Hey Digitalpoint, My names Harrison and I am 14 years old. I have been in the internet marketing business for a few months now and i have had the privilege to make money online and attend high school. I have noticed more and more kids at my school talking about being scammed by "Free Ring-tone Websites" I was wondering what you guys think about such a serious indirect (it does not affect us) issue. I wrote a post on my blog about it www.CpaShare.com but my blog is currently not that big and i really want to explore this issue so I'm making a post here on DP. Express your opinions please!
It's not a scam (although I would call it "scammy") if they publish on their website that you will be charged. I checked out a few of these websites that claim you get free ringtones, but on each, somewhere in the fine print, they all mention charges. They know that most people do not read the fine print (Terms), and while many will call their cell phone service provider and get the charge taken off, many will let it slide. Jim
Sure it's a bit of an shady market, but as you wrote by yourself...People need to read the TOS. I personally dont like Sites that try to fool the people making them believe it is FREE!! Totally FREE etc... But at the end of the day, you need to earn money and I personally think, if the money is easy, why not? Sure there are borders I would never cross just to earn money. But tbh ringtones isnt one and I can't call it unethical, because it isn't unethical in my eyes. Sure, lots of teenagers may not know that it costs (Even if on almost all of azoogleads landingpages is noted that $9.99 will be charged, and not only in the fineprint!) but I'm sure there are a lot people that just dont care because they dont want to search a long time. And I as affiliate marketer am no babysitter for teenagers that can't read. I dont say it's free, I say it's complimentary and that means not totally free it means "free bonus item" after the dictionary, or I just say bonus or sometimes I just say ringtones without complimentary or bonus. But I'm sure if no one of us would say complimentary or bonus, the sales would be approx. the same... P.S You know what I call unethical as example? If you scam people, as example saying it 9.99 will be charged but the fineprint says 9.99 plus 29.99 fees or whatever, or if you sell illegal stuff just to make money, or if you hurt peoples finances in a way they never can recover just to earn money, or spreading dialers around etc etc etc. There are so much examples, but ringtones not at least in my eyes, as long as you play by the rules and do not create pages that autosubmit tos and phonenumber etc ;o)
Simple, it's really easy money. It's a no-maintenance website that has a high demand and a really high profit margin.
What has this to do with moral?! We offer an service not only for kids and teens, as you can see from the second comment on your blog, even mom's are downloading ringtones... There's a big fat $9.99 on the top right corner of almost every landingpage, just because some teenagers feel scammed because they can't read we should stop earning money with it?
I don't think it's a question of morality either...even though I may not like the techniques used. They do state somewhere that there will be a charge. As I said before, "It's all in the fine print". it's also called "Buyer Beware". I'm not defending the tactics used by such sites, but as a buyer you need to take responsibility too. Jim
They put the auto submit on the bottom of the web-page where its hard to see. If you saw on shoemoney's blog, theres a web-page which actually auto approves you when you put your number in and the page title was "totally free" I just prefer offers which just charge people without knowledge
There's no one party to blame. Consumers should be more careful (ignorance is not an excuse). Affiliate marketers should not lie (saying "Free" and other forms of the word). Ringtone companies/affiliate networks should restrict what affiliates can do (I believe most of them already restrict affiliates from saying "Free" and other forms of it), and make it more apparent on landing pages that this service will cost you. Not everybody plays on morals, especially when it comes to money.
Money changing perception Somehow they are right, the ringtones are "free" - you don't pay anything for them, you pay for the subscription that gives you the free ringtones bonus. Anyway I think the word "free" is banned by all aff programs or CPA and all the campaign landing pages have the prices for the monthly subscription displayed... There might be exceptions though ...
Yeah indeed, we are evil. We say Bonus Tones where people get 10 Tones as A BONUS... This is marketing, and what else can we do then saying on each LP it costs 9.99/month...And maybe you should look on a few more LP's, bc it is noted clearly visible that it costs and not only in the fineprint. P.S: You can't call an entire business unethical, only bc some marketers and companies act unethical. Most marketers play by the rules and don't try to hide the costs, and sure even if you note the costs, some people still dont realize it. But that's not my or others fault, it's on a lot pages noted in BOLD...9.99/month. So what are we we talking about? Only about terms like bonus?
It is actually bit of a scam. It's HAAAAAAAAARD for people to read the fine print (who reads fine prints anymore?) and that's what "they" are counting on. I'm willing to bet 90% (if not more) of the people who enter their cell phone numbers into those pages have no idea they're going to be charged monthly. Once they figure it out, they'll probably spend another month or two trying to figure out how to stop it. BTW xharrisonx, props for doing this at 14 and understanding it already. Cripes, all I could think about when I was 14 was preventing pimples on my face. You should get ahead fast if you're already this far ahead at your age.
Because most people don't read the fine print doesn't make it a "bit of a scam". It is the consumers responsibility to read the fine print. That is part of the "contract". most consumers are just plan lazy and have such immediate gratification needs that they wiz by the TOS on everything. I have several online and offline businesses. I am also a former teacher of 27 years. I can tell you the most questions that people ask, and the more "misunderstandings" they have, are exactly because people read less and less, now. When I was teaching, the Chemistry Teacher used to say to his students all the time, "If all else fails, read the directions."...LOL Just because you don't read, don't blame the company. They are not responsible for putting their terms in 7 point, bold, fire engine red font on the top of their pages. Please, take a little responsibility and stop acting like a victim looking for someone to blame. That's what children do, and unfortunately, more and more adults these days. BTW...there is a thread on another forum where people are trashing GoDaddy because they cancelled a domain registration of one registrant and sold it to the next in line. The original registrant obviously did not read the TOS, input inaccurate information into his domain whois (a violation of ICANN rules), did not check the accuracy of his information, and did not respond to Godaddy's emails for over 8 weeks. Now, he and others are blaming Godaddy. Some are even going so far to say that GoDaddy is depriving this registrant of his business. What a laugh. I guess if you can't take responsibility for your own actions, you need to blame someone else. Jim
Bull$hit. You go into a store and there is a GIANT BANNER screaming "EVERYTHING MUST GO! .99 CENTS ALL ITEMS!" so you run and grab the vacumn cleaner, thinking it's .99 cents. But you forgot to see the tiny print underneath the "EVERYTHING MUST GO!" banner, whose tiny, tiny font is jammed in there alongside the day's date and the store name and the store's manager and the store's owner and every employee working at the store that day, which states, <small>"everything is .99 cents BUT the vacumn cleaner</small>. That's not the customers being lazy, that's the store doing everything in its power to TRICK you. Except ringtones makes it even harder, because no one is going to tell you that the ringtones cost money UNTIL the bill arrives the next month. BTW You state in an earlier post that you're not "defending" the unmoral tactics of these ringtone vendors, but that seems to be exactly what you're doing. Customers have a responsibility to read every single font on a page no matter how small or jammed into the page, but these unscrupulous ringtone vendors DON'T have a responsibility to NOT try to hide the fine print from you? Give me a break. It's like blaming the victim of a rape and ignoring the rapist.