That's exactly it...
We can promote and build downlines until we're blue in the face, but there are never any guarantees that those downlines will be active (even if you're dealing with the referral exchanges).
When I first joined, I went gold (my first mistake). The original gold membership, for $18 (I think it was). Gold members were supposed to get a WEEKLY ad, worth 2 cents. I should have known they couldn't sustain giving away that kind of money. I sent in my weekly ads religiously.
Then at some point the gold member benefits changed. Your weekly ad would still go out, but ONLY if you sent it on Tuesdays, GMT (like I know when that is exactly), and it would be worth less. And that's if it even went out. First it would have to not bounce back to you, and you have to use the correct email addy, and even then I don't know how many times I submitted my ad and never had it go out.
Then I was a little agitated to go look at my account one day to find that the nearly 40 first level referrals I had was now 3. That is not a typo, I was left with three lonely referrals in my first level. I know the rest weren't deleted for inactivity either, simply because of the fact that this site NEVER deletes inactives. The clickthrough rate would be higher if they did.
And can someone please tell me what's going on with NeoEmail? I was under the impression that this was to be the sister site to TME, it looked promising (boy, have I learned alot about things looking promising!) so I joined when they were under 500 members and went gold, again. Not so long ago I got an email from them talking about staying active... How the ###### am I supposed to be active when ya'll never send paid emails? I don't get it. Yeah, I could go in and do PTCs, but guess what? I joined a Paid to READ program, not a PTC, and I don't have time to be doing PTCs every day to keep active. If I did, I'd be making more money in my programs. lol
I don't know, but I'm about ready to throw in the towel with TME. They were good, but the good old days are gone, at least for me.