Dissecting Scammy CPA Publishers

Over the past year, I have been involved quite a bit in the (questionable) world of CPA (Cost Per Action) Offers.  And during this time, I have seen quite a rollercoaster of offers and strategies for selling products online.

Understand that CPA Networks are really nothing more than simple affiliate networks (such as Clickbank), but they tend to be much more aggressive and less patrolled.  Because of this, advertisers and publishers are more likely to take their offers and marketing to the extremes.  And over the past year, I have seen the limits to where these advertisers and publishers may go.

Further, over the past few months, we have also seen the FTC become much more aggressive in cleaning up this CPA industry.

Today, I want to focus on the publisher (or the affiliate), “Flogs” (or fake blogs) and Diet Offers (such as Acai Offers).

(5staraffiliateprograms.com has been covering a lot of this lately, particularly in this case, FTC - Big Crack Down on Free Trial Diet Offers)

I show this for two reasons:

1)  To help you identify and avoid them yourself

2)  To educate you, and understand WHY these are so effective from a conversion stand-point (and why they are misleading,too!)

TRUST

Flogs, or fake blogs, rely on the relationship between trust and social media.  If the information seems to come from a trusted source, it must be real.

USE TRUST FOR TRAFFIC

In this example, the publisher appears to be using the Google Adsense network to place content-network ads on a trust-worthy website, USAToday.  These ads are relatively cheap, but their quality would be quite high assuming it is aligned with the right USA Today article:

The other conversation trick here is to make the ad look like another news story from this website while re-affirming this with the “News” URL (like www.News3.tv).

I had to admit that the first time I saw this, I assumed it was another USA Today story about “Acai EXPOSED”!

USE TRUST FOR CONVERSION

So I click on the link.

This takes me to another news-looking site in the structure of a blog.

Again, TRUST.

- It still appears to be a sponsored by a reputable news agency.

- It has “AS SEEN ON…” logos all over the place.

- The blog format with comments makes it appear that it is a true social media outlet.

From a conversation stand-point, this web page has all of the signs of a reputable, honest report.

But of course, there is not real about this at all.

Let me point out a few things here:

1) Every red arrow I show here takes you to the same offer page (this is where the affiliate puts their link). This includes the ads, the videos, and inner-content links.

2) The blue arrow, which has links to your local weather (??? - again, the weather makes the page look more authentic) just points back to the same page.

3)  The comments look quite good!  Everyone loves the product, but smartly, the very bottom states that “comments have been closed due to spam abuse”.  How ironic!

The “cover-up”!  How can they do this?  Well, technically they can for two reasons.

Notice on the very top of the page, it says “advertisement”.

And then look at the fine print at the bottom.  It removes any affiliation with the reputable social media companies and then goes into the details of the offer itself.

This is very subtle.

But the biggest problem with these promotions are not how they are doing it, but what they are saying.

Fabricating testimonials is not legal and the FTC will not allow this.  Are these case studies and comments real?  If they are not, then this fraud.

This is what is causing a lot of stir in the CPA world right now.  The other concern here is how do they identify if they are real or not?  Social media allows for anonymity. Who is to say that these are not real people?  We send Twitter and Facebook recommendations all day.  It is what makes social media so great and powerful.

Still, it can be abused and agencies like the FTC and companies (like Clickbooth) are starting to crack down on this.

CONCLUSION

Being in this CPA space can be frustrating at times.  And trying to compete with slimy offers and publishers is always an uphill battle.  Still, CPA networks can be important leveraging points to online business.

Next week, I will talk more about the advertiser side of CPA networks and the direction that the offers are heading (and why CPA offers are being cleaned up, as well).

But while we see all of these sneaky tactics and misleading marketing taking place, it is our job as online marketers to identify them and learn from them, too.

cheers…matt