Shoemoney Vs Yahoo Search Marketing

If any of you haven't read about the turmoil between Jeremy and YSM, you should hop over and read his latest blog entry:

http://www.shoemoney.com/2007/12/14/yahoo-search-marketing-we-know-we-suck/


Regards,

Tony

 

Ya, I was reading that earlier this money. I wonder what the outcome will be.

 

I think Shoemoney said it best:

YSM can't blame anyone other than themselves. Thumbs up to Jeremy for calling them out!

 

I read that and am not too sure here. 65% of the YSM signups were fraudulent from Shoemoney's site. That's a bloody large percentage. In general terms, any affiliate would want to stop this scale of fraud occuring.

From what I can make out, the clicks go via Commission Junction but records regarding referring URLs etc may not be available. If a stolen credit card is being used, it would be used as soon as possible before any reporting of it took place. As such, even using a 3rd party credit card verifier (for stolen cards) would not work.

Does anyone have any constructive ideas as to how any company, Yahoo or otherwise would be able to protect themselves from such fraudelent signups?

 

Did you have money I on your mind when you wrote this post
Its a shame that Yahoo have done this to him, considering they admit that they know its got nothing to do with him.

 

I think the main point is YSM's lack of reliable tracking and fraud detection.

 

Did you even read what was said? The tracking is done via CJ and fraud tracking is only available AFTER a period post-signup.

 

Yes, I always got money on my mind. Shoemoney is a well respected person in our industry - and since Yahoo! banned him, they'll be an uproar among the blogsphere soon.

 

No. I don't think its any fault of YSM at all.

It is CJ who does not provide referral reporting for transactions and what referral YSM sees is just coming from CJ. So YSM can no way track where the traffic is actually coming from.

And each "disputed transaction" costs a lot of money to yahoo (I remember clickbank charges something around $80 for a disputed transaction). And if yahoo is not making any money out of it, it doesn't matter who is promoting it, they will just ban it if it is not working.

The only fault of YSM team I see is that "they could have assigned him a new account id and would have tested" but the did not. I don't know why, they may be having some own reasons of their own.

 

I think 65% is too high and I don't blame Yahoo for cancelling. Although maybe if they had a better way to track it.

 

Yes. absolutely. But I think they could have assigned him different ID (new account) to see if that rate is still maintained.

 

After reading the entire post, I kind of arrive at the same conclusion as Jeremy..."Whatever.. another day"

It does seem like business relationships online could start and end just like that...so it doesn't make sense to take it too hard.

Azoogle bans people, Google bans people, even Paypal suspends accounts...most valuable lesson learned here is that you must have a die-hard attitude like shoemoney if you want to thrive online.

Stroke of bad luck,...but Whatever.. another day...