Hydra Network Fucking Me Out Of My $750! Fuck Those Broke Bastards

[Rooby]

this guy sent some fraud traffic and yes, he shouldn't be paid, but no he should not have his information illegally sent to other networks.. he'll learn his lesson and move on!

networks need to stop being global police and start hounding down on quality more.. don't let a pub send $1k worth of traffic if he is new. have him send a $150-200 test and check in with the advertiser before he's good to go on more volume

I'm so with sgtryan on this, plus his final suggestion makes a lot of sense, and it's kind of crazy how everybody instantly jumped into "he's coming to rip you off next!" mode. That's called a slippery-slope and it's presumptuous and unfair.

When I first started with paid traffic I sent a ton of it to an offer and was real happy that I had something working. I had split tested over and over and finally found a group the offer worked for. Suddenly I get an email saying I'm not allowed to include users under 18 and that I just lost the few thousand dollars I spent on running it on a hairline margin.

The AM talked to me like I was either one of a zillion common affiliate criminals or a psychic, noting that I had been blacklisted from offers before. I told him, "Yeah, and every time I asked why, the only thing you told me was that the quality wasn't good. I don't really know what that means, and plus I haven't been doing this very long, so don't talk to me like I'm doing it on purpose if you aren't willing to explain it to me."

For all the tutorials and blogs and ebooks that abound the internet, there is no Affiliate Marketing 101. You can find strategies out the ass, but without a formal training course, the only way to learn is by doing things wrong one at a time, right?

Of course the OP is pissed that he's not getting money, but he's also probably afraid to admit in front of all the critical-ass people here who know better that he didn't know he wasn't allowed to pull this. Because what do you think would happen if he came straight out and said, "I didn't know I couldn't do that"? He'd get 5 pages of replies in the vein of "your a dumbass."

For a while I didn't know I couldn't target under 18 with a lot of offers; how could I have? Because it said it in 8px gray text at the footer of an iphone submit? I have NO idea how the hell an advertiser makes money from a zip submit, and when I asked this same question to an AM (at a network I've done well with and really do like), the answer was, "They usually don't!" Now you tell me what that's suggesting to a newbie publisher.

I bet you that if one network invested in a simple little Flash video course explaining how advertisers make money with offers, how networks make money from them, what can go wrong for publishers and the balance that makes affiliate marketing possible, they could gain a lot of new business while eliminating a lot of problems. My guess is that the OP -- if he ever gets the mercy of another chance, lol -- would NOT try this again.

But what do I know? I'm retarded.

 

[Andrew Scherer]

he'll learn his lesson and move on!

That is a nice thought ryan and logically you are correct

However I stopped giving retards the benefit of the doubt a long time ago

Chances are good he'll move on to the next network and this kind of bs really does affect us all

 

[MaxSteve]

I bet you that if one network invested in a simple little Flash video course explaining how advertisers make money with offers, how networks make money from them, what can go wrong for publishers and the balance that makes affiliate marketing possible, they could gain a lot of new business while eliminating a lot of problems. My guess is that the OP -- if he ever gets the mercy of another chance, lol -- would NOT try this again.

This guy was spamming craiglist with fake job ads looking to con surfers into signing up for credit report campaigns. This isn't a beginner who might have accidentally used the word "free" where he shouldn't have, or left out a few words in the text creative he pulled from a network, or even mistargetted a campaign. My guess is that he knew exactly what he was doing, and probably got a guide on how to do it straight from blackhatworld. That guide would have also told him how to avoid getting caught by networks, because networks don't approve of that shit.

I agree that pubs shouldn't be blacklisted across all networks because of simple mistakes - but this isn't a case of a simple mistake.

 

[DarkN1ght]

^^ This

Doesn't sound like he deserves the money, by why not give him another shot at being a dumb-ass

 

[smaxor]

Here's the issues with this:

A. Advertiser gets pissed off and pulls the offer. Then all the publishers that invested money and time into getting it to work right have no offer to run. So then they get pissed at the network. Also, as affiliate managers we spend a lot of time helping affiliates get their campaigns successful. So all our work was wasted as well.

B. Users that signup being deceived will be much more likely to charge back. Which in turn can make an advertiser lose their merchant account. Get blacklisted from getting a new one. Then they have all their continuity that they can't bill out. They of course lose money on the affiliate payout and it takes to around month 3 to become profitable ( credit reports in particular ). Now if they lose their merchant account and can't rebill then they're screwed and take a big loss because they've paid out all that money in affiliate commissions.

C. Based on the last one. These customers don't rebill at all. The scam usually goes if you want to rent this new aparment, buy this house, buy this car or whatever you need to get a free credit report. When they realize the car, house, etc doesn't exist and no one responds back to them they're pissed and cancel right away. In turn making the advertiser lose money.

D. If you have been following the credit report space, it's already walking a very thin line. There is the FTC and AG's breathing down their neck already. These people that get spammed on CL are the MOST likely to call their AG pissed off that they were scammed. Adding fuel to the fire for the cases they already are building against them.


In this space there has to be all winners for an eco system to survive. Everyone has to make money in the chain and be happy. Every CL spammer that has been around for a few days knows credit reports spam is going to be looked down upon. Some of these guys play the game where they signup for 20 networks and then run a script to send 1-2 leads a day to each network. If you're shit was legit there would be no need to do that. Then they get pissed off when they don't get paid.

I always say do your best to make sure what you're doing works for everyone in the chain. Then it is scalable and growable and not short sighted.