A while back I wrote an in-depth post on how an online scammer was promoting cures for ulcers, shingles, warts and whatnot, all packaged in eBooks you download for a fee.

It’s time to take that a little further and dissect how these scumbags run their games online, especially when they’re working as affiliate marketers.

One particular affiliate marketer recently clued his audience in on how he might typically run his campaigns, and what he reveals is pretty telling. It starts out by picking out what affiliate programs they want to join, which is often accomplished by joining a major affiliate network like Commission Junction, and then performing a search for affiliate programs that offer the highest payouts in the niches they’re interested in.

In this case, diet pills were chosen. The marketer then set out to build what’s called a landing page (in this case a landing page is a website that’s designed to encourage the visitor to click on affiliate links and eventually buy the products mentioned, resulting in commission profits for the marketer.) Look at what he writes:

…I used a review page. I included those offers in a list, and picked an order I wanted. Based on the EPCs my affiliate managers told me, I put the highest offer as the #1 and called it the “Top Rated”, and then the lowest EPC I put at the bottom and rated “Good Choice”. They each were rated 1 to 5 stars. The top rated was 5 stars, and the bottom of the list was 3 stars. You don’t want to rate everything five stars or else it looks fake, and people can tell.

He built a fake review page with a ratings system that had nothing to do with the quality of the products in question. They were actually rated in terms of what would generate the most profits for him!

I sold myself as a legit review site that was there to help the visitor find the best diet pill for them.

In truth he had no interest in helping the visitor make an informed decision at all, but every interest in getting their money. Virtually no effort was made to research the quality of the products he was marketing, or provide original content that weren’t merely borrowed advertising slogans. The only thing that mattered was the bottom line: converting visits to profits. That he would lie and provide misleading information to do so bothers him, not at all.

It’s disconcerting to see a 19 year old punk exhibit such moral ineptness so early in his life, perfectly content in sacrificing his integrity and promoting low quality goods that pollute the Internet, just so he can churn a good profit. And why not? After all, he has already raked in close to a million dollars already with his “marketing” efforts. But then again, drug dealers do pretty good for themselves as well. So do scumbag lawyers. And spammers. And the Russian mob.

This post is already a bit long, so in another post I’ll analyze how these “landing pages” operate, and provide a live example so readers can learn how to successfully detect whether a website was built by an affiliate spammer or not. Stay tuned!

Tags: affiliate managers, affiliate marketing, affiliate network, affiliate programs, commission junction, diet pills, expose, fake reviews, landing pages, niches, scammers, scams, spam, spammers
Categories: Tangled Webs
 
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Got an email today from a dating service inviting me to join their affiliate program. Yawn.

But then I noticed this:

Ashley Madison is the premiere online dating agency of its kind designed for people in a relationship, either married or otherwise, who are interested in having romantic and intriguing experiences outside of their relationship…

Holy jumping jiminy jam jimbos…

It does beg the question though: has the dating pool become so pitiful these days that one has no choice but to start hitting up married folks for some loving? I have to admit though, I’ve been tempted at times. There’s two hot coworkers I can think of who are happily married (I guess), but man, what I wouldn’t do for a little coochie coo…

I mean come on, so what if a gal drops her skag of a husband to go rolling around in the hay with me, proving without a doubt that she has no sense of loyalty, faithfulness or moral fiber whatsoever? Biiiiiiiiiiiig deal. I mean all that talk about soulmates and one true loves, pftttttttttt, that is so 10 minutes ago. It’s all fairy tales and bunk anyway. We live in the REAL world now, doncha know?

I’m telling you man, a dating service like this just can’t miss!

Tags: adultery, affiliate program, affiliate programs, coochie, dating, dating agency, dating service, doubt, experiences, extramarital, fairy tales, faithfulness, love, loyalty, marriage, matchmaking, online dating, pool, real world, relationship, romance, skag, soulmates, yawn
Categories: Romance and Relationships
 
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Man, so much to do, so little time to do it. Have to work early this week, get some balloons, a card and a gift together for some relatives’ wedding anniversary, get fitted for my new hearing aids, get my old hearing aids repaired, add my parent’s name to my bank account, create landing pages for my affiliate programs, purchase the SEOBook and give it a good read, and finally look around for some original shots I can take with my camera that might actually pass inspection with those anal microstock agencies.

I’m the kinda guy where if I have too many things on my mind, I tend to go….what’s the word… bat poopoo nutty. It’s a fact of life, but still, I HATE it when I have so many projects and errands I need to keep track of and run.

Oh well… gotta be a man about this… gotta be a man…

…Mommy please hold me.

Tags: affiliate programs, aids, anniversary, balloons, bank, busy, errands, fact of life, gifts, hearing aids, job, little time, microstock, mommy, projects, relatives, seobook, wedding anniversary, week
Categories: Lincoln's Personal Log
 
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I’ve been dabbling in the world of affiliate programs as a way to make some extra money lately, and so far I’ve already made 10 bucks by getting an affiliate sale for the folks at Clicky. I decided the easiest way to break into this field though was to just sign up for affiliate programs advertising products and services that I actually use. So far I’m using Hostgator for my web hosting, Go Daddy for domain registration, and Clicky Web Analytics for tracking my site stats. I’m pretty happy with all of them, so I can feel comfortable enough whoring for all of them without feeling too guilty.

I wouldn’t use Go Daddy for web hosting though. I’ve heard too many complaints from people using their hosting packages, and for the most part it’s too basic for those of you who are truly serious about building a good website, especially one that might be PHP-SQL driven. Still, I signed up for their affiliate program since I’ve had a good experience registering my domains with them.

But, in order to do that I had to first apply to become a member of Commission Junction, one of the largest affiliate networks in the world. When I got accepted I went to access my account page and almost went insane. CTRs and EPMs and EPCs and what the F___ is everyone talking about here??? There was so much information jam packed into one page I had no clue where to begin. I finally managed to figure out how to generate an affiliate link after tearing my hair out for an hour, which wasn’t easy considering Go Daddy apparently felt the need to provide 3 million different types of affiliate links and banners that I could use to promote their goodies. Ugh. All this business crap gives me a headache.

Eventually I’ll post review articles relaying my experience with these companies, which should serve as decent landing pages for all those interested in using the same services. I also added their banners at the footer of my blog now, so feel free to click on them and gimme some lovin’.

Seriously though, if you want to try out a service for free, Clicky is your best bet. You can use their premium service for three weeks without paying or providing any payment info, a smart move because they even hooked me in after my premium trial expired. The stats they track is not as exhaustive as Google Analytics, but the design is done so well that you can find out just about everything that’s going on (real-time) at your blog/website with just a quick glance. They have a basic version that’s free, while the premium version is less than $2 a month (if you sign up anually). Again, I’ll write a more extensive review in the future when I have more time.

Ok, I think I’m done whoring for now.

Tags: affiliate networks, affiliate programs, affiliates, clicky, clue, commission junction, ctrs, domain registration, epcs, footer, go daddy, goodies, hostgator, monetizing, problogging, web analytics
Categories: Blog Fog
 
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