Wow - CPA scam = 1000s in profits a day

5 replies
Boy when I read about this kind of thing it just makes me so mad. Here I am busting my butt for years to make a decent living online, all the while there are scammers out there taking the "easy way" and making 1000s a day.

If you run an affiliate program you REALLY should check out this blog post ...

Large-scale CPA Scam Nets Scumbag $1,000s Per Day

WARNING: If you're not morally strong, do NOT click the link above as you may be tempted to do this yourself. It seems like guaranteed money with no way to get caught and it's all laid out in the blog post. Crazy stuff!
#cpa #day #profits #scam #wow
  • Profile picture of the author Limemist
    It's scams like these that make it hard for people new to internet marketing to get into the CPA market. It's no wonder why they are overly cautious about who they let in.

    But is it really worth it using deceptive techniques like this one? Only a matter of time before you get found out and have your IM career end.
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  • Profile picture of the author Thomas Smale
    Lol, that blog post is pretty optimistic.

    You would NEVER get a cost per click of $1 with traffic from a PTC network. You'd be lucky to get $0.01 with traffic that bad.

    You'd also have your leads scrubbed down to basically nothing. You might get away with it for a day, but after that the advertiser/network will make adjustments and you'll make nothing for your leads (I'm assuming the leads won't convert for the advertiser). If the leads do convert, the advertiser/network will usually turn a blind eye and tell you to ramp up the traffic. If you rotated a ton of offers across a ton of networks, you might do okay for a while, but it's not going to make you much these days.

    The method also suggests buying traffic from PTC sites. I can assure you this traffic would not convert at all. You simply would not make a profit regardless of the "scammy" ad you use.

    The blog post is a classic example of someone with literally no idea what they are talking about. He cites referer.us as a site used by "scammers". That's really not true. Lots of top WH affiliates will blank their referer to prevent networks knowing their traffic sources. Nothing shady about that.
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    • Profile picture of the author Dash Evra
      Originally Posted by Thomas Smale View Post

      Lol, that blog post is pretty optimistic.

      You would NEVER get a cost per click of $1 with traffic from a PTC network. You'd be lucky to get $0.01 with traffic that bad.

      You'd also have your leads scrubbed down to basically nothing. You might get away with it for a day, but after that the advertiser/network will make adjustments and you'll make nothing for your leads (I'm assuming the leads won't convert for the advertiser). If the leads do convert, the advertiser/network will usually turn a blind eye and tell you to ramp up the traffic. If you rotated a ton of offers across a ton of networks, you might do okay for a while, but it's not going to make you much these days.

      The method also suggests buying traffic from PTC sites. I can assure you this traffic would not convert at all. You simply would not make a profit regardless of the "scammy" ad you use.

      The blog post is a classic example of someone with literally no idea what they are talking about. He cites referer.us as a site used by "scammers". That's really not true. Lots of top WH affiliates will blank their referer to prevent networks knowing their traffic sources. Nothing shady about that.
      Couldn't have said better myself.

      I do agree that the splash page that is being advertised is misleading, but the rest of the post is nothing but a bunch of assumptions.
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    • Profile picture of the author IMToday
      Originally Posted by Thomas Smale View Post

      You would NEVER get a cost per click of $1 with traffic from a PTC network. You'd be lucky to get $0.01 with traffic that bad.
      I'll assume you mean revenue per click, not "cost per click" ...

      It's silly to sit here and argue but I can tell you for a fact that PTC traffic can be monetized, just like any other. It's all about matching the right offer with the traffic. People who sign-up at PTC sites are quite likely to also be interested in other similar sites, and other similar ways to make "easy money." Again, I'm not here to argue - I'm simply stating a fact.

      Originally Posted by Thomas Smale View Post

      You'd also have your leads scrubbed down to basically nothing. You might get away with it for a day, but after that the advertiser/network will make adjustments and you'll make nothing for your leads
      You're not giving these scammers enough credit -they are pretty "sophisticated". Well not really, but they do a bunch of things that allow them to keep the scam going for quite awhile depending on the advertiser in question.

      They spread out the traffic between dozens if not 100s of different accounts at as many different affiliate networks as they can. Even more importantly, the smart ones MIX this traffic with other legitimate traffic so that the overall quality looks decent. The advertiser takes all the traffic, and the scammer makes 2, 5 or even 10X as much as they would have if they just sent the legit traffic. They have other tricks as well...


      Originally Posted by Thomas Smale View Post

      The blog post is a classic example of someone with literally no idea what they are talking about. He cites referer.us as a site used by "scammers". That's really not true. Lots of top WH affiliates will blank their referer to prevent networks knowing their traffic sources. Nothing shady about that.
      No need to get nasty dude. I can assure you I know what I'm talking about as I've been doing this stuff for 10+ years and could retire tomorrow if I wanted to. You?

      I did cite referer.us as site being used by the scammer. Not sure how you could argue this point. The whole point of the blog post was showing how a scammer was using referer.us to hide the true source of his traffic.
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  • Profile picture of the author Mikal Laster
    Link is dead
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