This past weekend, I was just sitting down to a nice game of Batman Arkham City on the Xbox, when I log into the forum and see 20 post by this network that just joined, spamming the forum. Now, after deleting all his posts except one and doing the research below, I'm pretty sure Batman is dead and I'm not in a good mood.
A number of networks are active inside Aff Playbook. They are well established networks and contribute quality content to the forum. Then, we have other networks that join and try to leverage the forum to get a ton of new affiliates. These are usually shady networks, and really easy to spot.
This is the kind of research I would recommend doing on any network you're thinking of running on.
First, without even looking, there are some things that should set off the alarm bells.
1) Never heard of them, and his forum signature said 500 direct offers.
2) Gyspsi (forum member) asked them to tell a little about who they were, etc. in their intro thread. Instead of doing that, the next time they log in, they go and make about 20 one sentence posts bumping all kinds of threads to get their signature noticed.
So, let's dig a little deeper. This should be done on any network you're thinking of running on…especially newer ones.
1) Check the whois
http://whois.net/whois/guardianads.com
Hmm ok registered Feb 6 2013 (2.5 months ago), nobody's heard of you, yet you have 500 direct offers and pay weekly? Notice also that the whois is private.
2) Check the website (duh) http://guardianads.com/
No people/names listed there. Check the contact page http://guardianads.com/contact.php notice the address on the right? Take that and search Google: 1200 Brickell Avenue Miami, Florida 33131
First result: http://www.davincivirtual.com/loc/us…s/facility-905 Virtual Florida office – these are pros we're dealing with here!
We could stop there, but why when were having so much fun!?
3) I wonder who they host with?
http://www.whoishostingthis.com/guardianads.com
Hostgator shared. I know most big networks run on Hostgator shared hosting so this must be legit More proof it's a shared hosting plan:
http://whois.domaintools.com/guardianads.com
4) Check Odigger
http://odigger.com/guardianads/ 7 positive reviews in the last few days lol
Keep going? I hoped you'd say yes!!
5) Search Google – allintext: guardianads.com
Check out this result on page 2 http://emillionforum.com/Thread-land…esign-services
Notice anything weird in that list? How about this:
That's kind of an odd coincidence. It doesn't prove anything, but it's kinda funny.
6) Another result http://www.startups.co/users/mauricio-arroyave
We have a name now, let's dig around. Searching that name in Facebook brought up a suggested search with his name + silverbee marketing
Ah-ha! https://www.facebook.com/thesilverbee
Also just for fun: https://www.facebook.com/GuardianAds
7) Now let's search Google for “Mauricio Arroyave silverbee”
One of the results: http://www.empowernetwork.com/blog-s…p?id=silverbee
https://www.empowernetwork.com/join.php?id=silverbee
I won't get into the empower network here, but it's a scam. Feel free to Google it.
But wait, there's more!
8) https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-S…e/222418215600 and
http://www.teamcommissionformula.com…/?id=silverbee
This dude made $2975 in 30 days!
Ok, that's enough fun for one Saturday night. The point here is to do your research on any network before joining them. I'll always tell you if I see a network pop up that's shady, or I have a good reason to stay away from one that's established.
Low overhead is smart David, besides I live in Colombia, the virtual office is just perfect for me. But thanks for the article bro, I am flattered. And by the way, here is how I made $2975 in 30 days: http://alphamarketing.me//30Days
Awesome…and just imagine how much fun it would be to try to collect from this Colombian fly-by-night network when they don’t pay. Seriously, who would work with networks like this when you’ve got large, established networks like MaxBounty, Convert2Media, Neverblue, etc…?
The virtual office is just ONE of the points mentioned. I wonder why you always logged into the forum from a different proxies. Why hide the fact you are based in Colombia? Thanks for the link to that vid…helps me illustrate my point here! 🙂
Maybe some smart people will …
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-21638308
lol make the network look like they’re from the US with a crappy virtual office is why.
This should be a thread on Wickedfire. Step 9 could be where you fly to Columbia and find Mauricio hunched over a Pentium III in an internet cafe — clearly without his $2975.
Guys, I really didn’t like this article- I have a network based in Israel, and we are very strong and always pay on time, myself working with some networks in Russia and all seems to be ok. So let’s not jump on conclusions here- is there any affiliate they didn’t pay on time? and how many network in US were scamming people, I was literally robbed by some of them. So I think you should present facts! there are other countries in the world you know…….
Please re-read the post. Not one of the points is about them being based overseas. I would have posted the same thing if they were based in the us (which is what they want people to believe anyway). What network do you run? I’ll do some research on you too 🙂
Lol last point cracked me up!
haha Ryan Eagle is busted.
LOL – (This post was last modified: Yesterday 02:38 PM by akshaymohunta.)
And ewakids and guardianads are removed.
but yet it lives on
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Femillionforum.com%2FThread-landing-pages-banners-websites-design-services
This article is a bit unfair to say the least, I own a network located outside the US and we work with dozens of US citizens and always pay them on time. We also work with many merchants located outside of our country and for the most part we get paid on time by them as well.
Again, can you please read the post again and tell me where I bring up the fact they are outside the US? Would you care to discuss anything else I brought up in the post that you think in ‘unfair’.
I often recommend networks outside the us – Adsimilis is a great example of a network I totally endorse.
FYI – both comments about this post being unfair are from generic email addresses, and both bringing up a reason I’m not using for this.
Since you didn’t send an email from your network, I’ll make the same offer to you – What network do you run? I’ll do some research on you too 🙂
Hey if you guys are going to keep submitting comments with different email addresses, you might want to use a different IP too to make it look at least a little real http://screencast.com/t/Pi2H8n6z
Instead of taking the time to make multiple comments, you could address the issues I posted. There might be a good reason for them, but not addressing anything and posting multiple fake comments just makes you look worse.
I didn’t make anything up here. Everything I posted is what I found from simple searching that anyone could find. If you feel anything is ‘not fair’, I invite you to address the issues directly and I will gladly post them.
Great investigative research, and really interesting read. This is the sort of stuff that people need to be aware of to prevent fraud before it ever happens. I can only imagine the number of countless people that have toiled away to scale their first successful campaigns, then get screwed by guys who set up ‘fronts’ such as those above.
The empower network I have a degree of respect for, because at least that is a sophisticated scam, that doubtless required creativity to put together, whereas many of these purely copy/paste marketers, forum spammers, etc have none, nor attempt to, therefore don’t deserve any respect.
Great read David! These are the things I also do much of and tend to get me distracted from real work. It is so addicting “internet sleuthing” 🙂
Usually do not comment on posts but walking through your investigation I could relate 100% and had to give you some props on it. It is not hard to identify a scam with the wealth of information available, people just need to do some research before conducting business, and they will save a headache later…