FTC Takes "All Remaining Assets" From Affiliate CPA Marketers

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If you have done CPA marketing you have likely seen the "free" gift card offers, such as get a free $500 WalMart gift card. Just submit your email address. And then in the fine print, also complete 6 Platinum offers, 11 Gold offers and 15 Silver offers.

Some industrious affiliate marketers decided to send text messages promoting the gift cards.

Problem #1 - sending unsolicited text messages, as with unsolicited faxes, unsolicited sales calls, unsolicited commercial email - is gonna draw a lot of heat from people tired of getting unsolicited advertising. And it's illegal.

Problem #2 - fraud, fraud, and more fraud. This was real easy for the FTC given the nature of the CPA offer. Fraud #1 is the text message can never hope to include all the possible legal disclaimers about the offer. Fraud #2 is the landing page which has the same defects. After all, if a consumer really knew what was about to happen to them they would never submit their email address. Fraud #3 is of course the gift card offer itself.

The FTC sued and a court immediately froze the marketers' assets. In a moment of surprising generosity, the FTC said the defendants could have $2000 per month to live on (and pay attorneys with).

To settle the claims the affiliates had to agree to "turn over all of their remaining assets" to the feds and for the next 20 years submit compliance information to the FTC.

Text Spammers Settle FTC Charges They Illegally Sent Consumers Bogus Offers for "Free" Gift Cards

Lesson: No text message marketing and think twice before adding gift card CPA offers to your site.

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#main internet marketing discussion forum #affiliate #all remaining assets #cpa #ftc #marketers #takes
  • I hate text message spam... more so than any other spam...

    With junk mail I get through my front door I save it up and at the end of every week I take all the junkmail and put it in one of their prepaid envelopes and post it back :_)

    Danny
  • It's not clear from the summary whether the gift card was the CPA, or the items they wanted people to sign up for to get the gift card were the CPA.

    I think it was probably the latter, because the items that people signed up for were trial offers and stuff.

    We've all seen offers where you subscribe to a magazine or book club, and you get the first month free (or minimal cost), but then you have to cancel if you don't want regular billing to kick in.

    The summary reads like these guys created and promoted a website where people were tricked into signing up for these kinds of offers, on the promise of a gift card. If you read however the number of offers listed, I'd be surprised if anybody got thru all the hoops to get a gift card, even if it existed.

    I wonder if the CPA advertisers even had an inkling what was going on. Most advertisers of trial offers don't want affiliates signing up a bunch of people who aren't really interested in the trial, actually want to cancel ASAP, and only signing up in order to get something unrelated to the trial.
  • The "and pay attorneys" with in brackets made me smile. Negative equity anyone?
  • Yea I saw that coming... I blocked so many numbers coming through to my Google voice. I would tell them to sto texting me and they would just text from another number. I knew it was marketers making a killing online.

    Oh well. You live and you learn. Sounds like they're gonna have to make money in someone else's name now :-(

    Dennis the Marketing Menace
  • Wow this is some serious stuff!
  • Fixed that for ya, Brian!

    I hate spam text messages, not to mention those "free" offers that are anything but free. So, not feeling much sympathy for the culprits who got caught.
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    FTC Takes "All Remaining Assets" From Affiliate CPA Marketers

    If you have done CPA marketing you have likely seen the "free" gift card offers, such as get a free $500 WalMart gift card. Just submit your email address. And then in the fine print, also complete 6 Platinum offers, 11 Gold offers and 15 Silver offers. Some industrious affiliate marketers decided to send text messages promoting the gift cards.