Super Affiliate Marketing Blog

I’m sure all of you have heard the term “click fraud” before. Funny thing is, just a few years ago, it didn’t exist. For years, even back in the adult days of the mid-90’s click fraud existed. Back then people just used simple bots that made multiple connections through proxies, but they didn’t really use them for search engine clicks (there was no adsense), instead they’d use it on their TGP sites or traffic trading sites to make it seem like they were sending tens of thousands of clicks, but really it was some desktop app or php script sending air your way, while you’d send back real people. After a while, webmasters started to catch on, and some new security scripts were made, and that was the end of it for years.

Then came the adsense explosion. Finally a new way to make some serious bank online without having to sell products. Instead, the search engine giant known as Google said “here is a snippet of code, stick it into your source code, and poof, it will measure your page’s topic and generate relevant ads for your site that you can make cash off of for every click”. Great! So of course, with every easy way to make money, there will always be a handful of pirates trying to make an even easier buck by finding loopholes in the system. But you have to accept it, because as much as you want it to go away, it will never be fully removed, so companies learn to accept that there will be a very slight amount of fraud, but it most likely won’t effect profit margins or revenue. A lot of retail stores take this into consideration when shoplifting comes to mind. They know, there will be a very small amount of people who will steal from their store, even with all of their security measures and whatnot, it will never end. So it’s sometimes best to just accept a small amount of defeat, cut your losses, and focus on the bigger issues like increasing revenue ten fold somewhere down the line.

Now my gripe here with click fraud is that it really is overrated. For about the last two years all I ever hear about now is click fraud this and click fraud that. People are asking “is click fraud really fraud and illegal?” The fast answer to that is no. There are no US laws against click fraud, although if you are planning on cheating your adsense, you are in turn going against Google’s TOS, so you’re breaking their company rules, and in some ways if you’re planning on robbing millions of dollars from their advertisers, you can bet you will be sued for it. But is it against the law? Nope. There is no law saying “click fraud is illegal and is considered actual FRAUD”.

With that being said, I don’t want you to think that I’m a fan of it, because I’m really not. I’ve had loads of ppc campaigns with weird looking IP’s showing up over and over, and they are pretty easy to pick up if you have some type of free or super cheap script in place to detect it. But why the hell is there such a sudden panic going around about this click fraud shit? It’s as if people just figured it out or are saying that it just came onto the scene, when really, it’s been around for a lot longer than most of you reading this blog!

The reason is simple. Money. As usual. Now, I’m a big fan of capitalism and unique/creative business ideas on how to make money or how to create your own niche market or industry and go nuts with it and make tons of cash, but what I don’t appreciate are all of these new click fraud firms that are literally scaring the crap out of every ppc advertiser, seo firm, sem firm, affiliate marketer and blogger in the industry. Why is everyone so goddamn scared all of a sudden? Again, money. These firms are now using the good old fashioned scare tactic to make everyone think that if you don’t use their overpriced scripts and services that you will lose millions of dollars, or if you don’t agree with them and see it the way they are perceiving it, then you are a total idiot and you don’t mind losing millions of dollars in ad campaigns. Well, I guess I’m an idiot, because I don’t think I’ve ever spent even $1M on a campaign, so how exactly can I expect to be losing millions from click fraud?

When I notice fraud, I log it and report it and get a quick comp or refund. It’s so frickin easy. Why do I need these overpriced services on an enterprise level? Well, I don’t, and neither do any of you. I don’t care how big or small of a ppc advertiser you are, these services are storming the industry like the black plague, and no one is questioning them whatsoever. Where the hell are they pulling these millions of dollars in lost revenue or advertising dollar figures from? Does that mean that when traffic fluctuates from great conversions to crappy ones that click fraud is the culprit? No way man! That stuff happens all of the time. There is nothing you can do to make yourself convert at insane rates all the time. Shit happens, sorry to be the one to tell you, but this is the industry we’ve chosen, and everyone needs to accept that sometimes, beyond our control, shit happens! It really is that simple.

Click fraud will not kill the internet, or bring it down, or kill off billions of dollars in advertising dollars. I’m sorry, but click fraud is such a minor threat to advertising campaigns that it is just plain retarded to put so much focus on it. I think if anyone that should be held responsible for it, it should be the actual engines and networks themselves, not the advertisers. If these click fraud firms want to exist, try selling your shit door to door to the networks and engines. Ohh wait, they’ll turn you down, that’s right, because they also know that click fraud is a joke of a threat. So what better place to pawn that crap around than the feeble minded and sometimes overly gullible general public. Get one or two well known bloggers to mention it and boom you have a shitstorm of panic over some measly little threat. I’d be a hell of a lot more concerned with spam, and viruses, things that can actually do some serious damage to a network or server.

I’m pretty sure I’ll be catching a lot of flack for voicing my opinion on this matter, but I could care less. I just wanted to get it out there to let people know that you are spending waaaay too much time focusing and spending money on dumb scripts and services that are so irrelevant, when really you could pick up some cheap script from hotscripts.com or find a custom one on one of those freelancing sites like rentacoder or elance or wherever to make your own. I’ve seen a lot of these analytical programs and services, and they are filled with completely useless bells and whistles of shit. All you need to do is make sure some asshole isn’t proxying his way into your pocket (these cheap scripts for about $20-$30 can find and log proxies too!) through adsense, and also pick up on a single IP clicking your ads fifty million times a day, but then again, Google also protects you from this stuff (the smaller engines do too, but not as well, so you’ll need the cheap script) for the most part, so really, there’s no reason to get all crazy about it.

Enjoy your New Years. See ya in 2007.

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