unlanthony

Hi All,

I am new to the PPC world and the company I work for just became an open network 2 months ago. Prior to this we were a closed network and would only show certain networks or mailers our offers. We wanted to expand and allow PPC and SEO traffic for particular offers. At 1st traffic thru PPC was flowing in and then BAM! A lot of the PPC affiliates that signed up to our network were scammers approved by us only after speaking to them on the phone. We have learned the hard way. We lost 3 advertisers within 4 days of each other. We have now learned a better way to screen thru these applications (takes too much time in my opinion) and some of these look legit. But the fall back is our CEO has now put every offer we have on "Request Approval" which just takes time for the legit PPC person and our networks and mailers to get things going. What i am asking is a little advice on screening PPC from all you legit and honest PPC players.

Thank You,

honestbizpro

Hey unlanthoney,

Sorry to hear about any legit biz that loses out on advertisers and profits.

But you are asking us to give you better ways to screen us?


I guess that is a fair question, but be prepared my friend. The Dark Side of marketing will never give up on finding a way to beat the system.

It's one thing to confirm our identities and maybe even our expertise,
but can you ever really confirm what our marketing ethics may be ahead of time?

LeivaMatias

Screening PPC?

Are you referring to screening the actual leads quality?

Most CPA marketers will not show where there traffic is coming from. There has been 1 to many times, that networks have taken a marketers campaign and began running it themselves. This also happens with hot cpa products, they get ripped too and put on by their own network owner.

So in terms of screening PPC? Its simple don't pay out if your not getting conversion or legit info on the back end.

The Youngest Network Marketer To Crack The Internet Code: http://www.matiasleiva.com

unlanthony

Hello honestbizpro,

Lol, no i did not mean screening you the way it sounded. I meant by screening, shouldn't we be able to have a phone call? I have no problems communicating thru AIM or by emails but when i give a call and get an answering machine every time, usually a robotic one at that. And i'll get a call back but they always want to be the ones to call, not me call them. Red Flag right there. As far as the dark side, yea there will always be someone looking to beat the system.
Its not about your expertise, of course the more experienced usually the more money every one makes And we can never know ones marketing ethics until we start working with them. It has just become frustrating, i just want to work with real people. Look not every offer will work for everyone and we can't control what the end user puts as their info and we move on, communication is always the best to what we can do together to make a profit on both sides.

unlanthony

Of course we can't screen lead quality until it goes thru the call center.
I am not asking for anyones source but every mailer we have sends us a referral URL thru our link and same with our legit PPC. We do not pay on fraud, we send bad lead files to both our mailers and PPC. We speant way too much time cleaning house this week,the percentage of legit PPC to fraudulent was over whelming, i know there are a ton of hard working honest people out there, these scammers just gives our entire industry a bad name.

danhughes

No... the same is not true! They are just better at covering their tracks.

There is not a single successful Affiliate who is going to show you where their traffic is coming from. Their leads are going to show no referrer or an anonymous looking redirect URL. If you have affiliates doing any kind of volume that are showing a legitimate looking referrer then they are running some kind of referrer spoofing script.

Feel free to think that Affiliates that wont take your calls every 5 minutes are scammers... but you are going to miss out *big time*. AM call us all the friken time and unless I have a great relationship with them or I need to talk to them then chances are I'm not going to take the call. Do you know how annoying it is to the same AMs calling and begging you run crappy offers all the time??? I had multiple messages last week trying to get us to push the hunk of junk https://secure0rder.com/offers/?c=s0roi1pets

honestbizpro

Oh that is so funny because it is so true! I had a single Affiliate Mgr calling me almost everyday...then I had to be careful what I said each time because then there was a follow up call to ask me how's that coming along!

But on the other hand I will say that same Aff. Mgr would give me some very high paying offers that were not listed for everyone else.









Well I think it's still great that you have open mind and are here to interact either way.

p2y

Yes unfortunately there is a lot of fraud in the affiliate and CPA industry which is why many networks screen their affiliates before letting them in. My friend actually owns a small CPA network and he sees at least 20 fraud signups per day, I can't imagine how many the bigger networks see. Anyways, here is what he does:

1) He immediately denies everybody from outside the US, Canada, or UK, they are given the option to "appeal" the decision but have to go through more additional screening which includes submitting proof of past payment from other affiliate programs and providing a scanned copy of their passport or photo identification. Declining the application almost immediately deters the scammers since they'd rather go and signup for other networks but the appeal is easy enough to allow legitimate affiliates from other countries in without too much of a hassle. Of course people who appeal will also have to go through the standard screening, which is part 2:

2) Everybody that is from the US, CA, or UK has their information (name, address, city, state, zip, phone) verified through public data. If the data can't be verified then it's an immediate red flag. He then calls them up and asks them questions only a true PPC advertiser would know (what type of landing pages do you use, what's your current best quality score, what tracking platform do you use, what's your average conversion rate, what other networks do you work with etc). If they don't answer the phone the first time then they do 2 more attempts, after that they are automatically declined and have to go through the additional screning in step 1. It's really important to ask them questions only a PPC advertiser would know because many of these fraudsters have gone as far as hiring people from craigslist to verify the phone call, collect the checks, and then send them off to the scammers.

3) Everything else is verified such as the website, that it's active, the whois information etc.

Automatic Profile Backlinks - Free Demo

PPC-Coach

Everyone complaining about how hard it is to get into networks can thank the assholes who have forced us to make it difficult. We have a pretty good screening process and yet we still get stung once in awhile by fraudsters. It is getting to the point where a face to face meeting and a ton of identification is going to be necessary in the future. (I'm not kidding either...)

Fox30

You shouldn't have to screen PPC traffic. FYI: some affiliates will tell you that they are marketing via PPC when they really aren't.

unlanthony

Thanks p2y and to all that have added insight for.

unlanthony

[QUOTE=danhughes;768386]They are just better at covering their tracks.


AM call us all the friken time and unless I have a great relationship with them or I need to talk to them then chances are I'm not going to take the call. Do you know how annoying it is to the same AMs calling and begging you run crappy offers all the time???

Hey Dan,

Thanks for the info on them just being better at covering their tracks. Like I said I am new to PPC traffic so the more I learn the better.

And yes, I do know how annoying it is to have an AM calling constantly.
I am not a phone person, I like to communicate thru AIM and email but I do believe in initial contact by phone, then a relationship usually proceeds from there. Look at it like this: If we did not pay you wouldn't you want to not just send an email or AIM but give a call and say "whats going on?" to be sure you are not getting scammed? Just a thought

unlanthony

Hey PPC-Coach

I hear that! It sucks that these few bad apples make it harder for all the hard working people out there