FTC Government Grant Press Conference
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thankyou, halle-fuckin-leuja someone with some balls saying what i too am feeling. its this hard ass attitude thats going to ruin cpa. while we keep brushing over the problems things are just going to get worse. lets take acai for instance. advertiser a cannot make offer profitable so scrubs 30% of leads to balance books, advertiser b follows suit and does the same, word gets round, and its now acceptable practice so what happens if ALL acai advertisers do this?
after all who's gonna be the sucker paying out on all leads if everyone else is scrubbing x% so they can offer a higher payout or make more profit. where do we turn to then? i tell you where, to more stable markets.
i never thought i'd say this but clickbank marketing is looking more and more intriguing everyday and so is pps. after playing in the acai sharkpit for the last 6 months its taught me one thing, you may be good but i can certainly handle it, so those CB noob pussies are going to be a total push over. so if i'm thinking this with my limited experience i can't be the only one and where are the networks going to turn when the talent is pitching up their tents somewhere else?
i personally blame the networks for all this. after watching my stats for the last year you can see the points where the shavers get turned on, in some cases my stats look like a flight of stairs one epc dropoff after another.
its BS and you cannot tell me i'm the only one this happening to (mr AM) i watch my search volume too. and everytime this happens there is a massive drop off in impressions fueled by the real market makers (media buyers) switching or dropping offers.
until networks step up to the plate and start dropping shaving advertisers this is not going to change its just going to fuel the current situation of fake blogs, page jacking and lazy marketing.
after all who can blame a marketer for being lazy on an offer that may or most likely will not be paying out in a month or so. fuck that i'll be concentrating my original hard work on the stable markets and fly by night offers will get fly by night efforts.
</rant>
Hello friend,
I no think goverment mad at blog format of landing page. I think they no like advertisement of deception.
Such as say black president Obama want give you free $12,000 check of stimulus monies if fill form and pay $1.99 for shipping and handling.
Good luck bro.
definitely...is it too much to ask for some type of level of service? you would figure with theamount of money we make networks, they would treat us right
right, i get that. but aren't these blogs deceptive? they are wholly false..
i don't think its the blog as a whole i think its elements of it that are the problem. some blogs are inferring that the free grant money is part of the stimulus plan (it is not) that everyone will get a free grant that they don't have to pay back (not everyone will) and the testimonials (comments) are fake (they are). there are no disclaimers like what you get at the front of an ebook (individuals are not guaranteed to make x amount of money or have similar results etc) and its not stated that this is not an impartial but a commercial review.
i believe this can be worked around with the correct disclaimers and due diligence but its going to take someone a lot smarter than me to get it right. afterall the core of the flog story is just a copyright story, the "reluctant hero" and has been used to market evrything from golf training to weightloss for many years previously without problem. even when Frank Kern got sued by the FTC it wasn't that what he said was deceptive its just that he didn't state that not everyone will have similar results and this opened up the door to subsequent litigation.
of course if their wasn't 1000 copies of the same page floating around it would have been a lot harder for the FTC to jump on the industry as a whole they could have only targetted individual pages and offers. right now we served the whole market up on a platter.
d'oh
of course if their wasn't 1000 copies of the same page floating around it would have been a lot harder for the FTC to jump on the industry as a whole they could have only targetted individual pages and offers. right now we served the whole market up on a platter.
d'oh
i believe this can be worked around with the correct disclaimers and due diligence but its going to take someone a lot smarter than me to get it right. afterall the core of the flog story is just a copyright story, the "reluctant hero" and has been used to market evrything from golf training to weightloss for many years previously without problem. even when Frank Kern got sued by the FTC it wasn't that what he said was deceptive its just that he didn't state that not everyone will have similar results and this opened up the door to subsequent litigation.
of course if their wasn't 1000 copies of the same page floating around it would have been a lot harder for the FTC to jump on the industry as a whole they could have only targetted individual pages and offers. right now we served the whole market up on a platter.
d'oh
let me rephrase, is the fact that people are making up identities and selling people on products using these fake stories illegal? (grants or not)
this thread is changing topics more often than a stripper changes tops.
listen, while you might see some corollation between these topics, i dont.
advertisers shaving is a totally different issue. you have a direct business relationship with an advertiser. getting mad and "doing something" about it might be a great idea.
you do NOT have a business relationship with other affiliates, whether they are your competition or not. if you dont like what they are doing you have the right to do something entirely different in the great ocean that is affiliate marketing.
but this scarcity thinking, "omg, look at those big bad affiliates that are cheating" isn't going to get the complainer anywhere closer to success.
thats my question. thanks. i feel like these acai blogs have been around so long that they ARE legal lol
How about long lost relatives' testimonials from other country. Well, i have alot of doubts about stuff that relates to other's country. How does FTC deal with that?
Better make sure they're available to talk to, and that they actually signed up and lost weight with their berries or are ballin' outta control with their google cash.
ok another newb question...is the practice of a company making its profits from the consumer's lack of attention to details illegal? (rebills)
It will take an hour (maybe) to write a comprehensive and
accurate enough answer.
So, to keep it simple (sacrificing a bit of accuracy):
It's illegal only if you deliberately mislead the consumer.
If you make the consumer aware of the rebill, you are fine.
The boundaries are fuzzy. Very fuzzy.
If you really want to learn what FTC considers acceptable,
go to this page:
Negative Options - An FTC Workshop Analyzing Negative Option Marketing
It contains almost everything you need to know.
Especially, read both of the PDFs under the section "BUSINESS INFORMATION"
very carefully. Here are the links to them:
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/business/ecommerce/bus28.pdf
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/business/ecommerce/bus41.pdf
Spend enough time to read both of them, understand it,
AND read between the lines.
Once you understand the true intentions and real constraints
of FTC, you have an advantage over almost everyone else.
Including FTC.
Reading back on it, I can see how it'd be hard to pick up on. I'll try and clarify.
It's not a totally different issue. We attract the type of business we practice. A perfect example is the latest "Google Cash" merchant running away with the cash. If the merchant is sketchy with customers, or is willing to stomach massive legal risk, they are *gasp* going to be just as sketchy with us. I think most people accepted that for better or for worse.
But as they accept that for THOSE merchants, the OTHER merchants realize they can get away with it. And we're so used to it, they can.
I have the "right" to do whatever I'd like. But before we turn this all 'do whatever to compete' ask yourself if you'd include 'finding your name and publishing it as the owner of your scammy ass site' in there. I wouldn't do it(obviously; not my style), but how would that go over?
Or what if someone takes your awesome new stimulus lander and reports it to the webhost w/ a link to the ftc press conference?
All the dumbasses feeling invincible and wanting a truly cutthroat business should think about what that actually entails. Not a single one of us is as hard to find as we think we are. I'm now up to only 2 grant sites I couldn't find the owner of (and yes, I'm not much harder to find than a lot of these guys if someone really puts their mind to it)
If someone wants to run a blog style lander, I'm not quite a big enough hypocrite to complain(I do love me some gray area). But there is a difference between fraud and tough competition.
Acai was competition. Google Cash was (a bit more dubious) competition. Grants(when they're called grants) were competition. Stimulus=fraud.
I mean, what. Are we going to be calling phishers affiliates next, so long as they have an upsell?
I guess we are going to have to agree to disagree. I don't see blog landers as a threat. Yes, it might attract a few more shady advertisers, but its up to the networks to regulate, imo. I met with the founder of Hydra yesterday, lunched with some of the staff and spoke to the sales person who deals directly with that google advertiser. Its a good group of people, professional, who enjoy themselves, this industry and mean well, imo. I dont see this nefarious underbelly rearing its head.
The fact that we can all be found is all the more reason to believe that affiliate extremism will show itself to have consequences. The industry and our government will regulate such extremism one way or the other, imo.
But, imo, a lie on a acia lander is a lie. A lie on a grant lander is a lie. A lie is fraud. Both are equal. Photoshopping a check into Obamas hand, getting a $100k media buy and having 100+ affiliates run the same ad to 50 million viewers on facebook--well, that's just mass publishing the lie. Hence, the press conference we all got to enjoy.
Pretty simple in my book. But not a threat to me or this industry, imo.
I'm not saying it's like an apocalyptic threat. But it does make things more difficult.
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