Just as I've been sick & tired of seeing make-money-online landing pages telling you to "claim free money"... Clickmagick has recently decided to tighten their policy, started to ban its users from promoting websites with deceptive content. It actually always has, but it's now made clear what kind of landing pages and funnels it prohibits. These are exactly the kind of pages used by many inexperienced solo ad sellers who have a list of supposedly "online business opportunities" niche. These contents are not just deceitful but so ridiculously moronic providing zero value. So I'm glad that Clickmagick has announced to take this action from now on.
You might occasionally encounter these sites in online business communities such as IBO Toolbox or LeadsLeap. But you never get to see them by organic search because most of them are already penalised by search engines such as Google and Bing. These spammers create a simple funnel exclusively to trade in solo ads or traffic exchange.
Why Are They Spamming?
Why do these traffic providers use such false advertisements? They do this simply because they want a bigger list of subscribers. You could say because online business opportunity market is saturated, so they've come up with a quick solution to collect more leads; target bigger audience. As in, any internet users on a random basis.
If advertised to the world at large, which one would attract more leads?
[a] Content marketing and SEO workshop: Revolutionary Blueprint to $10,000 per month
[b] Claim your cash prize from PayPal $1,234.56 NOW!
The answer is obvious - only business opportunity seekers would understand jargons such as "content marketing" or "SEO" in [a]. However there's nothing new in this ad text. "Revolutionary" "eye-opening method" "completely autopilot" "spits out a stream of cash every hour"... They've heard all that before. Very few will opt in nowadays. But at least the right people - online business hopefuls.
[b] would collect a lot more leads - wrong leads. And two types of people would subscribe;
One would be people who are skeptical but curious enough to opt in. They soon find out it's a scam, unsubscribe and complain. The other one would be those who are desperate for free money. They don't have a penny to spend - they're never prepared to, or they're in debt. They'd be clicking and opting in with any offers, again & again, hoping they'll hit some kind of jackpot one day.
Imagine buying a traffic from a solo ad seller with a list full of type [b] subscribers - you might get a decent number of people sign up with you, because they'll just sign up with anything without looking. But they'll never spend money on your product, they were only interested in 'free money' in the first place anyway.
Contents Prohibited To Promote Using Clickmagick
Clickmagick is a link tracking service, allowing you to track where your website visitors come from and split test your landing pages. It also has a rotator feature for traffic service providers, where they can distribute clicks to multiple different offers or clicks to people in a co-op particularly for solo ad sellers.
Clickmagick is a useful, innovative and legitimate tool. But because it's a linking service that provides its own URL's (www.clkmg.com and www.clkmr.com) to the members, if one member ran a malicious activity, the whole URL's could risk being blacklisted and that would affect all other members. Clickmagick needs to do anything to prevent this understandably, in order to maintain its quality of service and reputation. So it has always prohibited to promote sites such as;
- 1Illegal scams - malware/phishing, and malicious downloads disguised or bundled with legitimate software like Flash Player.
- 2Adult/porn sites - except legitimate, mainstream dating sites.
Now in addition, it disallows the two types of specific technique that are used by spam traffic sellers;
- 3"Claim Your Free Money" scam sites, shown in the image above. Any content suggesting that money has been sent to the user, the user has money waiting to be "collected" or the user has deposits to claim.
- 4Endless opt-in funnels. When a user enters their email address in an opt-in form, it opens up a new tab asking to "reconfirm" their email address, which is deceptively a new opt-in form. When that is submitted by the user, another tab opens up again with unrelated opt-in form, and it just keeps repeating over and over.
Many spammers use a combination of these two techniques. So end users are repeatedly told a random amount of money is "ready for collection" each time they click or opt in. There is never a followup to any of the offers (because no such offer ever exists). The second they "click to collect" their free money, they're presented with a new page showing a different amount ready for them to collect. Within minutes the user's browser will have 20+ tabs open, and they'll be unknowingly subscribed to multiple lists owned by different spammers.
Unethical, Well-Established Business
While I welcome the Clickmagick's tightened policy (and we all should!), I have received messages from many "panicked" fellow solo ad marketers in the past few days. Clickmagick no longer allows them to tell their subscribers that there's a free money to pick up. Clickmagick no longer lets them use 20 consecutive popups. So they'd have no option but to find another link rotator service in order to continue their "business".
...They either don't realise they are actually spammers, or they do but think I'm a partner in crime who might have an idea to get away with it (oh no, no.)
A few other solo ad sellers hit back at the Clickmagick's new strict policy, saying they make a decent money by using the technique (point 3 & 4 above). They make a living out of the technique that works and they're proud of it so what's wrong with it? They are proud of running an unethical business, that's what's wrong, obviously...
There's not much of a difference between this and selling counterfeit goods. What's not supposed to be sustainable has been well-sustained for a while, and that really is not right.
There's No Such Thing As 'Free Money'
If you're reading this, you know there's no such thing. But I tell you, there are so many people across the world who still believe there is. The type [b] subscribers, that is. They believe there's some kind of mystery going on in the internet marketing world, and if they tweak something they'll find large sum of money out of nowhere. I'm saying this because I receive emails on a weekly basis asking for help, like this one.
When I receive such messages, I ask them if they've received a proof of earnings, I tell them not to believe "Claim Your Free Money" spammer sites. And lastly that the only way to "get paid online" is to work on it and earn it. I do respond to every single email of this kind, but it's almost pointless because none of them gets back to my reply. Understandably because, these people were never interested in online marketing in the first place.
The "Free Money" scam site ban by Clickmagick will hopefully give an impact on new solo ad sellers' behaviour, making online business owners just a little easier to find quality traffic in the future.
I was a victim of these sites. Last year I was broke and desperate to make money on internet but had no knowledge of how to make a success. Stupidly I signed up with these sites believing they were telling the truth. I was overjoyed when I was told I was a winner of some gifts so I signed up. A popup window told me to confirm my email address so I entered it, then another popup told me some money was ready for collection. I had a little doubts but I really was desperate.
I started to receive tons of emails, and all of them had trashy contents. Package was undelivered. More cash was ready for collection. Some were even unrelated to online money and said sexy girls were waiting for me etc etc I was so disgusted. I was naive. I reported all as spam but still my spam folder was filled 100+ emails every day. In the end I simply had to change my email address.
Thank you Ray for your advice. I wish I had read this last year. Never ever believe these trashy sites however broke you are. They will never give you money for nothing.
Hi Clint, thanks for sharing your experience. I don’t blame you, there are still millions of people in the world unfortunately, who believe that some mysterious tricks exist online. That if you click “something” you might receive a fortune for nothing. It’s 2018, it’s about time everyone realised it would be stupidly too good to be true.
If you’re in online marketing now, I wish you the best of luck with success. For any help, don’t hesitate to give me a shout any time. Thanks for your visit!
Nice but teach me how
Thanks Mate, it’s good to see you keep your feet on the ground. I’m also sick + tired of spam solo ad vendors on Facebook selling no quality clicks like 1000 clicks per day. Only the endless funnels and bots enable them to do this. They all quit CM and moved to Qliker. I don’t trust Qliker users, I flatly refuse to work with them.
Funny thing is just as you say, they don’t know that they are spammers. If they aren’t, who is? Facebook is full of low quality solo ad businesses, I’m out now.
Hi, thank you for your message. Yes I’m aware that most of the solo ad sellers from FB have moved to Qliker, which inevitably ended most of my clickbanking partnerships. The endless funnels and this “free gift” squeeze page strategies really are spam, and unsustainable, so I’m glad that I have a great working relationship with Clickmagick too. I wish you the best of luck with continuing success.
i am getting negative about opening e mails as all the day its collect my address all the way across the screen, till it get to the end of the page, if you ever have a real offer that you have actually looked at and approve of please advise .
Hi Mariane, thanks for your comment. Yes, that’s the “endless funnels” – exactly what Clickmagick has started to ban. If one site tries to collect your email address more than once (very likely to be multiple sites though – you’ll notice the different URLs), then just close the pages. They’re spammers and they’ll never help you in any ways.
I have looked at many online business opportunities and recommend many kinds, and it depends what you really want to do. Please don’t hesitate to send me a message from here, I’ll get back to you with my detailed advice. Thanks for your visit!