I was reading some posts on the Wicked Fire forum this morning and came across one where somebody was looking for advice on his new blog. So I went to check it out.
Great – another mongrel that thinks it’s acceptable to celebrate and encourage fraud.
One of his posts explained how affiliates could scam affiliate programs that pay for leads and accept incentivized traffic:
Step 1: Sign up for affiliate account with Copeac/Commission Junction/Performics etc.
Step 2: Find a pay-per-lead offer that doesn’t mind incentivized traffic and apply for it.
Step 3: Set up some sort of package that would be downloaded by many on a p2p network or a bittorrent. Could be porn, free hacked software, whatever you think will get a lot of people to sign up for it.
Step 3: Zip up your bundle and password protect it. Have a txt file in the bundle that explains that the password is the 5th word of the first paragraph after they fill out your lead form. Once they’ve filled out the lead form – you get paid for the lead – they get their porn/software/whatever and everyone is happy.
He attributes the great idea to fellow Wicked Fire member, SEOdave.
In case any aspiring dregs think this is some new, clever idea, it’s not. The affiliates at the bottom of the barrel have been engaging in this sort of thing for a long time.
I caught on to it over six years ago and chronicled it in ClickZ.
Same scam. Back then, it was some smart kid that was going to Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Well, not so smart, because I caught him. I went to the administration at his school with the evidence I’d compiled.
The long and short – he was ultimately suspended from college for a semester for his handy work. Mom and dad must have been so proud.
So where do we go from here? Perhaps this can be the catalyst for the affiliate networks to start working together for a universal affiliate blacklist.
In the meantime, affiliate managers ought to audit their affiliate programs and ban the bums (well, you should have been doing that already!).
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I thought the issues with switching to Wordpress caused an error and made an old post to appear new. I then realized that this is not the case
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What is sad and funny at the same time is the fact that this kid probably thought that he is a real bad-ass and one of the cool kids, leet and not one of those lamers.
It’s not even worth talking about, but see, I also “wasted” some time on it by writing this comment. Well, there will always be the inexperienced rookies who have not seen much of the stuff people come up with. It’s a reminded that makes sure that the old scam remains just that, an old scam that does not do you any good if you use it.
We have the same kind of issues here in the UK, however it’s mostly guys based in China that have mail addresses in the UK, USA and Canada that join leads based programs and then just fill in details from a phone book, using a free email account as the email address for clicking the double opted-in… These people regardless of where they are from are criminals and should be kicked from Networks and where possible the police should be contacted (however that parts not easy when they come from a country that is pretty much not interested if a foreign company gets fraud).
I doubt you will ever have a listed of dodge Affiliates all Networks can share, in the UK it would be illegal to hold such as list about individuals based in the UK and share it with others, however not illegal to do the same for a company or people outside of the European Union. Bizarrely the people committing crimes are better protected than the ones affected by it, nuts!
Jon, obviously your friend didn’t know what he was doing. Hopefully he learned a big lesson (costly too) and figured out how to do it right.
Incentives have been around for as long as sales people have been around. There will always be a way to scam but for the most part the incentives do what they are meant to do, bring in leads.
Think about the “let me clean your carpet FREE!” incentive. Those people will come in and clean your carpet. And then try to sell you the vacuum cleaner. They also will PAY you for leads to their friends. Can you scam these guys? Yes and they know it. They know that a certain percentage will not give a rip about the vacuum and just want the rug cleaned PLUS they will give the guy like 30 names that may have been pulled out of the phone book.
But they still get leads and they got the foot in the door.
All affiliates should know the power of incentives. GOOD affiliates should know how to use them properly. IE how NOT to lose your shirt and weed out the scammers.
Sorry, but…any merchant that runs with incentivized traffic pretty much opens the door to this kind of thing. I dunno. Why pay for leads with throwaway email accounts, false ids (with prepaid credit cards), throwaway free phone numbers and fake mailing addresses? I don’t get it, the leads aren’t interested in the offer (only in the incentive) and are near worthless to the merchant.
Merchants (and affiliate managers) need to do some homework and realize there is an entire sub-culture out there (that’s growing by leaps) that teaches how to make money off of ‘getting paid to try’ – revolves around taking the money (incentive) and running. Never mind all the China and India gangs that ummmm, live in the U.S. and therefore qualify for the incentive
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Total agreeance with Jon (bolding mine):
Incentivized traffic? Not the smartest move IMO.
Chris -
It was lucky for the company where I worked that I was around to keep them from throwing away a substantial amount of money.
I really do find it amazing that you think I’m the bad guy for catching a thief.
I’ve never been a fan of incentive traffic/leads. They are the worst type out there, and the levels of fraud that go unseen are just crazy.
To add a story..
A friend of mine invested over $3M in creating a physical product, I think it was a skin cream of some sort, was sold on the whole “free ipod” campaign with Gratis when they first started to launch the whole incentive craze online a few years ago. Well, at first the orders came in like a madhouse, and my friend was in the black in no time. Well, that all came to a very scary end just a few months later, because all of those incentive orders, well, not all, but I think it was 85% of them charged back and/or refunded. So instead of just losing nearly $3M in product investments, he ended up losing nearly $5M total from the cash they paid out to Gratis/networks for the CPA, not to mention chargeback and shipping fees were at higher levels than I’d ever heard of before. Because of this story, and because I actually know the guy, I will NEVER ever use incentive traffic for any sites as a form of generating leads or sales.
With that being said, while I don’t agree with what you did to that college kid Shawn, I’m not going to get mad at you for it, because I would do the same thing to spammers/scammers (and have done it) when they come to WickedFire trying to scam/spam stuff. So I’d be a hipocrite if I went down that road.
But I also agree with Shawn that this Blastyourass kid is one of the few members on WickedFire that are into shady things. He does not, by any means represent ALL of WickedFire. In fact, he represents maybe 1%, if even that much. The only reason he has not been banned yet is because he hasn’t broken any of our rules yet, but I know a few of the mods and members have been watching him closely waiting for him to screw up so they can catch him.
At WickedFire, we try to stay neutral with all levels of traffic, advice, monetization, etc. Even if it’s considered illegal or super black/gray hat. The point is because we want people to make decisions on their own, and if it’s the wrong one, we don’t take any responsibility for it. It’s their decision to do something shady and I think it’s the best way to make someone learn for themselves that greed can be a great thing if handled correctly, or it could be your biggest nightmare. By telling people “oh this is wrong, don’t do it” that only makes some of them even more curious, and the only way I know how to break that mold of someone like that is to learn by trial and error. So if this kid wants to go and do that content and password thing, and rip off networks, then he will learn the hard way that there is a reason why not many people do this or even get away with it.
To those bashing Shawn about this, he’s a good friend of mine, and while we sometimes disagree on things, that doesn’t make us enemies or hate one another. Shawn has been around for a lot longer than most of you put together, so the guy knows his shite, inside and out. And as the owner of WickedFire, and a personal friend of Shawn’s, I value his opinions, however different or crazy I may think they are.. plus he’s a Jersey boy and a fellow Yankees fan, so how can I ever dislike him??
Jon
Wow. Lucky you were around to prevent that guy from paying for his college tuition! Your mom and dad must be proud to have their very own narc!
Awesome dude. Self-righteousness rules!
Shawn,
What we are watching unfold are the companies ultimately paying out, owning the tools to pinpoint where the bad data or negative traffic originated. The old-fashioned, word-of-mouth “Don’t work with that affiliate, they are trouble” is as relevant today as the reputation discussed so much for Sending IPs and Practices. Only today there is plenty of data to backup hunches about worst practices and outright fraud.
Affiliate marketing could be the largest growth story in the history of marketing if we can just weed out the numskulls that keep so many large budget brands out of the space. We are asked everyday to recommend compliant marketers across the acquisition spectrum.
The good guys are in demand.
I can understand the issue with copyrighted material. But honestly, aren’t 90% of all email/zip submits misleading anyway? I mean cmon’ whats the big deal.
And get over the whole black hat thing ghoti. Blackhat isn’t necessarily malicious. Its (in a lot of cases) a legitimate way to generate traffic and links. When Google owns the US government I’ll have an issue with it. Until then who gives a f@*$
Yes, it is. If you have an “incentive” that makes sense for the offer, run it by the advertiser and get their blessing.
If you are hesitant to run it by them, I’d imagine you know good and well that it’s because they’d never say yes.
Is this really any different from the “free gifts” people have for you when you sign up or purchase something?
Andrew -
I wasn’t even touching on the rights to distribute content (that’s a whole other discussion) – I have a problem with using that content for the purpose of generating fake leads.
Filesharing represents a massive portion of internet traffic so I think its reasonable to consider taking advantage of it — but, its just stupid to use pirated copyrighted material and software. Besides going completely against any affiliate network and offer TOS you are probably engaging in criminal copyright infringement.
A legitimate idea is to use content that you own. If you have a web site about movies, create a pdf movie guide filled with links to your site. If you can produce your own software, distribute it through P2P networks with links leading back to your website for additional features.
Yeah, I know that there are a few great people there (who are active elsewhere as well)…not everyone at WF is into the shady stuff, but certainly quite a lot of them are. BYA may be getting blasted there for his writing skills and his bragging without proof, but not for his methods.
And then there’s the “ASE Contest #2: BH IBL’s” thing at WF. Does ASE really want to be mentioned in the same sentence as blackhat?
Yeah I should point out that this guy is a moron on the wicked fire boards. And if you read some of the threads he’s contributed to people are blasting him left and right for not only being belligerent and illiterate but also going about things totally wrong. I personally think there is a lot more value over at those forums then people give them credit for. But theres always going to be a couple of idiots in every large pack. Its just the way things are. You just need to know how to filter out the crap, and focus in on the good stuff.
I wouldn’t characterize everybody at WickedFire like that.
So are you ready for 250 guys like this attending Affiliate Summit thanks to the exhibit passes WickedFire is giving away?
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