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Is BlackHat Considered illegal?

NameSilo
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Being in the affiliate industry for a long period of time now, I have seen different types of blackhatters where most of them use tricky ways to generate traffic or “force” visitors to complete an offer whereas some others tend to pass the boundaries and commit fraud (by completing their own offers via virtual credit cards)

What is a blackhatter?

In affiliate marketing, a blackhatter is usually someone who uses different sneaky ways to drive traffic to his offers and hence, generating a higher profit. Basically blackhatters break the TOS’s (terms of service) of the affiliate companies by using thousands of ways starting from ewhoring (posting in Craigslist) to scrapping different forum boards and mass emailing (spamming) anyone, and in most of the cases, they purchase paid traffic in order to lower they conversion rate (CTR) so they won’t raise any red alerts to their affiliate managers.

BlackHatters vs Affiliate Companies

60 % (if not more) of all commissions generated in an affiliate company are generated in various blackhat ways. At the end of the day, the affiliate companies don’t really care too much whether someone has used blackhat methods or whitehat ones, the affiliate companies start complaining solely when the traffic at the advertisers side is not converting. Even though most affiliate companies strictly prohibit any blackhat methods, they seriously don’t care as long as its converting for the advertisers

. . . And the “Shaving” was born

For anyone who is not familiar with the word “shaving” in the affiliate marketing industry, its the process where either advertisers or affiliate companies “shave” a percentage of leads in order to balance the equation :) . . . In fact there have been many cases where advertisers haven’t paid due to “low quality traffic” but at the end of the day, either the affiliate company has paid the publisher from its own pocket (in order not to lose him) or they have clearly stated that the advertiser doesn’t want to pay. In other cases affiliate companies shave and get a nice sum of money and the publisher can’t understand whats happening.

TIP: Rotate same offers from different affilate companies and at the end of the day check out conversion rate, if at one of them is quite low, that company shaves as a hell.

Blackhatting considered illegal ?

Depends! Many blackhatters really cross the border by even using stolen credit cards to purchase stuff via their affiliate links and that is a criminal offense in many countries whereas others cloak the url’s in order not to reveal where the traffic is coming from (because in most of the cases that type of traffic is not allowed).

Affiliate Marketing is a billion dollar industry and everyone with a brain and the capacity to act can generate a steady stream of income, some make $xx,xxx per day, others make cents per day … its all about perception and how good you are at it … at least the best part of affiliate marketing is that you are your own boss and you can work from the comfort of your house

Source: Is BlackHat Considered illegal ? | GoldenBlogger.com - Make Money Online
 
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The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
I think it very much depends on what you mean by "blackhat". There's no doubt that some activities of this nature are clearly illegal, because they are basically attempts to defraud others
 
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Uh yuh.

Why they call it "black" hat. :p

Though a lot of posers out there selling old info as 'black hat' when it really should be '1995 hat'.
 
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Yeah, You will find plenty of these guys selling blackhat methods ebooks on another popular forum. A lot of them are using it. I even saw a post by some one who was not refunded the money for the ebook and he had revealed the whole book method in a post to reveal what the seller was all about. So it is kind of sick. There are legit ways of making ton of money in affiliate marketing. And There are some decent networks as well who pay on time. I have been studying the very top guys in Affiliate Marketing have bought or subscribed to their courses and I think all of them do it legit ways and make millions a year.
 
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