status of your cashout, do contact Advertlets Support at info@advertlets.com or lodge a ticket at http://www.advertlets.com/support

IPSERVERONE – Web Hosting Discounts!
IPSERVERONE and Advertlets are happy to bring you discounted web hosting! Use the discount code “advertlets7″ for an RM30 discount per year on 100GB and 200GB both Linux & Windows Hosting.

PS: Linux hosting supports PHP5 and MySQL5…perfect for a new WordPress installation! So if you’re looking to shift your blog to your own domain, feel free to make use of this great offer. IPSERVERONE is the company that hosts Malaysia’s most popular tech forum Lowyat.net, so you can be assured of high bandwidth transfers.

CJ7 Contest – Movie Merchandise!
Stephen Chow is back this New Year! The star of Kung Fu Hustle, Shaolin Soccer and more brings you something entirely different – CJ7, the tale of a poor laborer and his son who find a strange new pet entering their lives.

Here’s your chance to win exclusive merchandise from the film CJ7 – we have 7 sets of CJ7 merchandise to give away, that includes: 1 Limited Edition CJ7 T-shirt (worth RM200 each), 1 Limited Edition CJ7 Tote Bag (worth RM120 each), and 1 Limited Edition CJ7 Notebook (worth RM80) each.

Hurry, contest closes 10th January 2008! All you have to do is write a blog post and answer the question: “What would you do if you discovered an alien in your back yard?”. Remember to link to Advertlets.com/CJ7Movie. That’s it, pretty easy to win eh? Contest valid for Malaysian and Singaporean Advertlets bloggers.

Advertlets+Faces E-Freebies December 2007 – Movie Merchandise, Fashion, Discounts and more!For December 2007, Advertlets + Faces presents E-Freebies yet again! (Yes, this is going to be on EVERY month from now on!). Here’s what’s up for grabs this month: (specially reserved for Advertlets bloggers)

- 2 x 50% vouchers of MyNavi that retails full price at RM1,948
- 1 x Nazleen Noor’s latest batik design material valued at RM680
- 1 x custom made carry-all leather bag by Iskandar Rahman
- 1 x 60 minute Raw Earth Spa Pedicure at Nail Art Artistry
- 1 x Limited Edition Enchanted accessories – worth RM800
- 1 x Limited Edition The Kingdom merchandise – worth RM300
- 1 x Limited Edition National Treasure merchandise worth 580

Just join either the Tech, Fashion or Entertainment Competitions at faces.com.my/contest/. Scroll down for details on the Advertlets exclusive contest. Contest open to Malaysian Advertlets bloggers only.

Oct Cheques All Sent!
All legit October 2007 cheques have been sent! You should receive it within a week or less (slightly longer for East Malaysia/Singapore). Future cashouts should not be delayed, and should reach you 30-45 days from the end of the month which you cashed out, as usual. Just a reminder: Please make sure that your details are filled up correctly (Full Name as per bank account, Mailing address), as sometimes we have to e-mail/call publishers to verify incomplete details, and this causes further delay.

Lastly, have a Merry Christmas and great holiday season! We at Advertlets wish you safe driving, happy partying, sumptuous eating, and happy blogging!

In Short: The Resolution
- September 2007 Cash outs will arrive to both Malaysian & Singaporean publishers within 1-2 weeks. Yes, we are aware that this is longer than usual, and we apologize. A detailed explanation is after the jump.

- Ad load time could be improved. A recent increase in the number of members and more visitors from countries other than Malaysia and Singapore has put a considerable strain on our servers. Although we are now already running on three dedicated servers, we will be upgrading our resources further to serve your better. An upgrade will be in effect within this week, with approximately 15-30 minutes of downtime required. This scheduled maintenance window will be announced shortly.

The Long Of It: The Issues & Reasons
When we first launched the Cost Per Click Ad system for Advertlets in 24th May 2007, we were excited at the fact that we would be able to serve 100% of all the blogs that have signed up with us and have installed our code. Which means that it would not be hundreds of blogs that get ads. It would be thousands. And it was a fair exchange, where relevant ads were served on all types of blogs, however, each blog would be given a chance to prove themself with the advertiser paying accordingly.

Unfortunately, some people spoil it for the rest. Recently we have had a few publishers in particular who have been attempting to profit from fraudulent activities – which is largely responsible for the delay in processing payments, but we are not making it an excuse. Usually, in the past, we would process the cash out requests as a group per month, and then send them out when all for the month have been verified.

However, we understand that our honest publishers are definitely going to be frustrated at the delay – which would justify a change in our process flow, so we’ve taken the decision to release the legitimate cheques this week, rather than take more time to process and clear the more doubtful cases. This change in policy will also apply to all future requests from now on. Hence, all valid earnings for September should reach publishers within the next 1-2 weeks from today. Please let us know if you face any delay receiving your payments.

We’ve spoke about this issue before, but it has come to our attention that there are new “tricks” being pulled in addition to click fraud, including hiding Advertlets ad units under graphic layers (effectively, hiding the ad) and impression fraud through use of proxies and botnets. We do not recommend trying these any under circumstance, and it most likely will result in an immediate ban. One more discouraging trend we’ve noticed recently: please refrain from scrolling Advertlets ad units using javascript animation, as obscuring the ad through movement does not justify the amount the advertiser is paying for a fixed spot. And of course, don’t ever put notices such as “please click on my ads!”. Its rather dissapointing to see cases like this happening, especially within the blogging community – sometimes even people that we have met in person. But we have to be fair for the good of all, and take action for the benefit of many.

Please take note of the following terms: Irregular clicks, which may be caused by accidental refresh requests, timeouts or server errors, non-excessive accidental clicks, and are usually “not your fault”. Impression fraud relates to using artificial methods to increase traffic. Click fraud is a proven case where we have established with great surely that someone is attempting to game the system. Naturally, we would need to assess the extent of which fraud has been commited, before deciding on further action, which requires human intervention – to audit if the amount is low or to ban if the amount is excessive. And in most cases, if your cash out function is disabled, it means that the system has automatically detected fraudulent activities.

As said before, its generally accepted that blogging is one of the most free, honest forms of expression available today. Apply the same philosophy to earning through your blog, and you can’t go wrong. We will continue to try our best, and listen to your feedback, and evolve as needed. Lastly, if you have any questions at all, do contact us, or if it ever goes unanswered, contact me personally. Thanks.

Other than that:
- Remember to put in your full name as well (same as your bank account), so that the cheque is made payable to the right party.
- Also, do remember to tag your individual blogs with relevant tags, under the “Blogs” section to enable us to match you with relevant ads for your blog quickly.

Contests & New Ads:
Results for the Faces+Advertlets E-Freebies and 30 Days Of Night Goodies will be announced within the next 3 days. And, new ads will be popping out this week (our graphics team is hard at work preparing the visuals for them), and two more exciting new campaigns are coming over the next two weeks! Hope you have a great week ahead!

Anyway, the purpose of this post is for us to ask you whether you’ve gotten your cheques. Upon request, this month we sent a few cheques by regular mail instead as certain bloggers were certain there would be no one at home to sign for registered mail. This little experiment will enable us to gauge the average time it takes for cheques to arrive to various locations including: Kuala Lumpur, Petaling Jaya, Sarawak, Sabah, Singapore, etc and also allows us the compare the speed of regular vs registered mail for those areas. On a side note, we were also thinking to compile a “hall of fame/Advertlets Cashout Club” style list where we link to all the blogs of the bloggers that have cashed out before. What do you think?

You don’t need to reveal where you stay (we have your address), but just tell us when you received your cheque (what time too even, if possible) so we can gauge the efficiency of the delivery. Do leave a comment on this post, or you can even write it on your blog and link to this post, and we’ll link it here too! Some of you might want to remain private too, but do drop us an e-mail if possible.

Thanks again for your responses on the this issue. We will continue to find the best way to serve you. All of you have contributed in some way to the growth of Advertlets, and be reassured that as we continue to grow, you will not be penalized with fees as our network grows bigger and bigger. The common sense thing is to do the opposite, and reward you!

We are confident that the size of the Advertlets network will continue to grow, as will sales of Advertlets ad inventory (which you provide, of course!). As the network grows bigger, economies of scale will kick in – and it will cost us less to operate as time goes by, and we will continue to pass our benefits and savings down to you.

PS: One very new benefit we’re offering for Advertlets Bloggers!…You you might want to check this out too (scroll down). More details soon!

For Malaysians, envelopes are sent via Poslaju (with a big Advertlets sticker on it), and to Singaporeans, via registered mail (look for a HSBC envelope).

Does Advertlets Charge Transaction Fees?
Of late, we have been asked whether it is our policy to charge anything or deduct anything in your payouts to cover our operational costs. The answer is no. Advertlets does not charge you for the cost it takes to send your earnings to you.

In case you’re curious, what does it cost to send out cheques to bloggers? Well, it depends on where you stay, of course:

Peninsula Malaysia: (RM0.50 Cheque + RM0.10 Envelope + RM5.20 Mailing Fee = Total RM6.80)
Sarawak: (RM0.50 Cheque + RM0.10 Envelope +RM7.51 Mailing Fee = Total RM8.11)
Sabah (RM0.50 Cheque + RM0.10 Envelope + RM8.09 Mailing Fee = Total RM8.69)
Singapore: (RM2.00 Commision + RM4.00 Mailing Fee =Total RM6.00)

Yes, its ironic that it costs less to send it to Singapore, although we’re sending it from Malaysia. For Singaporeans, we issue demand drafts (similiar to cheques), which are processed by our bank, HSBC. And for Malaysia, we handle it manually before sending it to the post office for processing. These charges do not include labour (of course, we hire fulltime staff and that’s part of their duties, sometimes I stuff envelopes too myself). It’s kind of fun Occasionally too, we also throw in Stickers and Badges for free – that costs us a bit more, but its worth it when we see it up on your blog together with your happy faces. Thanks so much for your kind support so far!

When we first decided on how we would send out cheques, we opted for a method that was surer, rather than cheaper. With your interests at heart, we decided that registered mail was the way to go. In the time to come, we will send out more and more cheques, and we have to find ways which are more cost and time-efficient. However, rest assured that your payouts will not be deducted to cover our costs.

Some of you have mentioned that you would actuallyprefer to have payments sent by regular mail because Poslaju/registered mail requires someone to sign for it, so if you’re not at home at the time the cheque is delivered, you would have to collect it from the post office. Sometimes the mail gets returned to us as well even, since it was not collected.

So, let’s conduct a vote: Registered , or regular mail?

- increased monthly total cash out amount
- an increase in monthly number of bloggers cashing out
- a new, more thorough system for click fraud auditing

In short, yes, most of you Malaysians should be receive your cheques before Hari Raya

Singapore Review Program
And for the Singaporean review program, there are still a couple more slots left, (including some of the high traffic/premium ones, eg, one more Hokkien review left), so hurry! Only 10 more days left.

Advertlets Badges/Stickers Posting Promo
We have received all your submissions, and the opportunity is now closed! We are currently compiling them and the review payment should be credited into your account over the weekend.

PS: Haven’t been blogging for a bit, there’s a lot more to announce including new advertisers, our network growth, and a few surprises. You’ll read all about it next week! The Advertlets Team will be at the Nurin Jazlin Tribute tonight, so do say hi if you’re there.Cheers!

We had problems deciding who would win, so we though, ah, screw it. We’ll just let all of you win! RM50 each for all of you! The money will be credited to your account before end of today, all at the same time! Thank you for the time, effort and creativity you put into your submissions!

Stupe – Money On Trees
Delephant – Cash Cow
Irene – Frozen Barley Advertlets
Jimmy – Advertlets Everywhere!
Yvonne Foong – Fund Raiser
Uncle Sha – Earrings
Drizad – Kids!
YongKaiLoon – Relaxed
Nafa SG – Laptop
ShoppingNSales – Real “Badge” On Site
Anna – Kaching!
Karimaka – Bunnies
Ben Moh – Angel & Devil
Budiey – Happy Face

Feeling left out? Want to join them? No worries, here’s a sponsored post opportunity for 100 bloggers200 bloggers (number extended due to ridiculously overwhelming demand – in Malaysia & Singapore). Its not much, but its our way of saying thanks for choosing Advertlets, and a great way for your to quickly boost your earnings with a simple post:

Details are as follows:

Budget: RM20 (Malaysians) / SGD10 (Singaporeans)

Language: English / Bahasa Malaysia / Mandarin / Singlish / Romanized Hokkien

Limits:Only one opportunity per blogger.

Requirements: To take part in this opportunity, you must not have had cashed out from Advertlets before. You must also be an active member (have had the code up for more than a month at least)

Closing Date: Blogvertorials must be submitted before 30th September 2007

Required: Post must incorporate picture above (advertlets-moneyhappy.jpg), as well as a link to http://www.advertlets.com on the image itself. You must also incorporate another link to www.advertlets.com using this text : “Advertlets.com – Blog Advertising in Asia!”.

Post Content: You are free to decide on the post title and what you’ll like to write for the rest of the post. Suggestions include: How you’re looking forward to cashing out from Advertlets, what you would do once you get your Advertlets cheque, let others know that they can take this posting opportunity too, and what else you hope to see from Advertlets in future besides your cheque Be creative, and be different.

Cheers! In the meantime, to those that have received your cheques, do keep in mind we’re also running a contest this month for you to blog about what you plan/will do with your Advertlets earnings.

What’s with the puppy? No, its just that Aprilcherrie is going to use her Advertlets earnings to buy a puppy. To those that have cashed out for this month, how are you going to use your cheque? We look forward to your posts…

Anyway, its strange that some of you have received your cheques and some have not. We sent it via Poslaju, so naturally it should have arrived already. We have been checking the delivery status…and most of them say “Station In” for most cheques, meaning that it has arrived at the post office already. If you do not receive your cheques within the next 1-2 days, rest assured we have done all we can on our side already. However, this is

1) Check to see if you have any delivery receipt from PosLaju (if you were not in when the check was couriered)
2) Check with your nearest PosLaju office for envelopes from Advertlets Sdn Bhd
3) Call me personally if nothing is forthcoming. (0123119141 – Josh [please, during reasonable hours!])

We look forward to you receiving your cheques! Trust me, we are as excited and anxious as you are for you to get your cheques soon!

Update: Yay! The following have received and banked in their cheques already -more soon…

11 Sep 2007:
Budiey, Smashpop, MalayOlga, Cheesie, AlamSiber, GoodEssays, Star, Ahpek, Stupe, AprilCherrie

Update: Cheques to Kelantan and East Malaysia are currently in transit, haven’t arrived yet at the post office. They should arrive soon!

1. Cheques have been sent for Malaysian publishers! This time there have been a lot more of you cashing out, so please be patient as we handle our initial growing pains.You will receive it within the next 1-3 days, confirmed. Unless PosLaju has a problem. Singaporeans will receive theirs before the 15th of September (hopefully before the 10th), apologies for that.

2. Netcity ads are now running on over 200 Penang blogs! We would like to thank them for also putting together a special deal for our members (50% off!). Netcity is the largest cybercafe chain in Penang! Now go play some DOTA, or CS, or whatever it is you kids do nowadays! I dare not even start online gaming, too addictive.

3. TechBeat ads are now running across the network and on selected tech blogs. Techbeat is a specialized, free job portal for those in the web programming and technical field.

4. We’re looking to add exactly 7 more people to our staff count for Advertlets and related companies within the group. Drop us a resume if you’re interested. A few new additions to the Advertlets family have happened recently too, and this will be announced soon.

5. We are now sponsoring Project Phunk, a philantrophic cause by Taylors College students. PHUNK stands for “Providing Hospis Understanding N Kare”. We are organizing a project to raise funds for Hospis Malaysia, a non-governmental organization which provides palliative care services. Palliative care is taking care of terminally ill patients in their last days.

6. On the Singapore side, we’re also promoting www.ilove.sg, an initiative in support of Singapore made films, music, arts & design.

7. Our little big project for our beloved Malaysia, MyFlag on Merdeka.com has attracted about 100 pictures submissions already. “Only 4900″ submissions to go now!

8. StarCeleb, one of our most prominent advertisers is having a photo competition, and they are running ads across the network to promote it as well. You can check out the StarCeleb, its happening this weekend (8th September) at Asian Heritage Row.

9. Drop Yvonne Foong some support with your well wishes. She is going through a tough time right now, imagine not being able to enjoy what you take for granted everyday. An excerpt: “When I eat ice-cream, I enjoy the cold, creamy texture, but not the sweetness.”

10. Kuching Bloggers. Please keep this date free: 15th September 2007. More details VERY soon!

11. These few days I’m very the busy (getting deals for you guys). But I will try my best to blog everyday!

12. Lastly, what do you like more, if you had to choose lah: T-Shirts or Keychains?

Update: The results are in…a lot of you prefer T-Shirts! So T-shirts it is! Yay! Now the next question: What other wearables could we offer? Advertlets Baby Ts, Advertlets Singlets, Advertlets Underwear, Advertlets Socks?. Would you pay extra to put your URL on wearables?