Hello everyone, I have an idea thast should help stop getting spam submisssions and unpaid submission to paid directories. I will admit that its probably not an original idea but nonetheless - What if you have it to where they have to go to the payment page before they are able to reach the actual submission page? Example: http://www.advantagecontent.com/submit/payment-standard.php Tell me what you think of this. Pros? Cons?
So do you charge or not in the end? If you charge for all submissions, then I don't see any new idea here -- of course paid directories don't have that much of a problem with spam. If you want to ask for credit card details without charging in the end, then you will still block many people due to inconvenience and security issue. Or am I missing anything?
I have been getting numerous listing submissions where the submitter does not pay. They go through the trouble of filling out the form but then they do not continue to the payment. I have one directory where I usually get 5 or 6 spam submissions every day. The submission page is very clear on the price for the listing. I only use PayPal as a payment option so there are no credit card info asked for.
But such submissions can be automatically discarded, right? Why would you even look at them if they don't play by your rules ?
yes but wouldnt you think it would be annoying to have to delete listings? and no you cannot automatically discard them you have to actually log into an admin panel and reject them.
That would make some sense. But you want to make sure you get the correct details as well, because their connection may be cut off half-way through the process. There's no point in taking money and not knowing what it is for, after all (well, not so long as you are honest!). Basically you need to get all the transaction details through before the payment is processed and the site appears in your admin panel. So it's best if the payment processing is integrated with the rest of the script. The trouble is, a lot of directory scripts are built so that you can simply put up Paypal buttons, and so on. Putting the payment page before the submit page wouldn't make an iota of difference: it doesn't matter where you put it, because the directory script doesn't deal with the payment side of things. Paypal does. Any half-decent hacker/auto-submit bot can go direct to the submit page and post the required values.
Obelia's point is relevant: even if the script could be customized to take no action until after payment, a bot could easily defeat that, since the payment processor is external and has no integration options. However, I'm not sure that bot users are programmers -- or willing to hire programmers to hack this *one* customized script. So, in the end, customizing the script might be a good solution.