While it's true that by definition it's almost all fraud, there are still distinctions. If not then by following a strict definition most tv advertising would also fall into that category. Almost everything is over promoted and under delivered.
As the topic gets discussed in regards to bhw and fraud, the distinction is primarily made when it reaches the level of thievery. Its the difference between being a hustler or being a thief.
- A hustler can usually maintain a certain level of credibility and even respect out on the streets, but the same can't usually be said for a thief.
- At the end of the day a good hustle should still leave everyone feeling like they got something out of the deal, for the mark it might not be exactly what they were expecting at the onset, but they aren't really feeling like they were robbed.
- On the other hand a theif just takes peoples money and leaves them with nothing at all to show for it.
If you look at a cpa offer, adsense, etc.
- If you actually are sending the right people to the ads there will be a certain conversion rate. The visitors that do sign up, are recieving whatever the cpa is involved with, the cpa got real visitors that might sign up, and the marketer gets paid for the traffic. Even if there where shady tactics used to get them there; at the end of the day most people don't feel robbed.
- If you send the cpa nothing but fake traffic with no expectation that any will ever convert, and try to make it appear as though your doing a good job for them and then get paid. Well at the end of the day the cpa got robbed, they got zero benefit out of the payment they made to you.
ewhoring is similar.
- If the fake girl tells the guy it will really help her out if he signs up for some porn site, well at the end of the day he got something out of it.
- If she tells him she loves him and wants to move to his city to be with the lonely guy, and has him send $2000 for a plane ticket, well he just got robbed.
Just look at the 419 scams. If you don't make a distinction then really they're just doing some blackhat methods. Would you really want to put yourself in the same category as these guys? They're bilking people out of their life savings, and even placing them at risk of going to jail for fraud themselves. Sure it's taking advantage of their greed, but it's still robbery. Many of the people caught in those scams only got involved because they're in desperate financial situations already.
As far as the job seekers go, do you really want to find an out of work father needs to feed his family and steal that money by telling him it'll get him a job. You might as well just wait outside his building and steal the money directly, as least then you haven't disrupted him from continuing his job search.
A lot of time the matter of bhw vs. fraud can be determined very easily, if you can go to jail if you're caught then you've gone past blackhat.
Sometimes it's a little harder to define the line. The main thing to remember is just because you're willing to game the system a little or even a lot doesn't mean you have to be a thief. There is still a certain level of integrity that you have to maintain. A guy chatting as an ewhore is just acting, not that much different than being an actor in a commercial. You don't have to sacrifice your integrity to do that, but having some integrity should make it clear how far to go with it. Same thing with any other way of getting CPA offers, or affiliate sales, or any of the other money making methods you can find on here.
You can lose everything you own. You can have everything taken from you. It's all just things, money doesn't define who you are. It just makes life a lot easier. On the other hand your integrity can't be taken from you. It's what really defines who you are. When it comes down to it integrity is the only thing you can never lose. It has to be given up by the choices you make, but once it's given up, everything else you gain doesn't really have much value anymore.
Integrity used to considered be a basic principle for being a man. It still should be, and if you maintain a level of integrity and morality, then usually you know when your crossing the line from Black Hat into outright fraud.
edit - when your talking about Black Hat SEO the idea of fraud really is less of an issue. All your really doing in those cases is gaming the system a little to make the SE's think your site deserves to be placed higher in the SERPs. You aren't even really running a hustle. It's cheating a little bit, but not in some really unethical way. Black Hat SEO still pretty much falls into the advertisement category, all your really doing is some salesmanship and acting. The only reason it's considered cheating is because your going around some of the rules that the SE's have put in place. But htey aren't actually even rules in the same sense as playing a game, they're just the criteria the SE's are using to determine your position in the SERP, they're considered rules because the SE's are letting you know they won't index certain types of pages. You aren't actually required to follow the rules, but when you dont it risks not having you're site indexed. If what you're doing has a positive effect then it passed the algorithms rules check, even if technically it shouldn't have. So the issue of fraud is much less of a factor when discussing SEO strategies. In those cases Black or White is determined by how much you're trying to game the algorithms. In most cases the concept of legal or illegal doesn't even factor into it.
