Fraud Update

[SunshineGirl]

Just got this email from one of the big advertising companies that we use (a CPA in affiliate lingo). I don't think that it will mean much for us, but I like to keep you as informed as I am.

*********************

Incentive traffic has received a lot of bad press lately. While we firmly believe not all incentive traffic is bad, there is a subset of incentive sites that are responsible for a significant amount of the fraud that is giving all incentive sites the bad press. The amount of fraud generated by this subset is so high that many merchants are now refusing to accept incentive traffic. If too many merchants stop accepting incentive traffic, the incentive model will no longer be sustainable.

This is not something we'd like to see. XXX believes that incentive traffic can still be valuable to merchants. However, this incentive traffic must be made up of surfers who are truly interested in trying out the merchant's product or service in return for a small incentive. The sole objective of the surfer should not be to just make some fast cash (i.e. turn their $20 gift card into a $100 PayPal payment).

As a result, XXX is announcing the following changes to our policies on incentive sites:

First, we will no longer accept into the network any site built with the following tools: MyEasyScripts, FSRevolution, ShiftCode or any other tool of a similar nature which promotes a quick incentive without any interest in promoting the merchant's product or service. These are the tools that are being used to create the types of incentive sites that do little more than create high levels of fraud orders for our merchants.

Second, we will be going through our existing affiliate base and suspending many of our affiliates that have sites built using the above mentioned tools. In addition, the commissions earned by these suspended affiliates will be put on hold until the merchants have fully reviewed the leads generated and have paid for them. Exceptions will be made for publishers with a proven track record of high quality leads.

Third, we announced to all networks that broker our offers that we would no longer accept incentive traffic from them. This prevents the bad subset of incentive affiliates from simply swapping their links from us to the other network.

I want to stress that we will still accept and work with any incentive sites that are not built with those tools and are not built simply to defraud our merchants.

We realize that this will be an inconvenience for some of our publishers and hope that they understand that this is a necessary step to revitalize the incentive model.

[jl8595]

Thanks for the info Tricia - very interesting. Glad to hear they're cracking down on the bad guys.

[llgray16]

That is very interesting. I know some popular sites are going to take a hit from this. Glad SR isn't

[m 'n c]

hmm. I'm glad they are going after the shady sites. I know another one I had signed up with and never got into just had to change due to the advertisers cracking down on them. They were a shiftcode site.

[Hedy]

That is very interesting. I know some popular sites are going to take a hit from this. Glad SR isn't

Seconded.

[Soccer Princess]

Thanks for the update Tricia!

[chocovrdmicears]

They were a shiftcode site.

That is a 'shiftcode site' ?

[Anna]

Interesting! Thanks for sharing and having such a nice honest rewards program!!!

[SunshineGirl]

That is a 'shiftcode site' ?

It sounds worse than what it is. LOL! It's a script that you can buy to start a rewards site kind of out of the box. You don't have to have any html or programming experience to run it. You've probably seen sites that all have the exact same features (an "inbox" rather than a newsletter that goes out, some kind of bonus token game, a proboards forum, etc). It's not so much a knock on those sites as the fact that a 12 year old could launch a rewards site in one day and look totally legitimate (and it happens--really, some of them are run by kids). So there are so many of them now that it has kind of overpopulated the rewards world.

[Anna]

Learn something new everyday here....hmmmm...who would have thought that they had a reward program in a box so to speak? Gee...what will they think of next?