FURIOUS AT WEEBLY!

[davepilgrim]

I've used Weebly for years and have always been pleased with the results.

 

But right now I'm FURIOUS with them.

 

I'd been sitting on a site I built there for months, a simple but very striking banner advertising site which I was very pleased with. I'd not seen anything like it before. One or two of you might even have seen it here during the very short time it was up...

 

In essence, it showcased a single banner, on a rotator, and you could buy lifetime placement in the rotator for only $10

 

Purchase was via a simple, straightforward PayPal button, but obviously it would make it a lot easier to generate lots of banner views for customers if I had affiliates promoting the site.

 

I planned to use Payspree, but make no mention of an affiliate scheme on the site itself. All sales would be simply for banner advertising only, but the site would be listed in the Payspree directory from where it could be promoted for 50% instant commissions.

 

The only question was whether this was allowed under Weebly's T&Cs.

 

I asked them to clarify this via support, making it clear that the site was not set up yet as an affiliate site, just a straight payment service as I didn't want to breach their policy and risk my account.

 

Here's their reply...

 

"We do not allow MLM / Make Money style sites on our network. Because of this, your sites were shut down and the accounts disabled. Sorry this happened out of the blue.

>

> Thank you!

> Jeff G"

 

That's right - they've shut down ALL my existing Weebly sites and closed my account BECAUSE OF SOMETHING I WAS CONSIDERING!!!

 

Because of an idea I was floating by them for clarification!!!

 

Words fail me.

 

I'm off now to do some deep breathing and await further comment from Weebly...

[troysavary]

Wow, that totally sucks. Well, thanks for the warning about hosting with Weebly.

[davepilgrim]

After sending further clarification a week ago reiterating that UnmissableBannerAds was NOT even an affiliate site, and absolutely not an MLM... that my original support request had merely been to discuss POSSIBLE changes to the site with the Weebly team... and to ask them to reinstate my account and websites, Weebly have not even had the courtesy to reply.

[Garrett Hutsko]

WOW this stinks. I think if you had approached this in a different way you probably would be in good shape and happily making money. The concept you are suggesting sounds a lot like My Free Banner Bus

You might want to check this out since this process works well.

 

Garrett

[Bruno Duarte]

I had weebly once, but no longer using them either

[ckoch]

Well I've been online for 20 years and this is my first and final warning to you do NOT

use free sites if you plan on getting traffic to them in mass.  You may get away with

it for awhile but that will be the end of it once you start taking too much bandwidth

from their server they will shut you down ANYWAYS.

 

To be honest I'm amazed they are letting sites on traffic exchanges as that stresses

their server also.

 

Weebly puts up with a lot more then other free sites online.  You basically emailed

them to tell them  you were going to take advantage of their server traffic.  I know

you don't realize this but thats the case.

 

Don't email them again they will NEVER email you back once they decide you are

a risk to their business you are GONE forever.

 

Change your email and computer if you can if you want to use them for anything

ever but don't think you can run mass traffic on a free site.

 

I'm also into payspree and own multiple PAID sites and would love to make my

own system for payspree but I hesitate to because of bandwidth issues.

 

Look this is just a fact you may not be aware of and now you know.  These 

companies don't change their minds about stuff like this.  Payspree has a 

lot of spammers.   If anyone spammed that new site it could even be worse 

for you.  just sayin.

 

i don't mind payspree nonetheless and I think what you were trying to do is

awesome and a good program so start over.  Among the traffic exchanges

I've seen some VERY low cost hosting for business owners with unlimited

bandwidth.  I'd give one of those a try because they know what you are

doing and they for the most part are created for this purpose.

 

Or try the program warren "old buddy" is promoting for $10 a month 

I quit them because of the issues they had with paypal but they 

also know you are mass rotating a site and have no bandwidth issues.

 

Warren has a program set up to make money with that so you could end up free

in the end pretty easily.  I recommend that if you don't mind using other

payment processors.

 

anyways good luck.

[ckoch]

I wanted to add.. another way to recruit affiliates is to put the program behind a listbuilding

program (that way you can build a list and slow down the bandwidth to get affiliates -

screen your affiliates if you can)  i do this in my programs I promote on an affiliate

squeeze.  People need to join my list to sign up from that "Free site".  So technically

you could still use a free site for the affiliate sign up part.  Have had no bandwidth 

issues although this is a squeeze maker and not a free hosting site which I think

is better to try then weebly.  I suggest weebly on this site not a great move on my

part I will need to change that.

[ripburn]

Thanks for the information. I use Wordpress for my blog and I like them. 

[Ed Forshaw]

If anyone plans to make the jump to site ownership don't even consider free hosting.

Good web hosting plans can be had for less than $5 monthly and give you complete control over your sites and your content as long as it's legal.

Unlimited bandwidth,multiple websites, and multiple databases are common with these plans and they are perfect for anything but traffic exchanges and safelists which require unlimited mailing capabilities.

[rpsmith]

I haven't tried free hosting in quite a while. The last time I did, the main issue was that they had placed their ads on my site in such a way that any ads I would want to place made it seem cluttered. Weebly sounds alot like some paid hosting that I have had the misfortune of dealing with. Too much traffic and your site gets shut down. I'm sorry for your loss. I hope you get things worked out.

[Michael Harris]

Well I agree with everything that has been said especially about if you are planning on trying to make money online don't use free hosting sites. But free hosting sites work well for informational sites. I use weebly for one of my church sites. I had a bad run with my first wordpress site. I mistakenly used a word that they didn't agree on. not a sentence but one word and my site was shut down and lost forever. so after years of searching for the right type of hosting I wanted and my conclusion was to do it myself, and i did. I own my dedicated servers and host all my sites myself. At the present i am hosting 28 sites. And when I need a new domain, I purchase from myself. I also use cPanels to build my sites. I believe this is the best way. 

And my domains are lower cost than go daddy's especially after you get that 1st domain. the next will double or tripple your cost.

With a cPanel you are totally in control and if you are not comfortable using it, you can always find someone who can help. 

If you want to find out more go to http://mss-mac.com and check out what we do. Once there check out out traditional hosting plus our cpanel hosting. 

[affilliate3percent]

When you use ANY Free website you are at the mercy of the site, their policies, their moderator team's interpretation of those policies, and the real and fake reports of others. That and you look like an unprofessional failing marketer who can't afford a blog or website of their own. Self hosted, preferably WordPress Blogs are the best route to professional look and the independence to operate your site your way and protect your data.

 

Andy Zeus Anderson

[randomcash]

You can use free sites but only to build links. Don't count on them for long term projects...

[weblord]

they're using a different domain to host their images like parastorage which is blocked by most adblockers extension so you won't be able to display all images.

[QueenMaa]

I had blog/website with Weebly and they too shut it down. I am using a free site now but they give you an option to upgrade. I plan on upgrading as I like the features. I don't know how Weebly can do business because most people who are online are promoting affiliate programs or network marketing business of some sort. I know I will never use them again and I was planning on upgrading with them but I would of been furious had I been paying and they shut my site down. I also wrote a blog post about my experience with Weebly you can read it here: Weebly Not Good For Bloggers/Affiliate Marketers.

[weblord]

come to think of it, you should be better of if you have not asked in the first place, but you meant well, you can find a better web hosting company.