SuiteJ

Two days ago, my wife was hangin' out on Craigslist, trying to find new stools for our kitchen. She happened to come across a set of really badass looking stools that were...FREE!

When she told me about them, I glanced at the ad's photo on her Macbook as I was passing through the living room on the way back down to my office. I had just made coffee and had "backlinking strategies" on my mind so I didn't really pay too much attention.

I do remember saying something like "damn, those are free?? Awesome. Get 'em girl!"

Tonight, I was standing in the kitchen (waiting for coffee to brew), and the stools reminded me of the Craigslist ad from a couple days ago.

So, I said "I assume you weren't lucky enough to get those free stools on Craigslist"?

She said "No, but she did write me back right away and gave me a link to a cool site"

Red flag raises along with my eyebrow

I said "Huh? A link? Whattya mean?"

She said "The lady was super nice and sent me a link to show me where she got them. She actually got them for free herself from a company that gives away free product samples".

I said "kitchen stools?"

She said "uh huh", and could tell by the look in my face that I was skeptical and wanted to see the email.

She said "I'll show you the email"

...it was something along these lines:

The link was cloaked with TinyURL. lol

So, I looked it up and sure enough, it's a CPA offer that has a payout of $0.75.

Have you guys heard of (or *gasp* use) that tactic?

Cheers
Jay

WD Mino

Hi J,

Man alive what a crock and I noticed no mention of the link being an affiliate link at all so right there it is shady. geesh craigslist spammers what a deal did your wife actually sign up?

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Taylor French

Yeah, I've seen all kinds of crazy things like this for CPA. I think it's really rude, but I guess it makes them decent money. I could never bring myself to do something like that.

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Michael Nguyen

Pretty normal mate.
You should see the dating sections on CL. There always seems to be a hot girl on there looking for a date. Come on now, no hot girl lives on CL.
Reply to it an they'll send you a cpa dating offer.

SuiteJ

Yeah, my wife sees the good in everyone, and uses Craigslist all the time for buying stuff for our daughter, etc.

She did sign up thinking she was recommended by a genuine, good-hearted soul who felt bad that she didn't have the stools for her. lol

Even though I make a living online, she has no interest in the "mechanics". lol. But, I warn her of things like this when they come up (obviously). No harm done or anything, but it's annoying that you'd waste people's time with that ad (being that there never was stools).

Ya, me either. There's enough ways to make money online without being a douchebag. lol

RGallowitz

Yup that's an old tactic and it's still widely used on Craigslist.

Buildingfutures

Craigslist spammers get my goat all the time. You should have seen an email of mine from a few years ago, I responded to a few ads on craigslist and was spammed to hell and back until I finally said it wasn't worth it to log into that email anymore.

I did recently and found that there were 5600 unread emails.

It kinda made me laugh, and at the same time wonder how many times that email was sold and resold and resold to someone else.

Boggles my mind.

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SuiteJ

Ya, that's annoying. We actually had a good laugh about it, as she was kicking herself for not realizing it after I showed her what was going on.

I'm not surprised or anything, but I don't really spend any time on CL, so I was just wondering if it's a typical method used for CPA on CL.

Thanks for the replies. Now I can show my wife this thread in the morning and she can kick me in the nuts for posting it. lol

Cheers
Jay

WD Mino

Lol better put your jock on first

Have a great one.
-WD

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tmedocianis

Sorry to hurt you feelings, but believe it on not, there actually are companies that give free stuff away on CL. They use it to grow there customer base and it's great demographics. Usually what they give away is valued at less than $100. But, they do give it away and it IS FREE!


Not true! My friend dates there and if you saw her, your d--- would jump out of your pants. She's smokin, but she's extremely disfunctional. But on CL, you not looking for functional, just fun. And just to boot, she has a six figure job with the Gov't. Cute as a button though. Oh, and so are her friends. They tend to talk about their CL Dating experiences and I heard one of them say one day that "CL came through for her last night," then they all laughed. Hmmm.

CL Dating is probably about 50-50 you'll get average, 20-80 you'll get cute and 5-95 you'll get smokin. But smoking is usually just passing through the city. My experience is that the hot ones are sales women from out of state and they're just looking for fun before they get shipped to the next place. Think about it, usually companies send out their most presentable people to push sales. For women, that means attractive. Don't blast CL dating cuz hot chicks are there. I should know. Also, don't forget about all the temp location positions like airlines. Those gurlz are empowered and ready to rumble. :-)

sbucciarel

Jay ... I've never used that one, but when I used to post in Rich Jerk's forum and bought some of his stuff, he sold that technique exactly, only he used this example:

Post a free puppy in Pets ... even put a photo of a gorgeous puppy. Set up an autoresponder to say that you are on vacation and will reply as soon as you return, but in the meantime, if you are serious about the puppy, check out this ebook on housetraining a new puppy (an affiliate offer obviously). It worked very well for those who used it early, until everybody and their mothers were advertising free puppies on Craigslist.

No ... this isn't a tactic I would use. This is precisely the reason that Craigslist is a bunch of junk for people who are really looking for stuff.

areevez

funny story, but yea CL is notorious for this stuff

LilBlackDress

Another variation on this is unscrupulous marketeers asking for writers on CL. The ad states they need reviews written. They ask potential writers to send an actual sample where the writer must join a free dating site in order to review it. The writer joins the site and the marketeer gets a fee from the dating site.
In addition the marketeer may use the review on their own site without paying the writer.
Very sad.

SuiteJ

1. I never said that there aren't any companies that give away free stuff on CL. I said that in this particular case, it was an individual using a fake ad for the purpose of getting a $0.75 CPA commission.

2. Don't apologize. That didn't "hurt my feelings". Why would it? lol


Yeah, I've come across tips like that before as well.


Yeah, I've actually read a similar "tip" to get "free articles" on CL by posting a "want-to-hire" ad and asking for a sample article based on a niche topic because you're looking to hire a full time writer. Often, the writers will want the job so bad that they'll whip up a fresh article to try and impress the "company".

The "hot tip" was to then take all your article submissions from hopeful applicants and run - never having the intention of hiring anyone.

I can't do crap like that. That's probably why I'm still not swimmin' in millions, but I'm cool with that.

thegabrieljibril

that is way so funny, i think some of these guys use softwares to do that, it will be impossible to do that manually, some might use lead evolution and other cheaper softwares, it is just crazy

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ReneeArticles

Great info on CL scammers here ~ I'll be on the lookout! Sad thing about writers being scammed too ~

http://www.warriorforum.com/warriors...able-here.html

misterwrecker

Hey, I don't promote offers this way but come on this is pretty harmless compared to what real scammers do that take people's hard earned money.

Tahiti Joe

I agree with you 110%!!

If you think about it no one really gets hurt. I mean I know no one likes to be duped, It's insulting, but she didn't lose any money and aggravating none the less I'm sure. There are so many ways to earn an honest buck!

The advertiser did lose money (which is why the networks scrub leads so much) because they did not get a quality lead which now they will more than likely pay for. It's part of the business unfortunately.


It's not right but there are worse things that people do.

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sbucciarel

Well, that's BS. It's rendered what used to be a really great website to a heap of trash. For those who liked Craigslist to find stuff, it has destroyed it. But that's true of any site that can be exploited by marketers. They take it over with their spam and offers and it's rendered useless to the general public who uses it. I don't bother checking Craigslist anymore because I'm just going to get some crappy cpa offer.

Tahiti Joe

That is the unfortunate truth my friend.

I often felt that they should charge a fee to place any ad (as little as $1 for most) that would surely dissuade the marketers but I doubt the general public would like it too much.

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chassm

Craigslist is just not worth anyone's time, they may have anti spam policies and all but that obviously doe not stop spammers and scammers from continuing their practice. I don't go anywhere near Craigslist and when I hear a so called "guru" recommend you use Craigslist for anything, that's my first clue he's full s**t.

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raymagnetic

I've seen this done and similar "methods" as well. Another tactic they use is to have people apply for positions with a fake company and then having an autoresponder which sends a message stating that in order to move forward with the application you have to run your credit check for free.

When I checked out the website none of the links were functional. In order to see any information about the company I had to get my credit report first.

areevez

yall better stop talkn bout all this blackhat CL marketing round this way lmao

Tahiti Joe

LOL!! Fer Shur, Fer Shur!!

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bravo75

Bet ya someone's making big $$ with that

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