A second introduction - first from MaxBounty

[MaxSteve]

Hello everyone,

I have been visiting and posting on this forum for a year now under the anonymous handle of FromANetwork. Based on the number of genuine questions I'm seeing about what is and what isn't allowed at MaxBounty, I've decided to step out from behind the anonymous handle and be available to the members of BHW for any questions you might have.

I'll still post my thoughts on methods that are blatantly fraudulent and will still offer suggestions on non-maxbounty issues.

Yes, I expect to be flamed, but I also expect that I will be able to help those who are looking to deliver legitimate leads to advertisers.

Some of my contact info is in my profile and will show up in my sig once I hit the minimum post count.

Thank you.

Steve Sauve
MaxBounty

 

[S M W]

Hi Steve. Thanks for outting yourself. Having some real advice from a network is valuable information.

 

[Sanitarium]

Son of a...

 

[S M W]

ok, now i'll get the ball rolling...

why are there so many posts about MB screwing webmasters out of commissions? there seem to be an awful lot of posts here about that.

Re: Maxbounty Sucks! They will luv u if you make little money... once you start making 1000$ per month... they will ban u..

 

[MaxSteve]

ok, now i'll get the ball rolling...

why are there so many posts about MB screwing webmasters out of commissions? there seem to be an awful lot of posts here about that.

Due to the nature of the forum, that's pretty much why. Many of the blackhat methods described here are used to create fraudulent leads for merchants (cakeslice, secret submit, fake job/appt ads on CL, godcpa, etc.). Those are against terms and conditions and lead to accounts being banned.

Since many people learn of these techniques here, it's only natural that they'd complain here when they were caught and banned.

My presence here doesn't mean I'll all of a sudden be okay with people cheating merchants/networks. But I know that there are people here who do whitehat and people who might bend the rules a bit but still deliver real leads and quality leads for merchants, so I figured I'd step forward.

MaxBounty has never knowingly banned an affiliate who was not breaking any of the rules. While I won't admit that we're perfect, those affiliates who appealed and could legitimately explain what appeared to be fraud were fully re-instated. Problem is that almost all terminations are valid and with rightful cause and we never hear an appeal.

Anyone who gets a termination notice is always more than welcome to appeal, but they have to do so with facts. E-mail responses with "WTF?", "How can you do this?", "I need info" are not sufficient.

Anyone here on BHW who has been banned by MB and thinks it was done by accident because they're legitimate, they're more than welcome to contact me. But I can say that the majority of the bans we've handed out have been with cause (see list above).

 

[S M W]

ok, those are fair reasons i suppose. obviously you've spent some time on this forum so you know the standard bh methods....

what about e-whoring?

obviously bh methods make networks a TON of money - especially when they ban and keep commissions. (doh!) are there any methods that people can try that won't get them in trouble with the cpa's? is it safe to ask your AM before you try a BH method?

disclaimer = i do not have an acct with MB

 

[toolbar1]

Ok Steve,

I know for a fact that you offer rotate. Let me explain. You'll have one lp up that is hooked to our affiliate link. Now at random times our affiliate link will take the conversion to another similiar offer or an offer from the same company that is on a different page and we do not get credit for the sale or submit or whatever a person is doing.

Can you explain this please and don't say it doesn't happen because it does.

 

[MaxSteve]

ewhoring for the most part is not accepted. There are some exceptions, but most dating merchants don't like ewhoring leads because the sucker creates an account then never uses the dating service once they realize they've been duped. So the merchant is paying for leads that will never convert to a paid subscription.

BH methods actually don't make the network tons of money. Fraudulent BH traffic costs merchants money and beyond not paying us for the BH leads, they get upset that we didn't stop it in the first place. If the merchant gets upset enough, they refuse to pay for ANY leads generated, even the WH ones! Considering networks pay affiliates before they are paid, this leaves the network eating the cost of the leads.

Finally, YES, ask your AM about any methods you feel unsure about whether or not they are acceptable. If you are worried about giving up your secrets, don't. Just give enough detail so we can make a call on your method. You will never be banned for asking a question.

 

[MaxSteve]

Ok Steve,

I know for a fact that you offer rotate. Let me explain. You'll have one lp up that is hooked to our affiliate link. Now at random times our affiliate link will take the conversion to another similiar offer or an offer from the same company that is on a different page and we do not get credit for the sale or submit or whatever a person is doing.

Can you explain this please and don't say it doesn't happen because it does.

Without having a concrete example, I cannot tell you what might or might not have happened. Generally speaking, if something like that happens it happens for one of two reasons. Either the click was geo-filtered by us to a campaign that allows traffic from that particular country, or this is something the merchant is doing on their end. We do not offer rotate within MaxBounty to rip-off affiliates.

Something I wish more people would understand is that reputable networks do NOT do anything to jeopardize their relationships with affiliates. We don't offer rotate, we don't shave, we don't ban for no reason, we don't steal your landing pages, etc. We'd be fools to do so. Our business (CPA Networks in general) is based entirely on relationships. Relationships with merchants, relationships with affiliates. To succeed and prevent our business being lost to our competitors depends entirely on how we manage those relationships. Undermining those relationships by engaging in unethical behaviour might lead to the short term gain of a few dollars, but ultimately will lead to the failure of the business in the long term.

MaxBounty has been around since 2004. We would not have that kind of longevity if we screwed over our partners every chance we got.

There might be bad merchants who do some of the shadier things you have all experienced. There might be some flavor-of-the-week HasOffers-licenced networks that do some of the shadier things you have all experienced. Heck there might even be some of the larger networks that do those things.

But we do not. We value the relationships we build.

 

[toolbar1]

Steve,

I know when my landing pages are changed due to geo-targeting this is not the case.

What you say sounds logical. So if you stand true to your statements then you should definitely investigate what the merchants are doing.

I mean according to your analogy above it would make even less sense for the merchants to do this.

So my point being this is happening and I'm sure in some sense you know this is happening. So if you want to be a cut above the rest like you are claiming. Lets explain why the merchants are doing it and put a stop to it.

 

[S M W]

all networks shave.

all networks deny shaving exists.

they will accuse you of being a crazy conspiracy theorist for accusing them of such activities.

I've heard excuses like "I guess the advertiser is scrubbing hard today", poor traffic quality, we can't control it, etc. Nature of the beast I guess...

 

[TheInternetHustler]

I like MaxBounty a lot, my favorite network, cool that you are here.

For the shaving comments, I know this has been said a million times, but I think its true, the advertisers are responsible for any shaving, not MB. I havent really been shaved on MB beside email submits which I understand because the traffics not always the best quality. Otherwise my conversion rates look correct.

Also any comments on code breaker style pages Steve?
Incent ringtone offers and surveys with it is fine right?

I remember my old AM(the one that got arrested) had an account on here, so no surprise you do to.

Also what is the range for a normal AM's top 5 earners? Just curious

Edit: never mind about code breaker, I fond a post of yours regarding it

 

[biks]

Hey MaxSteve!

Lemme ask you this - What kind of money are your best Internet Marketers making on MaxBounty? Do these guys favor one kind of offer over another? Where are they getting their traffic? PPC or organic? What percentage of your clients are making $100 a day?

Should one focus on mastering PPC and driving traffic that way or should one spend their time building an authority site with backlinks, etc?

Which sort of offers should a newbie focus on if they want to achieve something like $100 a day?

 

[MaxSteve]

Of course they shave, i belief that without a doubt especially in these times, they probably shave from people do not have a lot of sales so that if they figure out how they are being taken for a ride there is not a big lost if they leave, they wont do it to their big moneymakers of course. (or they are really stupid).

That is why your better of selling your leads directly to comapnies, you don't need a network like Maxbounty that shave 15%/20% of your convertions, just contact companies directly, give 200 free leads to try your stuff out, if your leads are any good, these companies will buy them from you for a much better price then you get from those networks.

I am not doing lead generation anymore, but if i would start today i would defintaly go the direct route instead of worrying if Steve is going to hit you with the ban hammer today.

Discussing shaving on any forum always falls back to a "he-said/she-said" type of discussion. I know that I (MaxBounty) do not shave. Convincing someone of that is entirely based on credibility and I understand that being where I am, most of you won't believe me. So I could write dozens of long posts explaining why I don't shave, why it's not in my best interests to shave, etc. But all that would still lead to a "oh, yeah, you shave all right, you fucking asshole" post from someone. So there isn't much point in me rehashing the posts I've already made on this thread. Either you'll believe me, or you won't.

A word of suggestion who might thing going direct is the way to go. If you think your BH leads are hard to hide from a network, good luck trying it directly with the end merchant. They are much smarter than you might think. You'd still find yourself banned, but with their slower payment cycles, you'd wind up losing a lot more. Additionally, with them having your name, address, etc., scam them enough and you could find yourself in a lawsuit.

 

[MaxSteve]

Hey MaxSteve!

Lemme ask you this - What kind of money are your best Internet Marketers making on MaxBounty? Do these guys favor one kind of offer over another? Where are they getting their traffic? PPC or organic? What percentage of your clients are making $100 a day?

Should one focus on mastering PPC and driving traffic that way or should one spend their time building an authority site with backlinks, etc?

Which sort of offers should a newbie focus on if they want to achieve something like $100 a day?

We have thousands of active publishers on the network of all sizes. Some do PPC, some do mailings, some have straight sites, some do incentive. So there is no real answer to your question. All types of traffic generation can be profitable.

My suggestion for which you should take is to go with one you feel you can master the most easily, especially if you are just starting. Get your experience on something (relatively) easy for you, then once you've mastered it, you can use that experience to try something else.

 

[sonneti]

I left a ppc campaign running over the weekend and came back to 1 lead out of 150 clicks... A buddy of mine said I should test them out so I loaded up some proxies & filled in my offers to test.

First offer: Scrubbed.

Second offer: Scrubbed.

Third offer: Geo blocked when I had a US IP

Fourth offer: Scrubbed.

Max Bounty might not directly scrub these offers themselves but if they are happening on your network is it not your responsibility?

Do you periodically test the offers your advertisers are running?

Assuming that you don't get paid when I don't get paid I find it very hard to believe that you are allowing the advertisers a free run at apparently defrauding both you and I at the same time.

 

[superbspurs]

i know for a fact there is scrubbing. I sent targetted traffic to several networks. MB 1200 clicks 17 conversions. Other networks the traffic was lighter with more conversions for email submits. i'm not complaining cos i understand that scrubbing is necessary, just that the denials are rather tiresome.

I've stopped sending traffic to MB for now because of the incessant scrubbing of all my legitimate leads. I'll concentrate on trial offers in future i think.

 

[TheInternetHustler]

I left a ppc campaign running over the weekend and came back to 1 lead out of 150 clicks... A buddy of mine said I should test them out so I loaded up some proxies & filled in my offers to test.

First offer: Scrubbed.

Second offer: Scrubbed.

Third offer: Geo blocked when I had a US IP

Fourth offer: Scrubbed.

Max Bounty might not directly scrub these offers themselves but if they are happening on your network is it not your responsibility?

Do you periodically test the offers your advertisers are running?

Assuming that you don't get paid when I don't get paid I find it very hard to believe that you are allowing the advertisers a free run at apparently defrauding both you and I at the same time.

It's always a posibillity the proxies were already blacklisted(chances are if you just googled for proxies), also did you clear cookies etc? Also advertisers have safe gards to prevent bad leads by filtering fake addresses and phone numbers etc. Also I woundn't say in a forum that you attempted lead fraud if I were you but whatev..

And Steve, have you read the thread from the owner of copeac which claims all email submit advertisers shave leads because they have to because of all the fraud? I think it's completelly understandable..

Also what do you have to say about grey hat traffic from mass YT uploads, fake face book accnts etc.? Is it generally excepted as long as the leads are good and affiliates have traffic go through there own landing pages first? I know in another post you said BH seo is cool, I guess that allows autoblogs etc.

Also what percentage of trial offers (acai/biz op) result in successfull rebills? Im just curious about that industry. And why is it always $79 or $81 or something like that? Just results in the best average when charge backs are factored in? I saw a video proffessor offor on another network that was $250 lol

Thanks

 

[MaxSteve]

And Steve, have you read the thread from the owner of copeac which claims all email submit advertisers shave leads because they have to because of all the fraud? I think it's completelly understandable..

Shave? No. Filter out leads that fail their in-house fraud/dup/validity checks? Yes. You touched on some of the stuff that happens. E-mail submit merchants have dozens of checks they do before they decide a lead is valid. I admit it might look like randomly shaving leads, but I have yet to prove it. Why don't I check into it more? Well, for every one affiliate that claims shaving, I have two affiliates that are making the campaign work with a consistent conversion rate and they're happy. And for every 10 affiliates that claim shaving, half of them give me the "I had 5 friends fill out the offer" line. Who should I believe? The affiliates that are making the campaigns work and generating thousands of leads, or those who run a handful of leads then complain?

E-mail submits have been around for years. Do you really think they'd still be here it they made it a practice of screwing everybody that ran their campaigns? Eventually, they'd run out of people to screw and be out of business. That's simply not happening.

Also what do you have to say about grey hat traffic...

Bottom line to me... don't trick the user into signing or partially signing up for the merchant's offer/service. No GodCPA/Cakeslice, no Secret Submit, no incenting offers that shouldn't be, no educating surfers that they can stop after page 1, no fake job ads, no fake apartment ads, no misrepresenting the offer, etc. When the surfer clicks on the link to get to the merchant's offer, they should know exactly what they're doing and what they're getting. That's really the bottom line.

Also what percentage of trial offers (acai/biz op) result in successfull rebills? Im just curious about that industry. And why is it always $79 or $81 or something like that?

I honestly couldn't tell you. Rebill merchants keep most of that to themselves.

 

[TheInternetHustler]

Bottom line to me... don't trick the user into signing or partially signing up for the merchant's offer/service. No GodCPA/Cakeslice, no Secret Submit, no incenting offers that shouldn't be, no educating surfers that they can stop after page 1, no fake job ads, no fake apartment ads, no misrepresenting the offer, etc. When the surfer clicks on the link to get to the merchant's offer, they should know exactly what they're doing and what they're getting. That's really the bottom line.

Cool, that was the answer I was looking for, works for me