Hello everyone,i'm a newby here i've just tried my luck on affiliate program 8th december last year. and i has choosed maxbounty as my network based on referrer on this forum. my earning in december are bout $3183 on pay per leads program. On 4th january 2007 my earning are $1190 but on 5th jan 2007 maxbounty had terminate my account with a reason that my leads fraudulent cause my users using stolen CC to complete the offer with a merchant. even not all the offer need CC to completed. my account terminated and all the earning that i should get are never been paid. i have contact them and the answer not good enough for me. My account is suspended due to lots of 'fraudelent leads', they said that this is because of my less awareness about the peaking leads from my site. I don't think this is all my fault since i have filtered the leads as tight as i could. As i see on my database that there's no one using the same IP,email or e-gold address. This is the best effort can be done on my side since i can't filter which account using stolen credit card since we don't collect such data. can anyone help me this??i came from a very poor country.. and my debt are about $2000 and this is a huge amount for me. regards
Kept on contacting them about it, send an email every day. I can't see how they can refuse to pay your earnings on that basis. As you say you have no control over the CC issue. In the meantime sign up to the network in my signature, they would never withold your earnings or theat you like that. They are great to work with and answer every question straight away. Sorry I can't be of more help ....
Um what do you mean by "less awareness about the peaking leads"? This is a bit of a worry for me, as I've just started promoting some Maxbounty offers. Has anyone else experienced a similar situation which they feel they have not contributed to in any way, and could not have detected themselves?
thanks cyclops..i'll always do that. for progress : about "less awareness about the peaking leads" maxbounty blame me for not aware why our income increasing and my website get booming. This is a dream for every affiliates right??? i approved all the customers based on Sub ID report from maxbounty, and they blame me for that too???
WillBeLucky. your account was terminated for two reason, and both are closely related. 1 - A merchant you were advertising verified the sales you generated, and ALL were from stolen credit cards. We verified your other sales with the other merchants you were advertising, and all confirmed the same thing. Over and over, stolen credit cards. Not only is the advertiser NOT paying for these sales, but a merchant suffers a penalty on every bad transaction, so it actually cost them to do business with you. So your fraud sales cost the merchant, we certainly aren't getting paid for them... I think it's pretty much a given that you shouldn't be paid either. 2 - You were terminated because you have no safety precautions in place to try and limit fraud generated through your incentive site, evidenced by the problem that just happened. The better incentive websites will delay payment to the surfer, store their personal info, etc... take precautions to not be victim of fraud. In your case, someone would come to your site, create an account, sign up for a few trial offers one right after the other, get paid through e-gold in short order... and then create another account with you and start all over again with the same offers and a different stolen credit card. Over and over for thousands of dollars of fraud. There were a few cases of leads being generated without the use of a credit card... but they came from the same IP addresses as CC fraud. We believe you probably didn't have a direct hand in the fraud. I acknowledge that you might be just as much a victim as the merchant is in this case. However the history of your account of solely generating fraudulent sales and your inability to limit the fraud prompted your termination. (We're not about to let you back in and generate more fraud!) In all honestly, you should be thankful the merchants in question aren't pursuing the matter beyond reversing your sales. This type of fraud is usually by credit card rings, people using phished credit cards, and targeting incentive websites as a means of laundering money from the card. Simply not knowing you generated fraud isn't enough to absolve you of responsibility. By keeping a margin and paying out the difference to your members, you were profiting from the use of stolen credit cards, assisting in money laundering. An affiliate is ultimately responsible for their traffic. I'd strongly suggest you take this as a lesson and modify your business model. Delay payment to your incentive members, perhaps offer points instead, send checks instead of using e-gold. These might seems like bad ideas which will lessen a surfer's interest in your incentive program, but it'll stop most fraud. If you're thinking long term, take the precautions to treat your merchant like gold.
OP, you said you came from a "poor country". Could it be that stolen CCs are common in that country? I would say that there is nothing you can do here. That is how CPA ad network works, they get paid and they pay you. if they dont get paid, they cant pay you. I am sorry about your misfortune. JP, how do stolen CCs get past your merchant? Dont they have to do some kind of "authorization" or "verification" of the CCs submitted? As much as OP is on the wrong, could it be possible that your merchant arenot doing their job to do the extra of verifying the CCs? I am in no way pointing fingers, i dont have very much clue how CCs get accepted in internet, so if i have said something wrong, please kindly enlighten me. Thanks
I'm not completely sure about how they run their CC processing, but I presume these cards were good when the charge was initiated, but soon after found to the stolen. If a phish-spammer sends a couple hundred million emails, fools 10000 people to click, and ultimately gets 100 credit card numbers... he probably has a few days where he can make lots of charges on each card before the CC company realizes what's going on. Trial offer campaigns are at high risk because the charge is usually only a few bucks, and some don't even charge right away but only seek a validation to see if the card is good. This kind of fraud is the absolutely worse, from scum of the earth thieves. The poor victims who fell for these phish scams are almost guaranteed now at serious risk for identity theft too.
ok JP i realize the problem here. But what kind of ability that i should have to limit fraud that came from my incentive site?? i'm new here,please let me know how?? are all the effort that i had done is not enough by filtering them by name,IP address and e-gold account number?? i dont know what else, so please tell me. I agree for what u say to tread all the merchant like gold, but i see the merchant should aware to this too. As an affiliate we only depend on the report based on your subID report,if merchants still dont have any system to protect from stolen CC, that nothing i can do to limit all the fraud that came from my site (right??). Let say if i use pending payment system. i try to aware and limit all the fraud but i cant limit all member who interest with the offer, they sign up and connect to merchant,fill application complete and CC was good at that time but it was stolen let say after 3 days. is it possible for merchants not approving them? and i see my subID report approved them and i do the same thing. Maybe you should explain bout my inability first and you are right. I take this as a big lesson for me. and i hope from your explanation i can get a clue here. thanks
Well if you're new to affiliate marketing, like YUHU said, all networks work the same way about payment. However, it's not just CPA networks, but most affiliate programs. And we're not talking about simple non-payment where the network could not collect what's owed, but legit reversed transactions where the merchant doesn't really owe anything for these bad sales. While most bad credit card sales aren't the fault of the affiliate, it's certainly not the merchant's fault either, or the network, so no one should have to pay. The vast majority of merchants will reverse bad credit card sales, and like I said in my previous post, usually the credit card seems good initially at authorization, but is later discovered as stolen. We're not just talking about credit cards without enough credit, which are usually denied at the point of sale (so the sale is never tracked at all for affiliates), but stolen or forged cards. There's no way for a merchant to immediately identify a card that's been freshly stolen, so if you don't want a bunch of reversals, the onus is on the incentive affiliate to try and limit fraudsters. What can an incentive site to avoid being a target for fraudsters? First, drop egold. While many egold members are NOT fraud, many fraudsters use egold. See wikipedia's entry on egold, there's a history of problems... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egold#Crime_and_fraud Second, get full info from your member before you give him any money. Don't just hand out payments when someone gives you only an email address and an egold account. Get their name, address, etc, and store it in a database. Verify this info against the IP address they signed up with and later log in with. Might want to limit yourself to just American members to begin with until you get a handle on how to prevent problems, since a large portion of bad leads are generated from foreign countries. Third, implement a delay before you pay your members. A month is a good number. 30 days is usually sufficient to clear a credit card transaction, at least to clear it from fraud. Lots of surfers will balk that other programs pay sooner, so you'll certainly lose some members over this, but you'll be mostly fraud free. Fourth, pay your members by check. If the member sign up info says his name is John Smith, but the payee name is significantly different, this should be a warning sign for you to check into his leads. Cashing a check leaves a paper trail, and thieves try to avoid that. (They've got to cash the check somewhere.) Even just using PayPal instead of a check is safer than egold. Most importantly, don't be blinded by the money. Look into your members and the leads they are generating, and boot those you know are causing problems. Take steps so they cannot sign up again. Do you see a pattern anywhere in the sign ups? Is the conversion too good to be true? Ask your merchant to verify some questionable transactions, most would be happy to accommodate. There are unfortunately incentive websites out there that turn a blind eye to problems because they like the money it brings it, but they usually don't last too long, and are ultimately as responsible as the thieves committing the crime. Take these steps, and you'll have merchants and network begging for your traffic.
JP - thanks for the clarification on the cause of this, I'm always a little wary of new affiliates/networks that I'm beginning to promote, but this detailed explanation has put my mind at ease once more.
how in the heck are you generating 3k in leads in dec and like another 1k in leads in 5 days? Seems pretty fishy when your getting that much business in such a short period of time. Don't know what of that is net income vs maybe gross sales but interesting.. Agree with JP, not calling or trying to say that the OP had anything to do with the fraudulent activities, but interesting that a person with 3 posts calls out a major player in the affiliate game and it turns out that the charges are fraudulent.... What types of sites or advertising were you doing to garner these results? Assuming that the OP isn't a US based webmaster but could be wrong...
JP Sauve , Your posts looks really honest to me. It seems that you are trying really hard at Max Bounty. I wanted to see which products you are offering to affiliates and it isn't possible to see its list without signing. Could you consider to make list of products browsable without signing?
Yes it is possible, I'll PM you. There's a reason why we don't broadcast the campaign list though. It's not a huge secret, but by offering a public list you're completely open to being scooped by other networks. (It happens anyway, but you try to prevent it where possible). As well CPA networks aren't like the big affiliate networks. Sponsors on Linkshare for example are long term, so they can show a list on their site and it'll be pretty stable for year. With a CPA network, any list I show you today will be different a week from now. If I just send you a list of current offers because you didn't sign up as publisher, and you don't like any of them, you won't be informed of new campaigns. Keep in mind that the next new campaign might be exactly what you're looking for. So I personally think it's better to sign up, get the network updates with campaign announcements, and start a relationship with the network. Not to mention, you'll have access to an affiliate manager who can deal on rates with you if you see something you want but need a little more, or want to match/beat rates on campaigns you're already running elsewhere. Anyway, I'll PM you a list.
JP Sauve - there is a list of campaigns that can be viewed by anyone without signing up for Maxbounty, I don't know if it is intended to be public and I didn't check how accurate it is, but it is there, live on maxbounty website
I too "WAS" an affiliate of Max Bounty....I was also told that I was let go because of fraudulent leads. Strikes me as funny because I do not run on any of my sites those dreaded Credit Card offers. I am not an incentive site, but a private website owner. I only use email submits with a few education offers all of which are free! I had a problem with paypal limiting access back in July, around the time my payment was due, and I believe Max Bounty rode that to the hilt! I did get a response from the payment issue email. They were on Canada Holidays and could not get back to me as soon as they would of liked. I was told one day they would cut me a"CHEQUE" when payments were issued the following week, and the next day let go! I have emailed them because I feel I am entitled to an explaination and have not heard back from them since!...Sound and feels weird to me.....
Well...I guess I start off all I have to say with a "Well"...LOL. No seriously, my time with Max Bounty has been a pleasure! I have spoken with Steve from Max Bounty via email and I have found out the nature of my problems with them. Steve was very polite, giving me a chance to explain my side of the problem...which by the way I thought was totally awesome of him! Bless Him! There is no reason to hold anger over this company, what was done has been done, and there "ain't" no going back. All the blame will lay on me, as it should. I try not to "air" to many of my problems and "misgivings" out in public, but chose to take a more private route with whom I have to deal with. I fully understand Max Bounty's stand on this, and will uphold their decision....God Bless Ya'll and I wish ya'll nothing but Good Fortune in all you partake. Max Bounty is a good company to affilate with!.....Chow.......