Maybe the dumbest question ever??

Okay whats up guys. I have a quick question that might just be the noobiest question you have seen so far. If you cant tell I am new to CPA so just bare with me....okay here it goes...why can you not just put cpa offers on craigslist? haha I mean lets say you were for example trying to sell a starbucks 100 dollar gift card, and you could put it on craigslist for 50 dollars and say you could use the cash more than the coffee, and when they email you, you say something like " I just got back from selling the card, I had crazy amounts of people hitting me up for that thing, but its not hard to get another one at this site I originally got mine from: (affiliate link)." I would think this would be against the rules of the CPA networks, but how would your AM know that you are doing it through craigslist? and by the way I applied for GoOffers, and got accepted yesterday with no phone call. and even told them I was fairly new to internet marketing, that I was looking to do major expansion on my website, I was going to be buying opt in lists to send offers, and that I did some offline marketing as well, which isnt exactly true at the moment, but hey, it got me accepted.

I mean lets say you were for example trying to sell a starbucks 100 dollar gift card, and you could put it on craigslist for 50 dollars and say you could use the cash more than the coffee, and when they email you, you say something like " I just got back from selling the card, I had crazy amounts of people hitting me up for that thing, but its not hard to get another one at this site I originally got mine from: (affiliate link).

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people do actually do this lol obviously not exactly the same but thats the general idea

This is actually working method, but you will face account bans, so prepare yourself to get more accounts. If you want to hide source of your traffic you can blank the referrer.

m.rvs2141 said:

This is actually working method, but you will face account bans, so prepare yourself to get more accounts. If you want to hide source of your traffic you can blank the referrer.

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So your AM would be able to tell where the traffic was coming from? and by traffic, do you mean traffic to the site where they have to purchase? and what do you mean blank the referrer? I've never done anything with CPA so is there anyway you could go a little more into detail bro?

anybody? anybody at all?

zsimpson22 said:

So your AM would be able to tell where the traffic was coming from? and by traffic, do you mean traffic to the site where they have to purchase? and what do you mean blank the referrer? I've never done anything with CPA so is there anyway you could go a little more into detail bro?

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To answer your first question about why CPA companies don't allow posting on CL, I never understood it myself but it's not them as much as the advertisers telling them what kind of traffic is allowed.

And yes, of course your am knows where your traffic comes from, just like any site owner knows where his traffic comes from. To get around it, you can blank or spoof the referrer using various methods. By that I mean you might use a php script or you might redirect your traffic so your am thinks it's coming from somewhere other than CL. For example, you have an ad on craigs for a gift card. Rather than linking directly to the offer, you have a link that goes to YOUR site. Using different methods, you simply have your site redirect to the offer site.

wow.. that's a cool idea..

But if he sends the link in an email, after someone emails him about the gift card, would CL still show as the source of the traffic? I mean, the person would be clicking the link from inside his email.

I am also a noob, so I'm sorry if I'm completely wrong.

TCC256 said:

But if he sends the link in an email, after someone emails him about the gift card, would CL still show as the source of the traffic? I mean, the person would be clicking the link from inside his email.

I am also a noob, so I'm sorry if I'm completely wrong.

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CL would not show as the source of traffic as the offer link would be in the email like you said.

Ultimately the problem with the "method" is that people that feel scammed do not convert. The point of happy customers is to keep lifting their spirits. Let them down once in the process and you lose them.

When the advertiser sees the poor conversions they will shave you to nothing and request that you get banned so you don't even get paid for the morons that do convert.

It's not that CL traffic is bad for the advertiser, it's the fact that BH methods are used to seduce the traffic into taking action on the offer and making the traffic feel like they were taken which then creates the user that came from CL to be upset and jump all over the advertiser in a way where it makes it look like the advertiser put the ad on CL when it was actually you. So when they trace back the traffic and see it came from you, your affiliate account gets banned, they don't pay you on the conversions you made all month long (making you think you banked) which causes the advertiser ro say they don't want CL traffic. When in fact the traffic from CL is not bad it's that the traffic from CL gets upset when they feel they have been taken by being made to take action on an offer in some way, shape or form.

Haha, this like one of the most known methods in CPA. I've used a variation of it. Time consuming, but it works.

I think that blackhat traffic goes best with incentive-allowed offers. They don't pay as well and might get shaved, but they allow rather low quality traffic. Just don't send too much to a single network or they will particularly dislike you.

Actually it is the advertisers which do not like traffic from craigslist. And CPA companies can easily look at where the traffic is coming from.