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Home→Tags scam

Tag Archives: scam

Beware Linkedin advertising !

Computer Aid Posted on 8 October, 2012 by Luigi Martin8 October, 2012

Back in January 2012, I got an email saying that linkedin is now implementing advertising (ie something similar to google and facebook advertising).

They also offered a free $50 “promotion”… OK, its less than the $100 that google offers, but it should be good to see what kind of return it gives.

Then it started getting weird:

I setup a campaign for my website design business, only to find limits like:

  • maximum daily budget cannot be less than $10
  • minimum cost per click (for a CPC campaign) is $2.00

Wow, I could be looking at, at least, $10 per day, per ad campaign.

Lets do the maths: with just 1 campaign, I could use up my “gift” $50.00 in just 5 days

I could be looking at $300 per month.

I’d need to be selling some high profit-margin goods or services to justify advertising in linkedIn.

As a comparison, Google have a minimum cost per click of $0.01 (yep, 1 cent), and the max daily budget also starts at $0.01. You you could limit your google advertising to just 1 cent per day, and then alter it if I want to get more views, traffic and clicks. And then Google also has a huge audience for showing these ads.

Facebook is similar: minimum Cost Per Click is $0.01, but the max daily budget is at least $1.00 (which I personally think is too high for some situations). But then again, facebook also has a huge audience for showing these ads.

So, I just try out the campaign, and as usual, I forget to check until about 2 weeks later (maybe this is what linkedin are planning: that people will forget).

Luckily it only cost me an extra $10 or $15, as I sometimes didn’t get to spend the full $10 per day.

Anyway, I switch off the campaign, and promptly forget about the LinkedIn advertising scam.

At the start of September 2012, I get an email from linkedIn, saying: “Your LinkedIn Ads campaign has been feeling a bit lonely recently. Come back to LinkedIn Ads and reach out to your customers!”.

They offer another $50 bonus, which expires on 19 Sept.

I figure: I’ll take another look.

I notice the click costs are still $2 per click, and I cannot set a max daily spend of less than $10…

Anyway, I guess I’ll just run the ad for a few days… I login and using the $50 code they sent me, I re-activate my ad campaign on the 12 Sept (before the 19 Sept deadline)…

I also add a campaign for my name-brand mobile phone look-alikes (iphone, Galaxy, HTC One X, etc).

Within 1 hour of activating my campaign, I get 7 clicks on my ads ($14 out of $50 gone already!)… and 29,000 impressions… ie my ads get shown 29,000 times!

But over the next 5 days, I get no more clicks, and the number of impressions drops to about 200 – 500 per day… It all looks a bit suspicious.

And I also find that the amount of information about my advertising performance, stats, etc is scant…I just cannot figure out why I got so many impressions, and then a sudden drop.

I then take a look over at the billing details, and I see that the $50 credit that linkedin gave me, has a “grant date” of sept 12, and an expiry date of sept 12… A reasonable person would think they mean the “coupon” has been used on that day… but being a suspicious person, I see it as: my “gift” of $50 expired on the same day I activated it, and any clicks after that date, I will need to pay for out of my own pocket. Thanks a lot LinkedIn! 🙁

When dealing with larger companies, it pays to be suspicious, and assume the cards are always in their favour.

So I suspended all my linkedin ads (again)… even though I still have a theoretical $36 in my account… I just can’t be sure about that. I’ll think I’ll just forget this whole linkedin advertising scam (again).

Posted in Business, Rant, Technical | Tagged advertising, linkedin, scam

Career77.com and workvictory.com another scam alert

Computer Aid Posted on 28 May, 2012 by Luigi Martin28 May, 2012

If you are looking for work and you get an email that begins with:

Thank you for your recent submission for a role at Employed Success.

To progress your submission further, you must finish an Online Assessment. This has to be completed within the next 7 days in order for your submission to get consideration for roles with Employed Success.

Then my advice is: don’t bother. Just move it into your spam folder and move on.

Its actually a variation on the: Work At Home Mom Makes $6,397/Month Part-Time

They say you make the money from google, but I doubt it.

My website and blog make me about $40 per month, and thats after 7 years of blogging (about 850 blog posts to date), so your chances of making 100 times as much depends on what kind of interesting / depraved / wacky nonsense you can serve up, in the hopes that it goes “viral”. Just because 1 person got lucky and got millions of hits on their youtube video of their pet rock which suddenly developed the ability to play chess, doesn’t mean you will too.

Posted in Hints, Rant, Review | Tagged career77, scam, workvictory

dynamicoxygen a variation on exitjunction?

Computer Aid Posted on 22 July, 2011 by Luigi Martin22 July, 2011

I got an email from yet another company with a great advertising medium.

The company is DynamicOxygen, and they seem to have a good deal that allows for some extra advertising that is run together with existing advertising on my site.

It sounds interesting, but the name sounds familiar, after some thought and some looking around I finally found why the name sounded familiar.

I have previously wrote of my bad experience with using ExitJunction, and at the time, I made a note to myself that the ExitJunction website is copyright by (you guessed it): DynamicOxygen.

So now I’m a little skeptical about dynamic oxygen, and I don’t want to experience the same google problems I had with ExitJunction… So I’d like to know if anyone has tried DynamicOxygen, and can report any facts about what effect it has had on their existing internet traffic.

Note: it doesn’t count if you had no traffic to start with… you must have some measurable traffic before you started advertising with Dynamic Oxygen, and ideally, you would have also had some google adsense ads on your site as well.

Will google penalise you for using dynamic oxygen? Only time will tell.

Posted in Technical | Tagged dynamicoxygen, exitjunction, scam

A message from Capt. Kirk !

Computer Aid Posted on 22 July, 2006 by Luigi Martin22 July, 2006

A few months ago, I got a typical spam message, but I just couldn't help replying… take a look:

From: JAMES KIRK <ijeobimma3@yahoo.com>

To: sales@computer-aid.com.au

Good day Sales.
                      Am JAMES Kirk,the  GM  of BUSYBEST STORES AUSTRALIA.

I got your company details from our local search  business journal and found that 
your company is in  the position to supply quality products and services .
kindly confirm if you can supply my new outlet in Nigeria with
your products,if you can supply them,email me back with your preffered
method of payment (VISA CARD OR MASTER CARD?) ,also your prefered
method of shippment(DHL,UPS,FEDEX OR TNT).I also need the price list of products
you have in stock.

Once the confirmation is made to me i will advice you on the type of
products am interested in.

Do email at ijeobimma5@yahoo.com.au  or fax me with your response as
soon as you receive my email.

Waiting for your prompt response to enable me place my order
immediately.

Regards.

James KIRK..
BUSY BEST STORE
AUSTRALIA
TEL/FAX:+61 7 3102 9366

Now, I don't know if this guy chose the name at random (It would have been perfect if he chose James T. Kirk !)

So I have some fun & play up the star trek theme a bit:

Hello James,

Do you have problems with Klingons on your starboard bow?

Computer Aid can supply you with spread frequency phasers, which can easily remove
those annoying encumbrances.

We also can supply any other type of computer products. I don't have a price list, so
please let me know what you are interested in.

I can only accept payment via Direct Bank deposit into the Computer Aid bank account,
I'm sure that you won't have a problem with that.

Of course, the humor is totally lost on this guy & he just focuses on the money:

Credit Card payment only.

Advice

Advice? what does he mean with "advice"? Well, I've run out of imaginative replys, I don't take CC (way too expensive for something I might use only once every month or two), so I reply with:

Hello James,

What about PayPal ?

I've not heard back since… I wonder why? 🙂

Posted in Humor | Tagged BEST STORE, JAMES KIRK, scam

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