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Fraud Friday - The Chinese Are Into The Network Game

Posted by Ruck in October 16th 2009  

A new wave of fraud and paranoia are upon us. I caught a thread the other day talking about CpaShine.com spamming the Wickedfire forum for signups. In good fashion the thread was started by one of the morons from the company who was quickly banned. I quickly quipped that it was most likely a chinese network and Steve from Maxbounty (WTF Ruck links to a competitor? Steve’s awesome in my book). Anyway, Steve quickly posted the whois details on the domain:

Registrant:
ruizhi zhang
tangxia tanglong dong lu 57#
dongguan, guangdong 523710
China

Domain Name: CPASHINE.COM
Created on: 17-Jun-09
Expires on: 17-Jun-11
Last Updated on: 17-Jun-09

Administrative Contact:
zhang, ruizhi bigo808@hotmail.com
tangxia tanglong dong lu 57#
dongguan, guangdong 523710
China
08687986221 Fax –

Technical Contact:
zhang, ruizhi bigo808@hotmail.com
tangxia tanglong dong lu 57#
dongguan, guangdong 523710
China
08687986221 Fax –

Domain servers in listed order:
NS37.DOMAINCONTROL.COM
NS38.DOMAINCONTROL.COM

Well that’s just awesome. I already know of a few more out there but now this situation is going to spin virally out of control. If you have read this category of the blog then you understand the sophistication these people will go to fraud a network. However fraud ALWAYS evolves and this coming year it’s scary to think how many advertisers are going to get their asses handed to them. With DirectTrack ANY network can share and receive offers and cross promote them and a lot of these chinese networks have interpreters to help them negotiate with advertisers and other networks.

What I do know is to stay away from CpaShine like it was the plague.

3 Comments
under: Fraud Friday

Come Meet Us At Adtech NYC 2009

Posted by Ruck in October 12th 2009  

With less than a month away we are preparing for the largest Adtech tradeshow in America. Adtech New York will take place November 4-6th at the Javits Center. Fortunately for us, we are light years ahead of the speakers so we dont have to go and sit and listen to all the boring shit they have to say. We are however exhibiting and would like to invite you to meet up with us at Booth #2116.

If you need an incentive other than talking about how to make more money online, we in C2M style will of course be doing kegstands and whatever else unprofessional we can think of. We’ve got Samuel Adams on tap the first day of the exhibit show and Coffee to nurse those hangovers and get you going on Day #2.

If affiliate summit was any indication of how popular our booth was, I’m excited to see what the largest Adtech show has to offer. I guess the not so typical “men in suits” approach works pretty damn well. There are over 250 exhibiting companies this year and looks to be an awesome time.

Ruck doesnt make appointments or I at least try to keep from it. Typically, I like to walk publishers around and introduce them to contacts and companies I know of that I feel may help increase their business. If you were at the Adtech San Francisco show then you already know I typically dedicate most of my time at Adtech in gathering up sources of traffic for publishers. Hit us up at the booth to learn more. Hope to see ya there!

1 Comment
under: Events

The Dreaded Fraudulent Gift Cards

Posted by Ruck in October 9th 2009  

I’m 3 minutes away from a Saturday but it wouldnt be right without a typical fraud Friday post. This is starting to turn into a bit of work. So far I’ve been invited to two podcasts and 2 speaking sessions covering fraud in the affiliate industry. Who said running your mouth wasnt a good thing?

Affiliate Managers - reading the blog, pay real close attention because I’m only going to explain this once. As a manager it’s pretty damn easy to get that lead report from an advertiser who is claiming fraudulent credit cards and just terminate the affiliate so this educational post may or may not be of any use to you. However, should you read it and comprehend what I am going to say, you may be able to stop these types of publishers BEFORE too much damage is done and costing you a relationship with an advertiser.

Advertisers -  Some of you are experienced, some of you are not and some of you are aspiring to run your own offer. Pay attention because when you start messing with your filters on processing their are most likely going to be options for you to use to keep a lot of this out yourself.

Publishers - You might as well pay attention to. Publishers are likely to participate in a lot of internet marketing forums and I can tell you that methods of using “gift cards” have been talked about openly. If you feel like you are being a “rat”, I’ll give you a different perspective to think about. If you know someone is doing this and you dont report it, you are only costing other publishers a possible opportunity to promote the offer, a network’s relationship with an advertiser and quite possibly the advertiser not even utilizing the Pay Per Performance Industry in which…-> We ALL Lose.

Alright so think about this for a moment. Ever seen those $50 Visa Gift Cards at say Walmart? Say you have a publisher cloaking traffic as is the norm in this industry. Unfortunately for the network, it looks like standard encryption or cloaking and the publisher hiding their precious traffic source. Now say you have rebill offers at $3.95 or less. At an average of $3.95 or less and a $50 gift card, a publisher can run 12 leads a day.

Doesnt sound like much right? Let me show you the compounding mindset of a gift card frauder who really has their shit together. Most of you probably wont believe this but the example I am going to show you is a VERY conservative one. After you see the example, imagine a ring of about 50 publishers who are teaching this to outsourced help and compounding the problem.

Monday:

  • 1 Publisher
  • 5 - $50 gift Cards = 12 leads per gift card @ avg. $3.95 per trial offer.
  • 60 leads total today spread across 10 networks = 6 leads per network
  • AVG. pay (conservative) $30 payout on each trial offer
  • 60x$30 = $1800.00 - $250 for the gift cards - $100 miscellaneous hosting/traffic = $1,450
  • At the very least, this publisher is going to make a $1,000 dollar day.

Not a bad day’s work for a frauder right? Volume is low enough that the frauder probably hits each network on 1-3 offers meaning 1-2 possibly 3 leads at the very most per offer. You really think the advertiser is going to pick up that small amount of leads? 99.999% No. Most networks arent even going to pick that up and see that but that is what you as a manager have to train yourself to look for.

Now let me compound this over a month long period and show you REALLY what an organize frauder is capable of. Managers, you are probably going to drop a brick because they most likely make more in a month than you do in a year. Pretty scary huh.

  • Publisher has 30 networks
  • Publisher hits each network for 12 leads a month across 3-5 offers keeping conversions down.
  • Total = 360 leads @ avg of $30.00 per lead = $10,800.00
  • Each card holds 12 leads so = 30 cards x $50 = $1,500.00
  • Hosting, Garbage Traffic = $1,000 a month (With what I know this is very conservative).
  • so $10,800 - $1500 - $1,000 = $8,300 a month.

$8,300.00 a month people. It’s happening out there. Now the scary part is your organized frauder isnt going to have just one account. Oh no, they know there is going to be casualties of war so they are likely to have 3-5 accounts sitting on a network. So if your organized frauder is spreading across multiple offers, staying under the radar on just 3 accounts at the end of the month they could possibly be looking at = $24,900.00

Scary right? It can, it does and it is happening people. It’s so small you probably dont even see it and the advertiser damn sure are going to see it especially since organized frauders do their research and stick to offers that are likely getting volume. Another thing they will do is trace and offer and possibly hit across a few networks.

This is one organized publisher. Multiply that by 100 organized frauders and you can see what we are dealing with in this industry. If you have low volume publishers hitting you like this, I urge you to take a REALLY close look at them. Their names, their information, even call them. Before first payment, have them send you a copy of their license or passport.

But most importantly…

Learn to identify this early on so that you can communicate with the advertiser and have them take those leads away. Shady networks out there. (I dont want to get off on a rant). It pisses me off to see us have an offer that I know is on shit networks that allow these tactics. Most of the advertisers just dont know any better and as networks sometimes the offer is given out to another network that allows this crap. I’ve seen it time and time again. I’ve literally sat an explained it to advertisers time and time again. Whether you care or not, for those who take their businesses seriously in the pay per performance space, it’s in your best interest to start watching stats ALOT closer on low volume for rebill offers.

If you see a new publisher sending these warning flags, start investigating before it costs you a relationship.

15 Comments
under: Fraud Friday

FTC: $11,000 Fine For Bloggers Is False

Posted by Ruck in October 9th 2009  

The other day I saw over a dozen blogs reporting that the FTC would be fining a possible $11,000 per violation of their new endorsement and testimonial rules which was targeted towards bloggers. Some say affiliates as well, but yet again, that is matter of opinion which I doubt any marketer online has solid proof of.  When I saw these posts I cleaned up my google reader REALLY quick. Posts like that from a marketer may seem harmless, but to someone who has actually dealt with the FTC on certain issues found myself laughing when I read this at the sheer speculation set forth by marketers. I already knew there was more to the story than that and generally when the FTC publishes it’s used as a scare tactic with important information missing or being misread.

Anyway, to squash all this bullshit, here you go -> $11,000 Blogger Fine Not True

Thanks go to Linda from 5 Star Affiliate Blog because when she blogs she doesnt just put it out there without following through with the entire story. You can read her full post here.

4 Comments
under: Randomness

C2M Announces The Smoke Challenge

Posted by Ruck in October 7th 2009  

We are launching another contest today with the new Smoke Challenge. This contest runs from today (Oct.7th - Oct. 31st). Details of the contest can be found here. We are doing a 2 part contest on this one. This contest is for Smoke Assist and Smart Smoker. Here the prizes:

  1. Details - Any publisher who generates 100 leads to either offer or a combination of both offers will receive $250 Cash or a Visa Gift Card Equivalent.
  2. Grand Prizes - The top 3 revenue producing publishers will receive one of the following:
  • Breitling Super Avenger Aviation Chronograph Watch
  • Bose Lifestyle 48 Series DVD Home Entertainment System
  • Alienware Aurora ALX

Disclaimer: In order to qualify for one or any of the grand prizes the top publishers must producea minimum of 1,000 sales from either of the offers or a combination of them.

Be sure to read the offer descriptions on both of these offers. They have a strong brand and dont allow PPC traffic nor trademark/url bidding or PPV traffic. These campaigns accept Email, Social, SEO and Banner traffic. Fire up the media buys! These offers accept traffic from the US and Canada but do not allow traffic from Michigan and Utah.

Check out the contest details -> here.

1 Comment
under: Events
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