By continuing my update,
I got banned from my network and here is why
Or better subject line perhaps would be "
Lost $6000 and what you can do to try to avoid it"
Behold. Below you can enjoy the screenshot of the decision that took an unexpectedly wrong turn. My aff manager reached out to me and proposed that I could try out a new offer from the same advertiser I take my current offers. As I trust my manager with all my soul, I went for it.
Seems innocent, right? Ha.
A week later I thanked my aff manager as my avg EPC from 0.09 increased to
0.12. It's like
35% gain, great results. It's worth adding that I did not request this specific offer and that I have worked with the same advertiser for almost 2 years now and they always were happy, I received payment bumps and they asked about scaling up.
Fast forward - a month later, my telegram bot went all crazy, reporting clicks but no conversions. Checked offers and they all redirected to Googles landing page after passing the network offer link, so clicks were counting but leads got forwarded to google.
As there sometimes are issues with links not working and usually I catch them first before my managers - at this point I think nothing more than that they again fucked up something, so I go to my manager with my usual "hey guys there is a problem again, btw why you can't just automate link checking, I will start to ask to pay me for doing your work, love ya anyways".
The manager promises me to check what is going on and comes back with "The advertiser has suspicions about your traffic".
At this point I still think that this is some sort of silly mistake because as I already mentioned, I work with the same advertiser for quite a while and I haven't changed anything in my traffic or setup, it's still my
best assistant doing her work.
An investigation is started, me and my manager - we both are confused and we both think this will get quickly solved. How naive.
What should be a quick issue solved ended up in a two-week-long disaster where names got called, fingers pointed, tiers, laughs, and other emotions.
Resume -
advertiser claims my traffic is fraudulent and I will not get paid for the last period.
As my manager decides that she trusts me and I decide that I trust my manager, we agree to continue to work together but with the current advertiser blocked on my account. They still have suspicions about me and I will need some time to clear my name in the eyes which I kinda understand as this business is a grey hat as one can be. Probably even black hat by what I've seen on those offer pages.
This irritates me deeply as if I would run fraud, I would make sure it remains undetected. That said, I never shit where I eat.
And the audacity of the fraud the advertiser is claiming is just outrageous.
They claim that the same cards were used to fulfill the offers, with one card used even 213 times.
Here you can see the log presented by the advertiser. (can give kudos to them for green/hackish spreadsheet tho, right?)
Did you note fake-ish email names used? I would never go with "horny4366" or "103noreply", my identities would have real Gmails, real looking accounts and for no way, I would submit the same card more than a few times.
So what really happened?
I don't know. And seems that my manager does not know either.
My theories:
a) My traffic gave unwanted attention from three-letter agencies, advertiser wanted to quit me and just took some of the cash with it.
b) Advertisers' software developer fucked up hard and I got nailed to the cross because of their mistake.
c) There are some kinds of cards users can use to bypass offer registration pages, e.g. Revolut app offers one-time purchase visa cards that can be used for safe eCommerce purchases, perhaps they are marked somehow as the same card used.
The thing is - issues started only after switching to that unique offer. Confusing.
What do you think happened here? Perhaps someone had a similar experience.
What you can do to avoid my mistake?
Split your traffic.
- between networks, never ever use only one network.
- between offers. especially if you onboard a new offer, test it.
Always ask your manager to confirm that everything is alright. Only my good relationship with my managers made sure Im not banned and I can continue to use these networks.
These were adult game offers, so if you run them - be aware that there is only one advertiser that has those offers even if there are many of those games as my managers stated - there is only one company behind them.
Right now I run regular adult dating offers, they convert about the same.
Thank you for reading about my experience.
Here are the subject lines I will keep you updated in the following weeks,
Some of the next subject lines I will post and continue to update you on in the following weeks:
- I got banned from my network and here is why
- They shave you shamelessly
- Spent 1000$ on domains and for nothing
- love you, Tier 3
- AI driven proxy setup
- Instagram limits, triggers, and proxy setup
- Microservice architecture
- Mental Health