Fraud Ring Exposed: Powersignups
Hello everyone, my name is Gennadiy Ryklin. I’m the owner of the Adfinity CPA affiliate network. In this article I will talk about affiliate fraud in two parts: 1) I will briefly discuss the state of fraud on affiliate networks, and 2) state a specific example I’ve seen personally – so other networks, and even advertisers and publishers will know what to watch out for.
Part I: Fraud in Affiliate Networks
As David Montague, founder and president of the The Fraud Practice said jokingly at the Performance Marketing Leadership Summit this November (hosted by Mark Roth of Offervault): “Fraud is the second oldest business known to man.” As hard as affiliate networks try to improve measures to improve the quality of their publishers, there are some that will always sneak through. These days especially, with diet and weight loss continuity offers that only require a consumer to pay a nominal shipping and handling charge, gift card fraud is still prevalent no matter what measures advertisers take to block BIN ranges. Another huge source of fraud are leadgen offers, which do not require a credit card. Adfinity has taken a few measures to improve their publisher quality:
1. We do not take international publishers, period.
2. We require a phone interview with every publisher, as well as a verified email address.
3. We require a minimum of three references from other affiliate networks or other reputable businesses.
4. We have a zero-tolerance fraud policy. We do not give publishers a second chance if they generate fraudulent traffic.
In addition to these policies, we strictly monitor publisher’s traffic, which leads to part 2.
Part II: Catching the Bad Apple Early
While I was going through our traffic logs today, here is what I found for one particular affiliate running an EDU campaign:
Considering his name is akin to John Smith in terms of the “American sounding blandness” many fraudsters use, I assumed it was a fraudulent international publisher with phone forwarding, or an American constituent who sold his account.
I asked the publisher how he was driving traffic. He told me “PPC.” Considering the traffic log showed all the email originated from Yahoo Mail, I instantly assumed the guy had no idea what he was talking about. He admitted to using a service called Powersignups (which I won’t link to in order to avoid giving them extra backlinks), where he paid for 1,000 leads up front for a dollar each. Doing more research, I came across their website. What they basically do is fill out lead gen offers with fake information, based on the affiliate link someone provides them. And I suspect a lot of the time it is too late for affiliate networks to charge back the leads, especially ones that don’t have their affiliate managers monitor traffic logs.
Moral of the story? MONITOR YOUR TRAFFIC LOGS CLOSELY. In this particular case, what tipped me off was the fact the conversion ratio (leads/clicks) was almost 1:1. But I may have overlooked it if it was a more believable conversion like 10%. Here’s some screenshots of the website in case it gets DDoS’ed soon.
What are some measures you take to ensure your publisher’s, or your own traffic is clean? Leave a comment.
That’s ridiculus that they are paying for these leads. That bugs the hell out of me considering this is leads to lower payouts from advertisers because of fraud ond them overall dropping campaigns from networks altogether.
I hope they get DDOSed hard and anyone using them gets slapped by every search engine known to man for any sites that they may actually be running.
This blog is about Affiliate Marketing, Affiliate Programs and Internet Marketing. Fake Http Referer
Fraud seems to come on all sides of Internet Marketing. I joined a PPC network, and could not find a publisher on the network that I could promote.
Checking out the publishers in Google was easy because the scam complaints were the first search results for every publisher that I checked.
How many PPC Networks would remain standing if the FTC began regulating them?
“We do not take international publishers, period.”
Is that not very short sighted and insular?
Sites like this which pay people to fill out forms are part of the reason the affiliate marketing industry can not attract big brand clients. This is only part of the fraud issue, there are a lot more “problems” most networks allow, such as spam on myspace or craigslist, scamvertisers to promote their offers through your network, further scamming consumers, and so much more. Bottom feeders in all respects, affiliates, advertisers, etc….
I wouldn’t put down a site you never actually used before. If you don’t truely know anything about how a system works, don’t comment on it. Shows your ignorance.
I personally have used powersignups, and am now currently a reseller. My downline loves them, as do I. I buy huge leads in bulk, then sell the sign ups to others. The sign ups come from people interested in home business, that is it. So they are not mortgage leads, real estate leads, etc. When they visit your site they sign up, they know they are going to a home business related site before they go there. That is why they sign up.
For you to slander a website you never used is ludicrous.
same game : dude, what? How can you defend them? based on those traffic logs it’s quite obvious that they are fraudulent leads. Another way to look at it is if they are so good at sending 100% guaranteed leads, why do they sell them for $1 a pop?
You do not need to use a prostitute to realise the negative affects this can have on the community.
Maybe you don’t understand what has taken place here. It is quite evident that powersignups is not purely being used for home business “leads” and in any case it is being abused. It is quite evident from the screenshots posted here that only one individual (I.P) was actually filling out and completing these offers. This is fraud. The people who create the lead or free trial offers are NOT paying for useless data like this, they are paying for real people who are interested in the product advertised.
Slander? There is no such thing when it’s backed up by solid evidence as presented here. You admitted that you are a “reseller” so you have a natural bias and simply refuse to believe this company IS committing fraud. I do wonder if you don’t have an even more vested interest in this company.
@ same game (pussy who hides behind his computer)
You are a fucking idiot. The screenshot alone shows 20 leads from the SAME IP, and you are telling me this is all good quality? These people aren’t signing up themselves clearly so they have no idea their information is being put into all of those various leads.
Bryn I believe you are hiding behind your computer as well.
The point is, you are blaming the website, not your dumb affiliate who decided to use the site. It is not powersignups fault the client asked for signups at said site, nor is it their responsibility to contact the advertiser to tell them so and so is trying to get leads to you guys.
That is like blaming myspace for all the bots and spam from users.