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The Blog Bermuda Triangle-The MODE Media Trainwreck

mode-media

In the last couple of posts, I’ve detailed this 3-part perfect storm of my blog. It has been quite a ride, but with fantastic support from WP Site Care, I am thrilled with the results. From ditching Bluehost and changing my theme, we are now brought to this tale of deceit and scandal. Treachery. Utter abolishment of trust. I’m talking about the MODE Media trainwreck.

The Beginning

When this blog first started, I was looking to do 2 things. 1) Let my momma know I was alive. 2) ramble about my daily attempts at running, cooking, and recipe-creating. In the middle of this, I had a new camera and I was going to learn how to use it.  I  learned some cool photography tricks, I was invited by FoodBuzz to create content and run some ads. Ads make money. Hobby blogging making money sounded like a great deal.

Bumpy Roads Ahead

Then, Lejit bought out FoodBuzz. I did my research and didn’t love the reports from clients of Lejit, so I did more research and found Glam Media and I liked what I read. With passing the requirements and signing all the tax forms I had a few very happy years at Glam with ads and creating content. Things started going downhill when Glam was bought out by MODE. We didn’t see a lot of changes at first. By “we”, I mean the support group at FitFluential. Then we noticed missing or late payments. BIG RED FLAGS.

Dangerous Rock Slides

After a few months of this, I started looking elsewhere. Right before my year of phoning in my blog because I struggling HARD with life after miscarriage, I found AdThrive. I loved their mobile theme, I liked the initial reports. I just needed to get a few more page views a month to qualify. Fair enough. But then life happens and disaster struck and my blog took a serious downturn. The only thing keeping it going was a couple of viral BuzzFeed posts and holiday recipe posts. I finally started pulling out from that dark hole in June. With deplorable shrinking in pageviews, I knew AdThrive would not take me on, so I started paying attention in food blogger groups, FitFluential, running groups, etc. Mediavine kept coming up with very positive reviews. I kept that name close in mind.

Over the Cliff

A few days after Bluehost tried to shank me, this came over my twitter.

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There it is. The end of MODE Media and I found out through TWITTER. No email. No heads up from reps. Nothing. As soon as that came across Twitter, I immediately logged into my dashboard to get a copy of my earnings. It doesn’t matter because I’ll never see a penny of the money they owe me for freelance work I did for them. Many people are out THOUSANDS of dollars. People who blog for a living are now scrambling to find income. MODE has a 120-day payout. That means Mode paid us 3 months AFTER we do the work. MODE Media shut down and we found out over social media. That is insane.

Safe Landings

I was off on the hunt for a new ad network, and right in the middle of a host change AND theme change. I’m now working with Mediavine. The support team showed a lot of patience to work with me while I got the other 2 parts of this change nailed down. And they were AMAZING! I had the option to move right into AdThrive because they lowered the pageview requirements due to the MODE scandal. I want to say it was a hard choice, but it really wasn’t. Mediavine got my business because they didn’t join the fray to pitch and promise the moon to vulnerable bloggers looking for a new home. They stood by their reputation and left their quality requirements right where they have always been.

(eta…I definitely made the right choice.  Another company just bought out AdThrive. I’m not going through this again.)

It took a week or so to get my site ad-ready so as not to be too obtrusive with video auto-plays and meet the new Google requirements coming in January. Everybody agrees that we all want Google to be happy with our sites. With Mediavine, I’m already there. Their support is better than any other ad network I’ve used. I have a small ad on my recipe cards so that the Pinterest “look, print, and leave” people can still print easily but I also earn revenue for that recipe that I created. My revenue is slowly building, but I’ve already made more in 1 week of Mediavine than I did in a month of Mode ads. And they are VERY transparent about sticking to what works- Keeping it real. Keeping it genuine. For bloggers, by bloggers.

Now, here I am. Finally got my branding logo and most of my blog design set.  WP Site Care monitors my site and I’m under subscription to have them do all the worrying for me. And I’m finally making some money on my recipe cards. That means, although I’m temporarily living in an RV, my cooking game is back on point.

That all sounds great, but what I am really taking away from all the trouble is this: I love blogging, and I missed it tremendously when I was dealing with some really hard life issues like depression and weight gain. I didn’t feel like I could freely type what was on my mind because my mind was NOT in a good place. I didn’t feel like cooking or eating anything healthy. It’s been a rough year but having my site on a shut—down alert put a fire in my feet and I realized how much I take my little patch of blogging real estate for granted. I am very excited about the future with the upcoming fall and holiday posts, the training for races, the continued weight loss and health gains. Thanks to those who have stuck with me through all this!

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