As affiliate marketers we know most of the products or services we’re promoting are complete bullshit and some are out right scams. We can play it off and say it’s their fault for signing up and not reading the fine print for that “Free Trial Offer, Only Pay $1.95 For Shipping!”, that really ends up charging them like $100 a month. Top that off with terrible customer service/support and a refund policy that’s so stressful and difficult most people won’t bother.
It really dawned on me today when I had about 10 minutes in between classes and I went to the computer lab to check on my campaign stats. I sat beside this girl who was just in the process of filling in one of those oh so common cell phone pin submit offers. I wanted to say to her, “you know that’s a scam right, they’re just gonna bill you every month”. Ok well it’s not a scam because it says subscription service $9.99 or whatever but most people are too distracted by the colors and lights that they just spin the wheel or whatever the thing is and check their cell for the “secret password for your results”, which of course is the pin activation which solidifies their subscription. Congratulations you just paid $9.99 for a bullshit automatically generated response. Here’s where it gets scary…So after she did the pin submit she clicked back like 5 times and was back on her facebook which is where she originally found the cell phone offer. I looked over and saw one of my ads…right away I felt like complete shit. I am pretty positive it was my offer she had just completed.
I actually don’t feel THAT bad considering most people are idiots if they don’t read the fine print when entering their credit card or any kind of subscription service, it’s there for a reason. Unfortunately in this world most people that make good money usually have to get dirty in some shape or form.
Oh and I’m not saying I’m stopping anything but it does make you think sometimes, trust me I still LOVE what I do.
Do you ever think about this? I know pay day loans are a big scam and I refuse to promote them because they can literally ruin peoples lives.
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For all intents and purposes, the terms are laid out on the landing page. People just have to take the time to read them. Taking advantage of a cell phone campaign, for instance, is no different than going to a cell phone counter at the mall, in the sense that there will be a hot offer of some sort, and some terms the buyer will need to know about. Don’t feel bad about seeing your campaign on her Facebook account. It should be encouraging to happen across one of your campaigns in class of all places!
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Bryn Youngblut Reply:
October 9th, 2008 at 6:12 pm
I really could care less now but at the time I did feel a little bad about not telling her but for all I know she may have fully known what she was doing. Either way yes the terms are laid out but most people are too lazy to read them and they often suffer the consequences.
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I wouldn’t call those offers scams in the first place… if they were actually scams, the networks they’re on wouldn’t run them.
Trisha Lyn Fawvers last blog post..Online Marketing Glossary: Meta Tag
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Bryn Youngblut Reply:
October 9th, 2008 at 6:25 pm
OK I’m going to revise my wording to “some”, and I don’t mean complete scams but for example if you’re going to tell me that a weight loss green tea is actually going to make you lose 60-95 pounds with drinking tea alone then you really need to do some research and read all the reviews.
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The real question is..how’d you get ringtones on Facebook?! lol
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Bryn Youngblut Reply:
October 10th, 2008 at 7:45 pm
I can’t go into detail about that.
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There’s a popular phrase- “guns don’t kill people, people kill people”, I think it applies here as well. (well maybe aside from the killing) 🙂
IMO people are (or at least should be) responsible for reading everything and knowing what they got themselves into.
Chriss last blog post..You can never check too many times
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Marc Reply:
November 4th, 2008 at 3:09 am
No, bullets kill people.
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Cute picture there. I actually did that a few days back.
Ermmm…unethical me. 🙂
Desmond – DesmondBlog.coms last blog post..How I Overturned This Current Awful Economy and Made $560 Out of It
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In my opinion you have no motive to feel bad. I’ve read an article that in my country (Romania) only 2% read the Terms of Service or Terms of Agreement. I even have friends that think that they “own” Windows and don’t really understand the license principle(well, this is another story). Just click “I agree with the terms mentioned above”. So, as long as it is in the terms, it’s not a scam and you really don’t have any reason to feel bad.
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That’s how they are making money and it’s really sad. People dont think twice before trying those sick companies
instant cash blogs last blog post..Get 104 Day Free Trial To E-Junkie.com
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