Sometimes I scare myself...

[Crossbow]

It sounds like it's working. Either that, or even the heavy hitters are afraid that you'll unleash your normalcy-destroying powers in their direction...

Either way, glad it was a minimum of drama for you, at least.

[Seraph]

That's the thing though....they usually don't.

This is....way, way out of the ordinary for them. Backstabbing is the norm with this niche, to some extreme measures like you wouldn't believe. I mean, I've seen someone turn on her best friend of years and years....and steal $25,000 from her, and leave her bestie's business in ashes....just so that her site would prosper.

Usually its every person for themselves, although admittedly I've worked a bit lately at trying to foster more of an alliance between them. I hope that this is a sign it's working.

[barainga]

I think its awesome that those in your industry support each other like that.

[Seraph]

So.... Um. Yeah.

Client reversed a payment to me after I finished a template + banner. Well, he reversed the payment for the banner, and emailed me that he was in the process of reversing the other one too. I immediately responded that if he did, I would hold him in violation of his agreement, and the template would be removed from his site. He didn't reply, so I logged on to his website and saw him and his buddy laughing it up in the site's chatbox.

Well now, that was unacceptable, so I went and posted about it on a popular group for the industry....and whoa. Did not expect what happened next. IN the space of ten minutes:

- Several of the heavy hitters in the industry signed up to his site, hopped in the chatbox, and started leaning on him. ("Nice template. You bought that from Seraph, huh? Paid her? You weren't one of those ****s who would try to screw her over, right?")

- The advertiser network he was running offers from (aka, his income source) promptly disabled his account and left a note for when he logs in: "Pay Seraph."

- Alternative advertiser networks that he might have tried to go to, put him on the universal blacklist...with the note of "reversed payment to Seraph, needs to pay her back"

- Received a couple of "hey, want me to hack his site?" offers

- His hosting company let me know that they'd pull down whatever I needed, the second I directly filed a complaint, they were here for me.



....Wow.

I thanked them all, turned down the hacking offers, and explained I was exhausted from a rather bad day, and that I'd keep them updated.

A couple of hours later after i went to bed? His site is gone. Like, GONE. It's a blank page now, with just the words "Site is closed now, sorry for all of this."

Didn't expect THAT to happen, just figured that at best, one of his advertisers would drop him a note in my support. Did not expect the reaction that I got.