I don't think it's a secret that many people really killing it on CPA offers are up to ‘no good'. See, when I first started out I was doing everything ‘by the book' and while I was doing ok… I couldn't figure out how these other affiliates were driving so much volume. I was grouping my adgroups right, making sure my keywords were relevant, and making the best landing pages I could yet other affiliates were SO far ahead of me.
What I of course learned is that most of the people driving tons of volume/sales on CPA offers are at least a little shady. This can be anything from a little misleading to outright fraud. I have the opportunity to look at the back end of a very large offer on a lot of CPA networks and I can't believe the crap these high volume affiliates are doing.
We as affiliates are NOT expert marketers. I know most would like to think they are but most of the big names out there hit on a niche or two and banked on that as long as they could. I'm not taking anything away from that, it's certainly an accomplishment, but often when someones traffic source/offer, etc dies they never make anything else work.
Let's look at some real life examples:
A while back affiliates were killing it bidding on ‘chat' related keywords for their dating campaigns and doing a lot of volume. Now this was only a little shady because you can't really ‘chat' on most of these sites. Nowadays people are using porn sites & hiding their traffic for as long as they can until they eventually get kicked off the offer.
Some affiliates will put an offers lead form in a page about something totally unrelated (hiding all content from the offer page except the form). I saw one where a customer would think they were filling out an offer to help Haiti but in reality they were just filling out a CPA lead form.
People made a LOT of money off of flogs/farticles. I shouldn't have to explain how shady this is. I'm not judging, I'm just saying fake testimonials are not exactly on the up and up.
So can you make money being a nice, well behaved affiliate? Sure! But next time you see a huge affiliate doing numbers that make your head spin you can almost be sure that something anywhere from 1-10 on the shady scale is going on.
There’s still a difference between being shady (and deceiving users at most) and blackhat (deceiving networks/advertisers). You seem to blur the line between those two a little here. I cannot imagine any network willingly paying out for an offer that has been deceptively iframed or something like that in the manner you just described.
couldn`t agree more, it`s like jerk vs nice guy
This post really hit home with me. All I can do is to stay the right course and know in my heart I am doing the right thing. In the end I hope it all pays off with becoming a ‘super affiliate’ marketer.
That is my end goal, to simply he and have a successful career.
Is this a broad generalization or the nature of the business? Just having a hard time believing that most affiliates can make money unless they pull shady shit like this.
Is this a broad generalization or the nature of the business? Just having a hard time believing that most affiliates can’t make money unless they pull shady shit like this
ahahha i did haiti CPA email collections. So u wasted some of my cash ey?
So your saying all Super affiliates making $50k/day are shady? interesting….
Having worked on the advertiser side of several affiliate programs over the years, I can definitely say this is accurate. There are “decent” affiliates to be found among the high volume people, but they’re a TINY minority. Networks don’t typically care as long as it backs out enough to be allowed and they keep their shadiness well-hidden.
It’s extremely time-consuming to track down that sort of thing as an advertiser, but if you take the time to really look into your top 10-20 affiliates, you’ll nearly always find that 90% are doing something you wouldn’t want your company to be associated with (if you’re a legit business and not just as shady as the affiliates, anyway).
In the grand scheme of things, as long as it backs in the end does it really even matter? i can understand if it wasn’t’ backing out but if it was does it matter?
Morgan – It matters because certain activity can tarnish the name of the advertiser or even get them in legal trouble. The fact that they’re paying affiliates means that in some cases, they can have real liability for the actions of those affiliates.
This is kind of how I feel with 99% of CPA offers. “Sign up now for a free trial/sample” and by sign up…I mean let me get paid $1.50 to let you get spammed to hell for nothing.
Like the other guy said it is almost in the nature of CPA to be shady.
Damn, depressing article. Can whitehat marketers still bank in this industry?
Well as a Offer Owner I say “Make sure you always comply with the rules,” as an affiliate I say “As long as the lead converts into a great customer, who cares where it came from”… In reality it is hard to draw the line, but that’s where experience and testing comes in…
I say it again and again and again. Flogs/farticles are NOT shady. This form of advertisement is the same as buying a full page ad in the newspaper and publishing an “article” with “testimonials” or whatever. Big, I mean BIG media publishers allow this kind of advertisements in print newspapers and magazines. They were doing for ages even before Internet came in.
ain’t no dollas without flogs
Bowflex commercials are practically flogs…. they have disclaimers saying they are actors. If you put your disclaimers in it is no different.
@Farticler
Difference is the testimonials included in these types of media are generally legit, and not completely fake.
That’s why the FCC has been cracking down on this practice as of late 😉
Flogs are scammy no matter how you look at it!
– Daniel Wiafe a.k.a. the Web Genesis
No need to be shady to make money although if you find something that is somewhat shady and is doing well then I say why not as long as it is not illegal.
So basically these are examples of blackhat traffic for CPA offers