Hi all, I was recently on craigslist and saw a few personals which I reluctantly responded too. From the process, I noticed that the process starts with an email, which is typically responded to within 30 minutes. The reply typically includes a link to a website with pictures of beautiful women, and legit looking personal websites. The blog typically referrs the individual to a pay dating site. This seems like a very good stream of income if the individual can generate enought traffic. I'm not here judge to anyone. I'm just curious if this a phenomon many of you more veteran e-commerce professionals have come across, and whether it has a name. Furthermore, just out of curiousity. How many personals on craigslist do you think are really legit? 5%? Anythoughts people? Is it moral? Is it legit? Is it good money? I feel kind of stupid if this is the case, but kind of curious at the same time.
Shoemoney has commented on this before on WMR. Affiliate marketers who use CL to attempt to convert dating sponsors. It's weak, and you can spot them 99% of the time right out of the gate. But there are still plenty using CL for that. Make sure you report them to CL.
It's really not ethical since they are signing up to meet said hot person in their area when in reality they don't exist. It's not a great way to make money but it's not that bad either, especially since they are probably outsourcing the CL postings to a third-party. If they get banned they'll just switch to a different proxy and start again. I think the people that fall for it kind of deserve it though. I think of it as social Darwinism in action, a fool and his money are quickly parted, etc.
Yeah, it's unethical. The worst type of unethical online business practice are those "Scam Exposed - Don't Fall For these Scams" sites that are really scams themselves. I wouldn't be able to look in the mirror again if I did something like that.
It is unethical and it has been going on for some time. However, due to people like which is realizing this fact, this money making method is slowly becoming saturated and most will not fall for the trap any more.
I did a bit of investigation and think I found the 'individual' who may be behind a few of these. Not really detective work or anything intrusive, just a few dns and domain lookups. For example, I just looked up the domain of one of the girls, and found the name of the guy it is registered too. So I assume he is the one who is getting paid for everyone who registers through that site. What do you guys recommend the next step be? I'm not sure if it's really illegal so maybe just write up an article about it and hopefully sad lonely people won't waste their money on these websites?