Last week we launched our first wide scale CPC Opportunities in SocialSpark. On a high level things went great. We generated a lot of high quality traffic for our advertisers and the system worked as planned. However, a small group of bloggers decided to try and take advantage of the system by participating in click farms, repeatedly clicking on their own links and other forms of click fraud. Those bloggers have been permanently removed from the system as of this morning.
We track an incredible amount of information for each click on our network and pass that data to Click Forensics, an independent third party auditor. Click Forensics helps us identify fraudulent activity, automatically invalidates clicks and flags suspicious bloggers. IZEA also does a manual review on our end to make sure everything is kosher.
The links provided in SocialSpark are for your blogs or the social media networks listed on the get code page. Do not use those links on other CPC advertising networks, click farms, link sharing services, etc. You will be identified, you will not be paid and your account will be permanently disabled. We take click fraud very seriously and have zero tolerance for any violators.
Invalid Click Rate on Twitter and Facebook
I wanted to address the invalid rate on CPC social network links. Social network updates receive a high number of invalids due to spider and bot activity. It is not uncommon to see a 30% invalid rate on these links, especially if you have a small amount of friends or followers. We do not consider this to be fraud. There is no need to be concerned if you see a high invalid number on these links.
We want you to make money with your blog and social media profiles. Do so in an honest way and we will both prosper : )
I was worried about that for a moment, I never did anything wrong but I saw all these invalid clicks. It was weird seeing invalid clicks from twitter. I didn’t realize that it was possible to spider twitter to register a bad click. Weird.
Glad to see you took swift and decisive action on the click farmers. Quality Bloggers only on IZEA properties.
Here is my feeling on this:
First off, I feel happy that IZEA has been willing to go into a traditionally fraud prone field. I agree that intense click fraud does happen, and needs to be protected against. However, when I participated in CPC campaigns, I feel that IZEA did not make it entirely clear that our blogs were the only exclusive media properties we could use. Sure, I do admit I distributed the links in ways that are non-traditional. I am the FIRST to admit when I have made a mistake. I promoted an advertiser link through a PTC(Paid to Click) website where users view a website for a period of time and are compensated. I have done this in the past, with other CPC campaigns with different companies and all have found the traffic very beneficial for their advertisers. I admit, I did clear this with those companies, something that I did not do with IZEA.
Overall, I just wish IZEA would of made it more clear, I made a mistake, and accept the responsibilities.
Have a nice day Ted and the team!
I wondered too about my invalid clicks and am glad to know it’s a normal result and not something I’m doing wrong.
Something which perhaps needs to be stressed a little more is bloggers are required to put #spon on their tweets. I completely missed this requirement until I read it in your recent post about the CPC opps.
I posted the Chilis voucher links on a few bargain forums I post on, as others have said it is not made clear that you can only post the links on your blog/twitter/facebook.
I won’t make the same mistake again, but you need to spell things out more, we aren’t physic.
Hi guys!
RealityTVFan makes an excellent point that proper and improper CPC placement should be better communicated.
I just wanted to post a quick note that it has been brought to our attention that some users have been placing our CPC ads within the Entrecard system to generate clicks.
We ask that any of you doing this please discontinue this practice as it has been reported as Spam coming from IZEA, Ted Murphy specifically.
Should you have any additional questions, please be sure to let us know by commenting here or sending a ticket to Customer Love.
Your cpc ads manta mania and beautiful underwater bubbles continue to appear on Entrecard drop inboxes. Unsuspecting owners click on the banners for their ‘U drop I follow routine” – cheap shot! Must be stopped and exposed!
The first 40 or so clicks on my first twitter opp came back as invalid. Glad to know that I’m not accused of fraud but very disappointing to see that even through I’m publicizing the opp, I won’t be paid.
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