Facebook's 3rd Biggest Advertiser Accused Of Being Affiliate Toolbar Scam; Facebook Says It's Never Heard Of The Company
from the just-like-the-old-days... dept
There have been numerous reports lately concerning just how much money Facebook is making on ads. That's part of the reason it was able to get that otherworldly $50 billion valuation from some. However, some are noticing something fishy in the Facebook ad business. After seeing an AdAge article mention in passing that the third largest advertiser on Facebook is not a household namebrand, but rather Make-My-Baby.com. Google's spam-catcher-in-chief Matt Cutts did some digging and quickly noticed that the site appears to be a sketchy toolbar installer that tries to switch you to using Bing, and then it gets an affiliate cut of any search ads you click on going forward. Cutts also points out that the URL to tell you how to uninstall the toolbar leads to a 404 page not found -- and many folks have had difficulty uninstalling the toolbar.
Marshall Kirkpatrick, over at ReadWriteWeb, digs in deeper and wonders if anyone at Facebook or Microsoft is actually minding the store. Even if they didn't directly know this was happening, if this is really the third largest advertiser on Facebook, both of those companies had to know something was up, just based on the numbers. A company like Facebook is intimately aware of its third biggest advertiser, and if the company is really driving that much traffic to Bing, then Microsoft would surely know about it as well.
Of course, this is where the story gets more bizarre. While Microsoft's response to this story was to cut off the company, Facebook's response was to claim that the company isn't an advertiser at all, let alone the third largest advertiser on the site. So how is it that reports suggest the company is the third largest advertiser, when Facebook claims they're not an advertiser at all? The company does have a slight hedge, by saying that "any affiliates that try to push people there we would shut down." So it's possible that it was hidden through some sort of affiliate setup before Facebook caught it -- but no one seems to be revealing any of the details.
Either way, all of this sounds quite reminiscent of the old adware days, where all sorts of sketchy companies would trick people into installing software to scrape up affiliate revenue. We hadn't seen much of that lately, as many of the old players eventually got wiped out, but it's hardly a surprise that similar schemes would quickly jump up in a Facebook world, whether or not it was officially through Facebook's advertising functionality.
14 Comments | Leave a Comment..
Affiliate marketing is easy once you find the tactics that work for you. The time it takes to become a master depends upon your learning abilities and also your problem solving abilities. There are no rules carved in stone. Everything changes very fast, so you need to change your strategies, too, every day. One method that was extremely great two years ago and you read about it in an e-book might not work today, or might work differently.
The pitfall of most e-books is that they are only listing the general processes and don't give you a step-by-step guide to affiliate marketing. Since there are literally hundreds of tactics to be successful, it would be a very long book to cover every single method. That's why those so-called gurus are only writing about their favorite methods, which would possibly not be the methods that you can utilize the same way.
Not every method will bring in the same results, so you will need testing. You must choose one that is the most appropriate for your personality, and abilities, too. Loads of people find some traffic generation techniques boring or too complicated. That is why about 90% of people starting with Adwords will fail, because they don't like testing and analyzing the keywords. If you are this kind of person, don't even go there, or you will end up losing money instead of making affiliate revenue. Although, if you are a person who loves sharing and communicates easily, social networking would be your best method.
Prior to spending much money on ads, it is always useful to test an offer on free traffic. I started to apply this rule long ago and it has already saved me a lot of money. If I am sending out a free solo e-mail for my list, for example, and it turns out to be a success, I might consider buying e-zine advertising and advertise that way. But if not, I can still do split-test campaigns, therefore maximize conversions prior to paying for traffic.
Continued on the next pagebench craft company
New York Yankees <b>News</b>: The Captain - Pinstripe Alley
New York Yankees news from around the internet on 2/9/2011, including Rob Neyer on Derek Jeter's attempt to bounce back from a disappointing 2010 season.
Fox <b>News</b> focus group in Iowa: President Obama is Muslim | The <b>...</b>
On Sean Hannity's program Monday night, pollster Frank Luntz hosted a focus group of Iowa Republican caucus-goers, gauging their reaction of President Barack Obama's Sunday afternoon interview with Fox News' Bill O'Reilly. ...
Small Business <b>News</b>: Digital Privacy and Customer Care
Small business is all about customer care. So how to you feel about new proposed legislation that is designed to prevent online clients from tracking customer.
bench craft company
Facebook's 3rd Biggest Advertiser Accused Of Being Affiliate Toolbar Scam; Facebook Says It's Never Heard Of The Company
from the just-like-the-old-days... dept
There have been numerous reports lately concerning just how much money Facebook is making on ads. That's part of the reason it was able to get that otherworldly $50 billion valuation from some. However, some are noticing something fishy in the Facebook ad business. After seeing an AdAge article mention in passing that the third largest advertiser on Facebook is not a household namebrand, but rather Make-My-Baby.com. Google's spam-catcher-in-chief Matt Cutts did some digging and quickly noticed that the site appears to be a sketchy toolbar installer that tries to switch you to using Bing, and then it gets an affiliate cut of any search ads you click on going forward. Cutts also points out that the URL to tell you how to uninstall the toolbar leads to a 404 page not found -- and many folks have had difficulty uninstalling the toolbar.
Marshall Kirkpatrick, over at ReadWriteWeb, digs in deeper and wonders if anyone at Facebook or Microsoft is actually minding the store. Even if they didn't directly know this was happening, if this is really the third largest advertiser on Facebook, both of those companies had to know something was up, just based on the numbers. A company like Facebook is intimately aware of its third biggest advertiser, and if the company is really driving that much traffic to Bing, then Microsoft would surely know about it as well.
Of course, this is where the story gets more bizarre. While Microsoft's response to this story was to cut off the company, Facebook's response was to claim that the company isn't an advertiser at all, let alone the third largest advertiser on the site. So how is it that reports suggest the company is the third largest advertiser, when Facebook claims they're not an advertiser at all? The company does have a slight hedge, by saying that "any affiliates that try to push people there we would shut down." So it's possible that it was hidden through some sort of affiliate setup before Facebook caught it -- but no one seems to be revealing any of the details.
Either way, all of this sounds quite reminiscent of the old adware days, where all sorts of sketchy companies would trick people into installing software to scrape up affiliate revenue. We hadn't seen much of that lately, as many of the old players eventually got wiped out, but it's hardly a surprise that similar schemes would quickly jump up in a Facebook world, whether or not it was officially through Facebook's advertising functionality.
14 Comments | Leave a Comment..
Affiliate marketing is easy once you find the tactics that work for you. The time it takes to become a master depends upon your learning abilities and also your problem solving abilities. There are no rules carved in stone. Everything changes very fast, so you need to change your strategies, too, every day. One method that was extremely great two years ago and you read about it in an e-book might not work today, or might work differently.
The pitfall of most e-books is that they are only listing the general processes and don't give you a step-by-step guide to affiliate marketing. Since there are literally hundreds of tactics to be successful, it would be a very long book to cover every single method. That's why those so-called gurus are only writing about their favorite methods, which would possibly not be the methods that you can utilize the same way.
Not every method will bring in the same results, so you will need testing. You must choose one that is the most appropriate for your personality, and abilities, too. Loads of people find some traffic generation techniques boring or too complicated. That is why about 90% of people starting with Adwords will fail, because they don't like testing and analyzing the keywords. If you are this kind of person, don't even go there, or you will end up losing money instead of making affiliate revenue. Although, if you are a person who loves sharing and communicates easily, social networking would be your best method.
Prior to spending much money on ads, it is always useful to test an offer on free traffic. I started to apply this rule long ago and it has already saved me a lot of money. If I am sending out a free solo e-mail for my list, for example, and it turns out to be a success, I might consider buying e-zine advertising and advertise that way. But if not, I can still do split-test campaigns, therefore maximize conversions prior to paying for traffic.
Continued on the next pagebench craft company>
New York Yankees <b>News</b>: The Captain - Pinstripe Alley
New York Yankees news from around the internet on 2/9/2011, including Rob Neyer on Derek Jeter's attempt to bounce back from a disappointing 2010 season.
Fox <b>News</b> focus group in Iowa: President Obama is Muslim | The <b>...</b>
On Sean Hannity's program Monday night, pollster Frank Luntz hosted a focus group of Iowa Republican caucus-goers, gauging their reaction of President Barack Obama's Sunday afternoon interview with Fox News' Bill O'Reilly. ...
Small Business <b>News</b>: Digital Privacy and Customer Care
Small business is all about customer care. So how to you feel about new proposed legislation that is designed to prevent online clients from tracking customer.
bench craft company
[reefeed]
bench craft company
bench craft company
New York Yankees <b>News</b>: The Captain - Pinstripe Alley
New York Yankees news from around the internet on 2/9/2011, including Rob Neyer on Derek Jeter's attempt to bounce back from a disappointing 2010 season.
Fox <b>News</b> focus group in Iowa: President Obama is Muslim | The <b>...</b>
On Sean Hannity's program Monday night, pollster Frank Luntz hosted a focus group of Iowa Republican caucus-goers, gauging their reaction of President Barack Obama's Sunday afternoon interview with Fox News' Bill O'Reilly. ...
Small Business <b>News</b>: Digital Privacy and Customer Care
Small business is all about customer care. So how to you feel about new proposed legislation that is designed to prevent online clients from tracking customer.
bench craft company
Facebook's 3rd Biggest Advertiser Accused Of Being Affiliate Toolbar Scam; Facebook Says It's Never Heard Of The Company
from the just-like-the-old-days... dept
There have been numerous reports lately concerning just how much money Facebook is making on ads. That's part of the reason it was able to get that otherworldly $50 billion valuation from some. However, some are noticing something fishy in the Facebook ad business. After seeing an AdAge article mention in passing that the third largest advertiser on Facebook is not a household namebrand, but rather Make-My-Baby.com. Google's spam-catcher-in-chief Matt Cutts did some digging and quickly noticed that the site appears to be a sketchy toolbar installer that tries to switch you to using Bing, and then it gets an affiliate cut of any search ads you click on going forward. Cutts also points out that the URL to tell you how to uninstall the toolbar leads to a 404 page not found -- and many folks have had difficulty uninstalling the toolbar.
Marshall Kirkpatrick, over at ReadWriteWeb, digs in deeper and wonders if anyone at Facebook or Microsoft is actually minding the store. Even if they didn't directly know this was happening, if this is really the third largest advertiser on Facebook, both of those companies had to know something was up, just based on the numbers. A company like Facebook is intimately aware of its third biggest advertiser, and if the company is really driving that much traffic to Bing, then Microsoft would surely know about it as well.
Of course, this is where the story gets more bizarre. While Microsoft's response to this story was to cut off the company, Facebook's response was to claim that the company isn't an advertiser at all, let alone the third largest advertiser on the site. So how is it that reports suggest the company is the third largest advertiser, when Facebook claims they're not an advertiser at all? The company does have a slight hedge, by saying that "any affiliates that try to push people there we would shut down." So it's possible that it was hidden through some sort of affiliate setup before Facebook caught it -- but no one seems to be revealing any of the details.
Either way, all of this sounds quite reminiscent of the old adware days, where all sorts of sketchy companies would trick people into installing software to scrape up affiliate revenue. We hadn't seen much of that lately, as many of the old players eventually got wiped out, but it's hardly a surprise that similar schemes would quickly jump up in a Facebook world, whether or not it was officially through Facebook's advertising functionality.
14 Comments | Leave a Comment..
Affiliate marketing is easy once you find the tactics that work for you. The time it takes to become a master depends upon your learning abilities and also your problem solving abilities. There are no rules carved in stone. Everything changes very fast, so you need to change your strategies, too, every day. One method that was extremely great two years ago and you read about it in an e-book might not work today, or might work differently.
The pitfall of most e-books is that they are only listing the general processes and don't give you a step-by-step guide to affiliate marketing. Since there are literally hundreds of tactics to be successful, it would be a very long book to cover every single method. That's why those so-called gurus are only writing about their favorite methods, which would possibly not be the methods that you can utilize the same way.
Not every method will bring in the same results, so you will need testing. You must choose one that is the most appropriate for your personality, and abilities, too. Loads of people find some traffic generation techniques boring or too complicated. That is why about 90% of people starting with Adwords will fail, because they don't like testing and analyzing the keywords. If you are this kind of person, don't even go there, or you will end up losing money instead of making affiliate revenue. Although, if you are a person who loves sharing and communicates easily, social networking would be your best method.
Prior to spending much money on ads, it is always useful to test an offer on free traffic. I started to apply this rule long ago and it has already saved me a lot of money. If I am sending out a free solo e-mail for my list, for example, and it turns out to be a success, I might consider buying e-zine advertising and advertise that way. But if not, I can still do split-test campaigns, therefore maximize conversions prior to paying for traffic.
Continued on the next pagebench craft company
bench craft company
New York Yankees <b>News</b>: The Captain - Pinstripe Alley
New York Yankees news from around the internet on 2/9/2011, including Rob Neyer on Derek Jeter's attempt to bounce back from a disappointing 2010 season.
Fox <b>News</b> focus group in Iowa: President Obama is Muslim | The <b>...</b>
On Sean Hannity's program Monday night, pollster Frank Luntz hosted a focus group of Iowa Republican caucus-goers, gauging their reaction of President Barack Obama's Sunday afternoon interview with Fox News' Bill O'Reilly. ...
Small Business <b>News</b>: Digital Privacy and Customer Care
Small business is all about customer care. So how to you feel about new proposed legislation that is designed to prevent online clients from tracking customer.
bench craft company
bench craft company
New York Yankees <b>News</b>: The Captain - Pinstripe Alley
New York Yankees news from around the internet on 2/9/2011, including Rob Neyer on Derek Jeter's attempt to bounce back from a disappointing 2010 season.
Fox <b>News</b> focus group in Iowa: President Obama is Muslim | The <b>...</b>
On Sean Hannity's program Monday night, pollster Frank Luntz hosted a focus group of Iowa Republican caucus-goers, gauging their reaction of President Barack Obama's Sunday afternoon interview with Fox News' Bill O'Reilly. ...
Small Business <b>News</b>: Digital Privacy and Customer Care
Small business is all about customer care. So how to you feel about new proposed legislation that is designed to prevent online clients from tracking customer.
bench craft company
New York Yankees <b>News</b>: The Captain - Pinstripe Alley
New York Yankees news from around the internet on 2/9/2011, including Rob Neyer on Derek Jeter's attempt to bounce back from a disappointing 2010 season.
Fox <b>News</b> focus group in Iowa: President Obama is Muslim | The <b>...</b>
On Sean Hannity's program Monday night, pollster Frank Luntz hosted a focus group of Iowa Republican caucus-goers, gauging their reaction of President Barack Obama's Sunday afternoon interview with Fox News' Bill O'Reilly. ...
Small Business <b>News</b>: Digital Privacy and Customer Care
Small business is all about customer care. So how to you feel about new proposed legislation that is designed to prevent online clients from tracking customer.
bench craft company
New York Yankees <b>News</b>: The Captain - Pinstripe Alley
New York Yankees news from around the internet on 2/9/2011, including Rob Neyer on Derek Jeter's attempt to bounce back from a disappointing 2010 season.
Fox <b>News</b> focus group in Iowa: President Obama is Muslim | The <b>...</b>
On Sean Hannity's program Monday night, pollster Frank Luntz hosted a focus group of Iowa Republican caucus-goers, gauging their reaction of President Barack Obama's Sunday afternoon interview with Fox News' Bill O'Reilly. ...
Small Business <b>News</b>: Digital Privacy and Customer Care
Small business is all about customer care. So how to you feel about new proposed legislation that is designed to prevent online clients from tracking customer.
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bench craft company
New York Yankees <b>News</b>: The Captain - Pinstripe Alley
New York Yankees news from around the internet on 2/9/2011, including Rob Neyer on Derek Jeter's attempt to bounce back from a disappointing 2010 season.
Fox <b>News</b> focus group in Iowa: President Obama is Muslim | The <b>...</b>
On Sean Hannity's program Monday night, pollster Frank Luntz hosted a focus group of Iowa Republican caucus-goers, gauging their reaction of President Barack Obama's Sunday afternoon interview with Fox News' Bill O'Reilly. ...
Small Business <b>News</b>: Digital Privacy and Customer Care
Small business is all about customer care. So how to you feel about new proposed legislation that is designed to prevent online clients from tracking customer.
bench craft company
If you are reading this, you are probably familiar on some level with article marketing. You may have even begun to do some article marketing research. But for those who may not know, let's take a quick look at this simple, effective way to earn an income online, then I will give you a simple, A - B - C, step-by-step plan to making money within 7 to 10 days.
There are several ways to make money by writing articles online, but the most common are ...
1 - Affiliate Marketing
There are vendors who will pay you a percentage of their profits to direct customers to their product. This saves them time and money, and multiplies their efforts many times, thus allowing them to reach a massive audience without a financial outlay. They do not pay you until you get a customer to buy from them. There are affiliate marketers who write articles, then submit those articles to article submission sites, blogs and websites. The articles contain a resource box or bio box that contains a link to the vendor's sales page. If a purchase is made, the article writer gets a percentage of the sale, anywhere from 4% from vendors like Amazon, up to a whopping 75% from vendors on sites like Clickbank.
2 - Upfront Payment
This is a great way for article writers to generate instant income. A writer can write articles on popular niches (topics) like "Losing Weight" or "Making Money Online", and then sell those to marketers who need content for websites, blogs and article submission accounts. Many article submission sites also pay upfront for quality content. Payment ranges anywhere from $2 to $30 per article, depending on a wide range of variables.
3 - Performance Payment
A relatively new way of making money from articles is the performance payment. An article is written, and then submitted to article submission sites who offer a specific amount of money per thousand page views. This may sound like pennies, but can actually add up to a nice monthly payment when one hundred or more high quality articles are out there, using keywords with a lot of searches.
As you can see, these three methods all have one thing in common. You have to write articles! When I started out, one article seemed like a lot. Then I did some article marketing research, and discovered that most articles on the internet were between 300 and 500 words. That is because the internet is not like paper article advertising. People want quick, relevant information on the net. This means it is entirely possible to have 100 articles out there earning you money in only a month or two. (I still type with two fingers, and crank out between 5 and 20 articles every day.)
There are literally dozens of article submission sites out there that operate differently. Some offer one form of payment or another, and they are all different. I have found a site that allows you to earn money all three ways at once. Associated Content, the site you are reading this article on, allows you to submit articles for upfront payment and performance payments, while containing a link to a relevant site. In this way, you hit the trifecta! Let me lay out the steps you need to take today to make money within 10 days.
A - Open an account with AssociatedContent.com. This takes all of 5 minutes. It is easy and quick, and you are under no obligation of any kind.
B - Read their Terms of Service. Basically, you want to submit ORIGINAL content that has not been submitted anywhere else, but you need to read the T.O.S. and be familiar with it.
C - Go to clickbank.com and register. They are the largest supplier of digital products in the world, and this is where vendors go to list their e-books for affiliates like you to sell.
D - In article marketing research is everything. Do some keyword research and find terms that are getting searched for 100 or more times a day. There are a lot of other excellent keyword search tools out there, but Google's keyword tool is Free, easy to use, and has all sorts of parameters. Go to Google and type in Keyword Tool to access it. When you type in a keyword, Google will return a listing of related words, and display how many times a month they are searched.
E - Take that keyword back to clickbank and search "the Marketplace". When you find a vendor selling that type of product, click "promote this product", and you will be given the html code you need to add a link to your article. (Many of these vendors have done a lot of article marketing research, and will provide you help to sell their products!)
F - Write a 350 - 500 word article on the keyword phrase you researched, making sure to credit any sources you may have used, and adding your affiliate link at the end.
G - Submit the article to AssociatedContent.com. There are several different submission guidelines, so choose the correct one that allows for upfront payments, and performance payments, and calls for original content.
H - Write a second article, then a third, etc.
That's it! Associated Content generally takes a week to 10 days to review an article. If they turn you down for upfront payment, don't fret. You can still submit for performance payments, and your affiliate link will always be there. And they will tll you exactly what you need to do in the future to be accepted.
This is a bare-bones method, but can be refined, and made to fit your personal style. There is a great community of accomplished writers on Associated Content who are very giving, and will answer any questions you may have.
If you improve your knowledge of keyword research, keyword density, article marketing research, article title creation, and affiliate marketing, you will find yourself receiving more money upfront, AND getting more page views.
If you would like the same article marketing program I use every day to make money online (a $97 value available FREE to only the next 35 people) , go to WWW.FREEARTICLEMARKETING.INFO for an instant FREE download.
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