Frauding affiliate networks?

[Fiko]

I don't have much experience with affiliate marketing so I apologize if this sounds like a stupid question but how hard is it to fake certain things like leads? Lets say you earn money per lead/registration/email submit/whatever couldn't you theoretically just use proxies and fake results all day long? Couldn't you also just get hundreds of people to call your offer and you pay them a percentage of the profits? Or maybe faking it another way by using classified traffic? How would the publishers know?

 

[Farrah1]

Not only is fraud illegal, it’s also just downright wrong dude.

 

[Degen]

Hypothetically you could do that. But your conversion would be 100% or near 100% which is suspicious.

Furthermore free proxies are blocked by most offers.

There is a whole shit storm to go through if you want to scam your network. In the end your account will be banned, and potential legal actions.

 

[Fiko]

Not only is fraud illegal, it’s also just downright wrong dude.

I understand its wrong but there certainly has to be people who have tried this method especially in less developed countries with weaker legal systems right? How do publishers not lose insane amounts of money there has to be some sort of safeguard in place, no?

Hypothetically you could do that. But your conversion would be 100% or near 100% which is suspicious.

Furthermore free proxies are blocked by most offers.

There is a whole shit storm to go through if you want to scam your network. In the end your account will be banned, and potential legal actions.

Read my above reply to Farrah regarding international people in IM. Do you think they're realistically able to dodge legal issues? I doubt their country would extradite them to the U.S. Also with the conversion rate, that seems relatively easy to fake right? Couldn't you just use a landing page or something beforehand and claim you have a highly interested number of people thru a solid email list? Btw guys don't worry Im a US citizen I dont plan on doing any of these methods Im just generally curious lol

 

[BassTrackerBoats]

BHW is not a fan of those that are looking to steal from affiliate networks for a number of reasons.

@Fiko - you say you are curious, stay that way as you are not going to get a response here to satisfy your curiosity without warnings flying all over the place.

 

[Degen]

I understand its wrong but there certainly has to be people who have tried this method especially in less developed countries with weaker legal systems right? How do publishers not lose insane amounts of money there has to be some sort of safeguard in place, no?



Read my above reply to Farrah regarding international people in IM. Do you think they're realistically able to dodge legal issues? I doubt their country would extradite them to the U.S. Also with the conversion rate, that seems relatively easy to fake right? Couldn't you just use a landing page or something beforehand and claim you have a highly interested number of people thru a solid email list? Btw guys don't worry Im a US citizen I dont plan on doing any of these methods Im just generally curious lol

3.4 Engaging in, either directly or indirectly, or encouraging others to engage in, click-throughs generated in any manner that could be reasonably interpreted as coercive, incentivized, misleading, malicious, or otherwise fraudulent.

You seem more than curious 'Tom' . We are not going to play your slughorn.

 

[Gotzha_network]

Advertisers get in thousands of real leads per day. So it's easy for them to spot differences in patterns between real and fake leads.

 

[zubidoo]

Even IF you somehow pull it off, networks will eventually ban your account for shit leads. They'll know something is suspicious if the advertiser reports none of your leads are converting
Plus they can find out easily if you're using proxies to send through fake leads. Look through Affiliate forums you'll see networks banning people left and right for sending in fake leads through proxies and freezing payments
its probably harder to scam affiliate networks than it is to generate real leads/conversions
In short don't do it. You'll be back to flipping burgers in no time.