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. MaxBounty 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, MaxBounty 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. Please feel free to contact me with any questions. Thank you.
Good to see a network taking positive action in trying to maintain the incentive market, instead of just taking the easy way out and cutting it off completely. Unfortunately it is all the small sites with the $20 scripts that are slowly destroying it for the legitimate players.
Hello Steven, I agree that this is necessary to help save incentive marketing. We are all trying our hardest and taking extra precautions approving accounts. RevU now requires 100% ID check for all affiliates waiting for approval (if they are not denied outright for failing to meet specific site criteria) Fraud has become ridiculous and in the mind set that some people view incentive marketing as nothing more than a job or a way to get quick cash. Best, Kelly
Advertisers are pulling out left and right from allowing incentives. I'm glad MaxBounty is working to keep incentived marketing as a viable option for everyone involved.
If you don't use a script such as FSRevolution, how else do we create an incentive site? I recently purchased FSRevolution for $250..looks like my license is worthless now.
Someone looking to get into incentive marketing can start from scratch and create their own incentive script. And hopefully in the process of building and perfecting the script/website, he'll learn the ins and outs of quality measurements and fraud prevention. With the right pro-active attitude, he will end up building a community of valued members instead of just a bunch of cheat surfers looking to ream sponsors. What’s wrong with using a pre-written script that’s easy to implement? It's just that the barrier to entry into the incentive world is SO low when making use of these scripts that you get very newbie publishers who don't know any better getting into the business. They aren’t experienced enough to recognize obvious quality problems and become an open door to fraud. They put no anti-fraud measures in place, and even after we council them on how to reduce fraud, they don’t know how to implement the solutions because they just bought some script that does it all for them on the promise of making a quick buck. I guess I can sum it by saying that these scripts simply give you the mechanics to run an incentive website, and the mechanics are only a small part of a SUCCESSFUL incentive business. Want to get into incentive marketing, and see long term success? It can be done. Abandon the idea of simply having a GET CASH BY COMPLETING OFFERS website. There was a time when these websites worked well, but now the model has been abused by surfers so much that it’s almost impossible to run one successfully. By success, I specifically mean measuring by whether your sponsors are happy with your traffic and will come back for more, not just by how active your members are. If you still insist on running a cash-back website, you better be a very knowledgeable webmaster who knows how to reduce fraud, and willing to implement measures that will earn you less in the long run but ensure quality.
Well I had a script coded from scratch, made a few hundred since I opened the site 2 days ago, and was amoung those suspended. As I said I totally understand it was necessary, still a pain in it. I suppose I should say congratulations on taking the step. I know all your merchants will be pleased with this decision. This will undoubtedly raise the value of the traffic, and who knows, maybe even raise some of the payouts?
I believe it could have been done a little better. I myself am in no way trying to cheat the system or the merchants with my Incentive Site. My site was approved by MaxBounty and I was accepted into the network. I have put in a lot of effort working with the site and have earned commissions, but now I suppose they may never be paid. The email said "any unpaid commissions that you have accumulated in your account will be put on hold until the merchants have paid for them." If the merchants are offered a choice not to pay for leads and/or sales then they would probably not pay. But if some of them do I hope that MaxBounty keeps their word and pays. I for one will be looking for ways that I can improve my site to better match the needs of networks like MaxBounty. Hopefully in the near future I will be able to work with them again. EDIT -- I have been running one of the offers on a completely different site with no incentives. That campaign has earned in excess of $20 or 30. I am curious to see if they pay for that.
While significant enough in number, the fraud leads are a smallish portion of the total business we do with our sponsors. If they wish to continue getting our business, and they all do, they'll pay for the valid leads. Most merchants are looking for long term relationships, and that would be damaged by just deciding not to pay for any leads. They just need time to sort out which leads are good and which are bad. We cannot expect our merchants to pay for fraud. That’s great to hear, and we echo the sentiment that we’d love to work with you too. Many of the suspended publishers have already signed up to MaxBounty again with new affiliate accounts to continue their non-incentive marketing. With some exceptions, the publishers effected weren’t terminated, the accounts are simply suspended pending lead review and payment. The publishers in question are welcome back with non-incentive websites, or at the very least non-cash incentive marketing. (Just sign up with a different email address please.) There's still lots of value and growth opportunities in incentive marketing. I do however suggest getting out of the CASH FOR OFFERS business. Fraud surfers are actively hunting for loyalty websites paying cash powered by inexpensive incentive scripts because they are so easy to defraud. If you want to stick with incentive marketing, switch to non-monetary rewards instead.
The specific nature of the fraud isn't immediately identifiable. All trial offers have low initial costs with larger monthly subscription fees (unless the surfer cancels during the trial) which the member agrees to when they sign up. Unscrupulous surfers are buying low value gift cards, like say a prepaid $20 Visa card, and signing up for a bunch of trial offers using the card. They turn that $20 in to $200 of incentive earnings, and the next month or two later when the merchant tries to charge the subscription fee, the card is empty and dead. The merchant calls the surfer but finds the data is bad too. The merchant usually only finds out he was defrauded after another month later when they get their merchant account statement. By then he's paid the network, the network paid the affiliate, the affiliate paid the crappy surfer, and the surfer buys another card and starts all over again... unless someone puts a stop to the chain, and that's what we're doing by suspending these script using affiliates. Sadly, some bad affiliates are educating surfers on how to defraud merchants using this very method on message boards and myspace.... and then crying foul because they aren't getting paid. Needless to say we've captured screen shots of this and have passed the info on to our merchants who are looking at legal options. Essentially though, those bad apples encouraging the fraud have pretty much ruined it for anyone using an inexpensive incentive script. So if you run an incentive website using these scripts, while you might not have done anything wrong, others have opened the door to make you (along with the networks, and the merchants) a victim of fraud. Who pays for this fraud? The sponsors are getting reamed with huge fees from their merchant account processors. The networks are eating and paying for thousands of dollars of bad leads from previous months of undetected fraud which sponsors now rightfully don't want to pay for. It's now being passed down to affiliates who have a hand in it, albeit mostly unintentionally. What really gets me is that if you look at a bunch of the websites we suspended yesterday, they've already pulled our links (good!) and jumped to 'no-questions-asked' networks even though they know they're assisting fraud. (bad!) The anonymity of the Net is not always a good thing.
I just sent Steve a important email about my site, if it was ok with your new policy. Can you please look into this? Thanks
Thank you for your replies JP I appreciate your company's position and I can well understand how cases of fraud have gotten out of hand in this area. I will definitely take all your suggestions and comments to heart. I will be reapplying to MaxBounty very soon.