Top gossip and fashion blogs are members of the "Glam Network," a celebrity and fashion site that partners with blogs with the promise of advertising revenue from ad placement. The Glam Network is scamming fashion and gossip bloggers into giving them massive free advertising in exchange for a small link on the Glam website and the promise of ad revenue which never materializes.
The Glam Network lures bloggers with exclusivity and .50 cents a click. After applying to join, your blog might get approved about a month later and you're sent a lengthy contract that states that Glam will pay you .50 cents a click for third party ads, which they can swap out with ads for Glam.com at their discretion. This sounds like a decent deal and it seems better than the payout for AdSense or CrispAds.
Glam never explains the contract in simple terms, and there are no Terms of Service or FAQs for Glam Network bloggers on their website.
In order to finalize your membership you're required to place one Glam ad, either 160x600, 300x250, or 728x90 on your site, along with a small Glam membership logo and a 160x200 Glam "Module" which features content from Glam. Most sites choose the large 728x90 vertical banner, assuming they're getting .50 cents a click.
Here's the relevant part of the contract:
The thing is - Glam doesn't give any payout for its own ads, and third party ads are rarely, if ever, seen. It also doesn't offer any real time statistics or network blog control panel. Get this - you have to e-mail them to request statistics and then take their word on it.
It is incredibly rare to see a third party ad on a Glam Network blog, and the Standard Blog Contract states that Glam can swap out the ads with free Glam ads at their discretion.
Celebitchy was approved for the Glam Network and we signed the contract this week. We got suspicious after we realized that we wouldn't receive any paying ads for a while, and that there were no statistics available.
Our contact at Glam e-mailed us:
I answered:
When we checked, only one Glam network blog had an ad that wasn't for Glam.com. We e-mailed with a top gossip blog that gets a huge amount of traffic and they said that they've had Glam ads up since April and only saw a third party ad appear occasionally at the beginning of this month, June
No one has ever been paid by Glam that we could verify. That same top gossip site told us that they've never seen a dime from Glam despite having their ads up since April.
Two other gossip bloggers told us they assumed they would be receiving .50/click for the huge ads on their site from Glam, and did not realize that there was no payout for Glam.com ads.
Glam is a much worse deal than CrispAds or AdSense because you don't get paid for every click - you get paid when Glam decides to throw you a bone, but they haven't paid anyone yet!
Glam might continue to get away with this because bloggers are afraid of being sued. The contract that we signed states that we have to give Glam 90 days notice before removing their ads.
We suggest that everyone who thought they would be receiving .50 a click for Glam ads remove them immediately.
To be fair, they did withdraw our contract without penalty when we requested it a day after signing up.
Once Glam tries to sue us for reporting this, we'll let you know. We're not going to take this down if they threaten us.
Update: One blogger claims to have been paid "not much" in March, but another e-mailed us to ask if we'd been paid, and said "Have you gotten paid yet? Not just told how much you're getting paid, but have you actually gotten paid? I haven't and it's been over a month." We only had Glam ads up for a day, so they're never going to pay us.
Written by Celebitchy
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Top gossip and fashion blogs are members of the "Glam Network," a celebrity and fashion site that partners with blogs with the promise of advertising revenue from ad placement. The Glam Network is scamming fashion and gossip bloggers into giving them m... [Read More]
I've been paid, not much given my smaller traffic size but I did recieve a check in March.
Was it less than $10 and did they pay you in April or May? Also, did Glam send you over here to say that?
More than 10 and yes am here on my own accord, lol.
I also make $ from other advertisers on my site (I gave up on adsense a long time ago too) since Glam's ads aren't exclusive. Sorry you had a bad experience tho, good luck!
"To be fair, they did withdraw our contract without penalty when we requested it a day after signing up."
How can you write this whole thing when you were only with them for a day? Seems pretty pointless if you ask me. The contract says you get paid once a month and after your first month they have 30 days to send you payment. Since you aren't a part of the network (and I am) and you never really were (1 day doesn't count), I think you need to chill a bit. And no, glam didn't send me here like you asked the other commenter.
"This whole thing" is based on talking to several Glam bloggers who were totally misled into believing they were receiving .50 a click for Glam.com ads. In fact I signed up believing that I would be receiving .50 a click. Several other bloggers have contacted me since staying that Glam misled them, and is not clear about their business practices.
Glam doesn't work the same way as other ad networks, and they don't have basic measures in place needed to run their operation. They never should have started pulling in bloggers without real time statistics, clear outlines of their program requirements and payout on their website, and enough advertisers to run it. Instead, they focused on using bloggers to build up a huge ad network and are now making excuses to everyone.
When they do pay you - if they do - you have to take them at their word. All you have done is e-mail with them. Go ahead and trust them and continue to let your site be a huge billboard for Glam Ads.
(1) I was signed up quickly.
(2) Their policy on allowing companies to choose which sites to advertise on is fair and makes sense. Running Glam ads makes sense and so does not paying us.
(3) I was paid a few hundred dollars for February in March.
(4) I have not been paid for even March yet, though!
My comment was not posted yet, I assume it's moderated, so I don't quite remember what I said. But I just read the comment on that they have 30 days. That's the standard amount, like Adsense. Glam has 45 days to send payment.
(If that is SEND and not for us to receive, then I'm probably still about 10 days late in getting my 2nd check!)
Ella - the comments are not moderated at all. They used to be by defauly because the spam filter was set too high, but all you have to do is hit "reload" to see your comment. I wish that comments would appear right after you've made them without having to hit reload, but it's not working like that for some reason.
That is great that you got paid so much and are doing well with Glam, and I appreciate your honesty. Hopefully you'll get another decent-sized check soon.
Based on the fact that they don't have any guidelines on their site for bloggers, that they don't have available statistics or a user control panel, that they can remove paid ads and put up Glam ads at any time, and that they don't even send a standard follow up e-mail with the bullet points of their system, (e.g.
- .50 a click for 3rd party ads
- unpaid Glam Ads
- Glam will remove paid ads at any time)
I think it is unfair at best and deliberately vague and deceptive at worst. They can pay you whatever they feel like and there's no way you can verify if it's accurate. They can also remove paid ads from your site if you're getting too much traffic. No matter how "nice" they are or how quickly they respond to e-mail, they have a terrible system set up.
I've worked in the Internet industry for over 8 years and they've set up a network that doesn't have basic safeguards in place, and doesn't even partially adhere to industry standards.
People are getting defensive about it, saying I didn't give it a chance or whatever, but that's like saying I need to give Scientology a try before I criticize it. There are logical, obvious ways to evaluate things, and that's what I've done here. When most of the members I contacted didn't realize that they weren't getting paid for Glam.com ads, something is clearly wrong.
You're right.
I just received an e-mail back and Julieta told me that they are working on a new plan that will compensate bloggers for Glam’s own ads.
And they don't have a centralized way to communicate to bloggers - meaning that they can e-mail people separately and maintain different payout rates for Glam Ads without anyone being the wiser. How hard would it be for them to start a password-protected area of their website with Glam Network announcements and guidelines? They could use the same username and password for everyone and just e-mail it to them.
It works in their favor to e-mail people separately because they don't have to have consistent payout rates and they can make separate deals with people depending on their traffic and visibility.
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Kick their asses, celebitchy. People who rip off bloggers go straight to hell ;-)