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Click Fraud: Six Things You Should Be Aware Of Before You Buy "Guaranteed Traffic"
By John Young (c) 2006

Bill was getting frustrated and desperate. He'd being trying to
promote his website for months with little or no success.

Adwords didn't seem to be working. He'd devised the most
fiendish ads he could think of and set them up on Google only to
find that nobody clicked on them.

He had written several articles and, using an automatic article
submitter, had placed them on hundreds of Article Barns across
the web. There had been an increase in his Alexa Ratings, but
that was it. Maybe there was a slight flurry of hits when he
first placed the article, then nothing.

He'd set up a blog, made a press release announcement, and done
everything except don a Shaman costume and dance around his
computer.

He'd purchased ebooks on increasing his traffic, and tried every
idea he ran across. His budget was beginning to show the
effects, and he had the chilling realization that if he didn't
come across something that worked, he was simply going to run
out of money and go bankrupt.

In other words, he was about to become one of the 90 per cent of
the Info Marketers on the web who fail.

That was when he ran across a site that guaranteed traffic.
Little did Bill know he was about to become a victim of click
fraud.

Click Fraud and Big Business

Click fraud has been discussed in a recent issue of Newsweek
(Oct 6, 2006) as one of the most serious issues that faces
online advertising. It has cast doubt on at least some of the
efficacy of services such as Google Adwords to bring actual
paying customers to a business website.

It began with the monitoring of clicks that appeared to be
coming from outlying countries such as Botswana and Syria, and
grew into the discovery of a scourge that threatens to undo the
very concept of paying for clicks as a way of obtaining
legitimate customers.

Whole cultures were discovered that sustained themselves by
clicking on ads - "paid to read" rings consisting of hundreds of
thousands of people who do nothing but click on sites.

Newsweek reports that Yahoo and Google claim they "filter out"
clicks of dubious origin, but the credibility of pay for click
advertising is beginning to be undermined. It's estimated that
10% to 15% of all clicks are fake. 300 to 500 million dollars of
advertising revenue are being funneled into the click fraud
industry.

The "visitors" COME FLOWING in

Bill was seriously considering paying for "guaranteed targeted
visitors". For as little as $100 he could get this kind of
traffic directed to his site, and after months of frustration in
building his customer base he pulled out his credit card.

And the clicks began. They started slowly and then gradually
mounted. By the time they reached a thousand, Bill knew there
was something wrong.

He was getting a lot of clicks, all right, but he was getting no
sales. Bill knew from his experiments with Adwords that his site
had a 1% "conversion rate". That is, for every 100 clicks he
sold one ebook.

If he were truly getting paying customers he should be selling
books, and he wasn't.

What to LOOK FOR in a "guaranteed click" service

So the question is, are all "guaranteed click" services
fraudulent?

If you're down to the point of paying for a service that will
send you customers, you should take a hard look at a few things:

   1. How do they get their customers? They should have some
      reasonable explanation for how they entice 10,000 or so
      customers to click on your ad.

   2. Do they allow sites with pop ups? If not, why not? Could
      it be their automatic click machine doesn't work on sites
      that have pop-ups?

   3. Do you have the software necessary to monitor your site
      to determine if the clicks are coming from unique visitors?
      If you don't, you have no way of knowing whether or not
      you have 10,000 unique potential customers or 1 machine
      clicking your site 10,000 times.

   4. Do you know what the historical conversion rate of your
      site is? If sales aren't tracking that conversion rate,
      why not?

   5. Are there any complaints listed with the Better Business
      Bureau? (Or, if you want a report for consumers by
      consumers, check the Rip Off Report
      <http://ripoffreport.com/>).

   6. Finally, if you suspect fraud or feel you have been badly
      treated, email the company in question and demand your
      money back. If you don't get it, post to the BBB, or
      better yet, the Rip Off Report. Sites like this one will
      put some of these guys out of business.

THE MORE DESPERATE You Get...

As your business progresses and you are discovering that you
aren't getting the traffic you need to truly "make a go of it",
you become more likely to search out quickie solutions such as
"paid for traffic."

   * Thoroughly consider the credibility of claims and offers.
     Sleep on it before you jump in with your credit card.

   * Recognize that you need an overall "system" for developing
     site traffic, not a "band aid" approach. Band aid approaches
     usually don't work.

   * Visit marketing forums and talk with people about what
     works and what doesn't. Get recommendations from reliable
     sources.

   * Remember, every recommendation on a sales page is ecstatic,
     and the entire page is psychologically designed to sell you
     a product, whether it works or not.

In short, as time progresses and you aren't experiencing success,
you become more vulnerable to fraud. You must take stock of
yourself and what you are willing to consider.

And be a lot more careful.
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John Young is a writer with a scientific and technical
background living in Southern California with his wife and cat
"Bear". He is recommending an advertising monitoring software
Adminder. Please check this out at

http://www.ebook-marketing-software.com/Adminder.html

For his guide through the Informational Marketing Swamp, check
the parent site http://www.ebook-marketing-software.com
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