How I Got Scammed For $10,000 By a Traffic Scam Artist

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Hi, my name is Igor Kheifets and this is the List Building Lifestyle, the only podcast
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Igor: Welcome back to another edition of the List Building Lifestyle with your
host Igor Kheifets. Nobody is safe from traffic scams even a grizzled vet like me.
A couple of years ago I had the pleasure of buying traffic from a gentleman I met
in person at the Solo Ads Summit in Orlando. This guy seemed okay to me so I
decided to run about 1000 clicks with him which is the usual test amount of
traffic I purchase from anybody I start working with and this test went really
well. So I scaled and when I say scaled I really mean scaled because over the next
few months I went ahead and I purchased over $10,000 worth of traffic from this
fellow. But then I noticed after a couple of months that my sales were down, in
fact I’m not even sure why I didn’t check the stats on an ongoing basis but
somehow at that time I noticed that something was off and I started checking my
conversions. First I checked my overall conversion and then I checked conversions
per source. What I discovered was I was getting a lot of traffic that was not
converting into customers. In fact not only that I discovered that a lot of this
traffic was not converting into email subscribers that open emails, a lot of my
emails were undelivered. So I checked my Hotjar recording now Hotjar is a software
which you can get for as little as $20 something per month. It’s a screen capture
software which you install on your homepage on your website which records your
visitors’ activity so you can see how to improve your website. You can see where
people are scrolling up and down, which headlines they are reading, which
headlines they are ignoring and you’re able to quickly identify the weak and the
strong spots of your copy. After checking that recording, I noticed something
really weird. Now Hotjar doesn’t usually tell you landing page specific data, you
just slap your code and it just gives you the entire thing you know for all the
traffic coming to your website. It does not know how to differentiate into a
specific source. So after checking my Hotjar recordings, I noticed that there was
a lot of traffic that was behaving in the exact same way. These were clicks coming
from mobile devices located in the U.S.A. that would opt in to my opt in page and
then on my sales page which is the next page right after my squeeze page, they
would just scroll all the way down in like 1 ½ seconds and close the page. This
behavior was really just cookie cutter behavior. You could see it literally on
every single click that I’m talking about. I went ahead, I took out these IP
addresses and I checked them against my data and it turned out that all these
clicks were coming from this guy. More over I went ahead and I checked the email
addresses that opted in through this same IP data and I discovered that none of
these email addresses were actually delivered. So I ended up paying $10,000
actually over $10,000 to this gentleman for fake leads. Not only were they fake in
the way that they were checking out my sales page and not acting or anything but I
also could not email these people and make sales on the follow up. So I’ve gone
ahead, I took out the video recording of this behavior, I took the IP data, the
time stamps, the email addresses and I confronted him and I demanded all my money
back. Now because I had proof, of course he gave me my money back and thankfully
he doesn’t sell any traffic anymore but what this story tells you is that the
danger of buying fake leads is real. There is a ton of people out there still
selling you fake traffic which you have to be absolutely careful from purchasing
because often times it looks exactly like regular clicks and one of the best ways
that I find to be able to fight these scams is to use what I call real time email
verification on your squeeze pages which is why here at Igor Solo Ads we actually
developed a real time email validator which we install on each and every one of
our customers squeeze pages because that allows us to protect our customers from
getting fake leads. Now just in case you’re wondering, okay but most people
probably sell you good leads because they got testimonials and they got you know
these slick pages but I assure you – the thing is that 99% who buy traffic cannot
determine whether they get fake leads or not. Most people determine the validity
of the leads they are getting based on the opt in rate which I mean it’s really
the wrong way to go about it because it’s really easy to fake the opt in rate. In
fact, this guy who scammed me for 10 grand, he developed a special script, a robot
script if you will that was designed to get on any landing page, locate the opt in
form whether Aweber or Get Response or anything else and then inject an email
address into the Get Response or Aweber form using a database. Now he probably
should have injected real email addresses into that database but regardless he
injected emails into the form making it look like you’re getting 40 and 50% email
open rates which to most people that’s like the Holy Grail of list building so
that is why when you are buying traffic somebody for the first time or even the
second time or third time, you should always keep in mind that you have to closely
monitor all your metrics. We are not just talking the opt in rates, we are also
talking your email open rates, we are talking CTR, we are talking email delivery
rates, you have to watch your bounce rates. Because if your bounce rate is rather
high chances are you’re emailing a dead list. You should also remember there are
things like spam traps and dead emails that these scammers can easily import into
your list. They can inject all of this data into your list and thus compromising
your email account because the ______ companies always scan the list for quality
which means if they find all kinds of nasty bad emails and dead emails and spam
traps, they will either put you on a really bad emailing IP or they just ban you
without giving you any reason whatsoever which is why anytime you run a paid
traffic campaign, every now and again obviously it doesn’t make sense to do it
every single time you run a campaign but every now and again you want to export
your list and use a lister cleaning service to see what your list hygiene is at
the time. Most of the time you’ll find that about 30% of your list is either junk,
fake, or just useless. The thing about the _____ companies that they love when you
export your list, you clean it up and you import it back in, they actually reward
you with better delivery for doing something like that. So just to refresh, just
to go over what we have talked about today, first and foremost, the danger of fake
traffic, fake leads is real. It’s still out there, never went away, in fact, if
anything these mechanism, the lead injection mechanisms are getting more and more
sophisticated which is the reason why it’s always important to be working with a
reputable traffic source. Next if you would like to get protected against these
scams, it’s absolutely vital that you use a real time email verification on your
squeeze pages. Now this is not something that you get with your basic squeeze page
builders like Lead Pages and Click Funnels and all that other stuff, they don’t
offer this service because it’s expensive to code something like that and to
support it. However, if you are Igor Solo Ads customer, you get a squeeze page
with a real time email validation installed so the traffic that you’re receiving
to your page, these prospects literally cannot enter a fake email to get on your
list, it’s impossible. They have to give you the right, the real email of theirs
in order to proceed which is awesome because it keeps your list clean and you’re
only paying for real leads. Third, always be tracking your stats. Always be
watching your metrics. Always be you know closely examining your numbers because
you never know if the traffic seller sends you one good campaign and then starts
sending you bad campaigns after that. Because that’s exactly what happened to me,
the first campaign that this dude sent me was really, really good. He actually
sent me real traffic which I made money with however, once I got comfortable and
he noticed that, then he started sending me kind mixing the fake leads into the
whole thing so always, always, always be measuring your traffic results, what’s
your opt in rates, what’s your email bounce rates, what’s your open rates, what’s
your sales are – be eyeing that thing like a hawk because you can easily get
scammed for thousands of dollars if you’re not careful.

So this is Igor with the List Building Lifestyle, I appreciate you tuning in
today. If you would like to get a free squeeze page with 100% real time email
validation installed, all you have to do is become a customer of Igor Solo Ads at
www.igorsoloads.com and until next time we chat, have a good one.

Thanks for listening to The List Building Lifestyle Show, make sure to subscribe on iTunes
or Google. Play to never miss an episode because who knows just one conversion tactic
we share on the show might double your list and double your business. Download the
transcript of today’s episode and all future episodes at listbuilderslifestyleshow.com and
don’t forget to claim your complimentary copy of “The Wealthy List Builder’s Survival
Guide” at listbuildinglifestyleshow.com/survival . This is Igor Kheifets until next time we talk, have a good one.

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