1. We know its not your fault but your still expired? WOW!

   Its stuff like this why Yahoo will never overtake Google in the search marketing area.

2. Nice Quality Control Yahoo!

3. what a bitch! geez you would think that with Yahoo Search Marketing being the only thing that can save them they would be nicer to one of there top affiliates.

4. SHOE do you think this is a result from the mybloglog stuff a while back still mad at you?

5. […] Yahoo Search Marketing – ‘We Know We suck’ What Say You? […]

6. It sounds like you are a bad guy who attracts a high percentage of bad people. At least that’s how the emails from Yahoo try to make it sound. They really have no tracking ability? I guess that would be consistent with a lot of their other lack of abilities.

7. ya it does… first time in many years with many affiliate programs I have ever been accused of that

8. strange when shoe blogged about my site we did a ton of money in sales and not 1 stolen credit card!

9. I still do not understand the part where they admit its their fault but are going to kick you out anyway?

10. […] Read more of this article at ShoeMoney.com […]

11. Sounds like google didn’t hire some discrete people that are not from a country that was never called USSR to not go YSM bowling on their top affiliates.

12. What I don’t understand is that even after you offered to have them discount the fraudulent sign ups from your account, Yahoo still didn’t try to keep you. That’s just poor customer service all the way around.

    Sounds fishy to me and you would think Yahoo would try to do anything possible to keep the business relationship between you profitable for all parties involved considering the amount of traffic you can deliver.

13. Their whole advertising side seems a bit weird. They don’t seem to know what they are doing with anything. You would think with all the PHDs they would know a little something, or perhaps they just don’t have enough man-power. Either way, a multi-billion dollar company should know better.

14. Yahoo is messing up all over, they got that one guy in jail in china who now is getting tortured, they are on a bad path.. RIP yahoo

15. i dont think either are connected… the mybloglog thing was healed (i think) weeks after it happened

16. With so many of your readers coming from digitalpoint, are you really that surprised that you’re getting so many fraudulent referrals? Not that it’s your fault, and terming your account sucks, but any company with half a brain is going to stop paying someone if the referrals aren’t converting into positive income. You’d do exactly the same thing in their shoes…..shoes…get it? …..sorry

17. actually I would fix the problem. I have been in there shoes only worse. With AuctionAds we paid out net ZERO terms which meant that if there was any fraud we were stuck with the bill…

18. Typical MBA executives. You can only put an ad on your site, or promote their affiliate program in some way and send them traffic. After that, everything else is up to them.

    Instead of cutting you off entirely, they should have put a system in place to identify whether a given account is valid or fraudlent within X days of that account signing up.

    They then should take back and cancel those lead signups, and not pay you for them.

    That way, they still get 35% of your valid sign-ups, rather than 0 sign-ups a month from you.

    They could have even said we will only pay 3 months delayed.

    Of course, if you are generating the fraudulent sign-ups yourself, then of course they should cut that affiliate off.

19. Wow I see there is no loyalty to top affiliates….Yahoo was in the wrong. Shoe what is your feeling about continuing a relationship with companies like this. For example Im alway getting my check late from one company [they do not do direct deposit]. Do you move on and never work with them again? Will you work with yahoo again down the road?

20. Alarming!

    What the hell has happened to Yahoo. Somebody needs to put a tent on that circus.

21. Maybe he just found a weak link at the company. I bet he could elevate it to someone who is a little smarter.

22. Jeremy,

    I wouldn’t get to uptight about the whole situation your doing to much promoting (positive) not to have any problems, just have to get it taken care of :).

23. […] your account” to Shoemoney. There are several email responses listed on his site in regards to Yahoo Search Marketing – ‘We Know We suck’ in which Michelle tells Jeremy that his account has a 65% fraudulent charge rate, it is not your […]

24. Newbie question. Is it possible, or even probable, that this is all generated from one or two bad apples?

    I realize they haven’t told Shoe anything, but in general, does anyone know?

25. They can’t tell which url is behind business transactions they accept? Why does that scream “theres a buck to be made here”? I’m not implying getting stolen cards or anything, but theyre giving out fairly large commisions without being able to track?? I hope that gets fixed soon for Yahoo! sake…. before someone figures out how to take it to the bank. Get to work Shoe!

26. I wasn’t just referring to YSM, but also YPN. I ran into trouble with them on the publisher side… they seemed very unprofessional.

    1. really dey r unprofessional

27. I had unpleasant dealings with YSM as well. One of my sites was generating around $700/month through them and they closed my account, pointing to a “low conversion rate”. I thought the point of CPC advertising was that it’s Cost Per CLICK. I’d have put CJ.com ads on the site if I wanted to earn on conversion. The point is that I would never deal with them again. They have no idea how to treat customers. I made just over $14k with Google last year and they sent me a Christmas gift, not accusations.

28. Fark that is a high number – 65%

29. I understand where Yahoo is coming from with some of the issues with CJ’s interface….it only gives advertisers so much control over an account and the affiliates running that program under the account. Sometimes it can be a pain. It shouldn’t be that big of an issue to go in and invalidate these transactions if they have the order id though.

30. What a service are they delivering.
    And nice touch by saying wait after Pubcun, because they know you’re gonna talk about them.

    I said loose them and spread the word. I think there are other advertiser out there that are willing to step in to fill the gap that YSM left for your

    Good luck

31. You’re still running their banner up on top?

32. Wow, idiotic way to do business and from a company that is big enough and been around long enough to know better. No wonder they are getting their asses kicked in so many areas. Can you say permanent beta! First they flat out suck with ad targeting for publishers then blame and ban them for not sending relevant traffic lol. Now this.

    I’m kind of confused what that 65% is representing…is it referrals that are buying traffic with supposedly stolen cards or advertisers buying ads with bogus cards?

    If it is publisher referrals my guess is it is a bunch of people, or just a couple really busy guys, using temp credit cards to sign up for new accounts just to get the free bonus credits (like those $100 codes), using up the credits and since it’s a temp credit card it won’t refill which maybe they are considering fraudulent cards? The once their free credit is up they are going to get another new account with another temp card…rinse and repeat. Would that explain it? Or am I just confused about what they are confused about lol?

33. It sounds like the problem is that the CJ interface doesn’t give them the info they would need to address it.
    I wonder that they don’t offer to take you on directly, given the amount of traffic you send them! Amazing!

34. I must say I’m quite surprised. So what do the others in the top three do ? I know there’s no point in tracking referrer data. In the event your ID has been circulated on some list, well you’ve already mentioned that (change the id on your account.). They could block offending IPs (though they’d be at that forever and a day).. at the end of the day they have JUST ONE ALTERNATIVE. There IS no way to mitigate client side. THEY have to do something about it.. from a business perspective, they’d be nuts not to take the cost effective approach.. in a nutshell, It’s obviously cheaper to ditch you. Prolly time to ditch them and move on to a program that gives a damn.

35. Hmm.. I think people are being a bit unfair on Yahoo actually. The mails sent were polite and clearly explained the situation. At the end of the day, 65% of the converting traffic was fraudulent and would end up costing Yahoo money. Of course they have to address the issue.

    They said they can provide the referring URLs, but not tie specific URLs to the fraud. I don’t know what tracking CJ provide, but if this is the case, perhaps the real failure here was in Yahoo using CJ in the first place! But as Jeremy says – this site is where 100% of the traffic is coming from, I’m sure Yahoo would point out if there is traffic coming from any other sources. Jeremy, I don’t get why you didn’t pursue this and find out where else the traffic is coming from?

    They’re obviously quite convinced that traffic from this site is the problem. No offence, I love the blog! But for whatever reason, it seems to have resulted in problems for Yahoo, and they have to knock that on the head – fair enough.

    How would assigning a different account ID help? The traffic’s still coming from the same source. I don’t see what other option is open to them, other than ditching CJ so they can use better tracking elsewhere.

36. http://www.digg.com/tech_news/Jeremy_Schoemaker_is_banished_from_Yahoo_Search_Marketing

37. Their actions are mute – stopping you from promoting their product is NOT going to stop their fraudulent sign ups.. the fraudsters will simply apply through another source..

    This is so funny after reading your “Shoemoney’s a Drug Dealer” post.. even IF you were.. stopping one drug dealer is not going to stop the demand for that drug.. my 2 cents

38. they should’ve solved the problem asap.

39. Actually, I doubt it. This is exactly the type of conversation that I’ve had with everyone I’ve ever talked to at YSM. You’re always left just shaking your head.

40. Only something like this could happen to the Shoe. lol

41. WOW. They expect you to know who is using a stolen credit card? I may be mistaken, but aren’t THEY the ones collecting the credit card information? How in the world would you be able to figure it out?

42. Yahoo sucks in more than one way. They should sell their biz to Google and go do something else because they no longer seem to know what they are doing.

43. That’s just crazy!
    Think they need to get their act together or shut up shop, as they seem not to have a clue on this one.

44. That was my guess as well, all sorts of international signups coming from DP using shitty ass VCC’s bought in the buy & sell because they can’t get proper credit cards due to country or being a minor and whatnot.

45. I think CJ are as much to blame in this situation. 65% is way ttoo much to be accidental, somebody is obviously targeting you to try and get you booted, CJ should be able to filter those referrals (even if Yahoo can’t).

46. Obviously someone is targeting you and Yahoo of all people should be able to figure that out. Duhh!

47. Just absolutely WOW! That is unbelievable to me. A Mickey Mouse operation is right. Even The Mouse himself would be disgusted. They are looking at a big loss and, after this gets out, Yahoo may as well hide under the covers if they’re not too busy with damage control.

48. Google pulls the same crap. I got booted from Google Adsense because they said a lot of my clicks were fraudulent even though I always abided by the terms and conditions. People I didn’t even know were clicking on the ads and ended up getting me booted.

    There was no recourse with Google, and it looks like Yahoo is pulling the same crap.

49. All i have to say is Yahoo still does not filter US from non us traffic.. so it doesn’t surprise me that they cant filter credit card fraud i mean how hard is it to filter Ip addresses…. Google does it well so does MSN …. but yet Y! cant for some reason.

50. That is incredibly lame.
    Oh well, their loss.

51. I work for a mid-size company that takes 100% of its orders online with credit cards. We successfully weed out 99% of fraudulent sign-ups. It seems unacceptable that a multi-billion dollar company like Yahoo! can’t keep out the frauds. WTF?

52. So much fraud and scamming the system. Google represents the peak of this trend, and AdSense represents this moment in time. If click fraud can’t be ultimately brought under control, then it pushes enormous pressure on the marketmakers to respond somehow. The little guy (shoemoney, etc.) gets tossed out. Why? Ultimately, how many made for revenue sites with crappy content and where the main focus is figuring out how to maximize affiliate/adsense revenue? I don’t blame them..it’s worked thus far.. But it won’t forever.

    As marketing technology continues to improve, better targeting engines and modeling will allow for better ROI from display ads on higher profile (read: higher credibility with advertisers) sites.

    I’m sick of the SEM world, with everyone from the Millenial generation rushing to get their piece of the action. Such a model will collapse under its own weight.

    I’m not saying that Shoemoney is scamming anyone personally; however, it’s a big club of folks trying to ‘pay the bills’ which could attract less than legitimate customers for the products he’s advertising, and more sympathizers to his cause.

53. 65% is so unbelievably high that it has to be intentional. Someone is targeting you.

    I can’t come to any other conclusion.

    Still, even a standard “out of the box” merchant gateway will stop 98%+ of stolen cards. I can’t believe Yahoo is for real…

54. I think someone at Yahoo is gonna get fired!

    They couldn’t expect you to keep quiet about this. The bad PR from this is going to hit them a lot harder than the bad credit cards, especially when it seems it is there problem not yours.

    I suggest everyone shows their support to Shoe with their feet and leave YSM to their own downfall.

    Good on you Shoe for exposing this.

    J

55. You got a Christmas gift from Google for $14k in a year? Hmm… wonder why I haven’t got anything from them.

    As for Yahoo, I was there since the very, very beginning. I was one of the original 2,000 accepted, made a couple thousand a month from YPN. Then, they kicked me out for ‘low conversion rate’ as well… it was really just a generic email that they seemed to be sending everyone.

56. These type of problems tend to happen a lot towards big blogs. The reason for this is because with the huge amount of visitors, some are bound to mess things up.

    -Mike

57. […] we thought it was worth mentioning that Shoemoney has been having a hell of a time with the Yahoo Search Marketing department lately as they’ve canceled his YSM affiliate account over at CJ. His post illustrates just […]

58. Shoe, how come the Yahoo Search Marketing creative is still running?

59. You would think that if they had a top 5 publisher having 65% fraudulance that they would sit down in a meeting with their top 10 accounts and figure out what the issue was. The only way Yahoo! is going to compete with anyone, let alone Google, is to make their system better, which cleary they aren’t doing. Now instead of trying to rectify the problem, they’ve given you (shoe) a reason to post an article that will be read by thousands of webmasters and bloggers currently earning with Yahoo! or considering Yahoo! as a possible affiliate program, which will in turn only manage to loose more potential customers for Yahoo!. Really poor customer planning and service there. And I find it completely absurd that they do not have enough data to determine offending PID’s or urls. Very interesting post, one I will look forward to hearing more on as I continue to research Yahoo! as a possible resource – although after reading this post they have fallen WAY down on my list of potentials.

    Keep up the good work shoe!

60. To me it sounds like whatever person at Yahoo be it Michelle or whoever manages the traffic stream Shoe sends just don’t know their head from their ass. I can’t believe Yahoo doesn’t have the tools to handle this. It’s just some jackass at Yahoo that doesn’t know how to use them. Sounds like someones job/paycheck at Yahoo is on the line and they don’t know hwo to fix it so they are giving Shoe the boot instead. Also sounds like some smart bastard that doesn’t like Shoe or is jealous is behind this.

61. Yahoo doesn’t know where their traffic is coming from?? Wow, they are ripe for fraud. No wonder this is happening!

62. Yeah Jeremy, How come the Yahoo creative still running ?

63. it’s understandable that they can’t continue to take a loss but their pathetic solution to every issue is to just ban the publishers even when much of the problems are directly related to their bad structure. It’s one thing to protect your profits but another to just continue to filter out people who are helping you make money just because you can’t figure out how to properly set up services. YPN is a pretty obvious example. There is nothing “contextual” about it when compared to companies that know what they are doing. And rather than fixing it the publishers get blamed and banned. Not the smartest solution. They are going to end up banning all their real publishers by the time they decide to get out of beta lol. Though considering how they have been doing things, maybe they shouldn’t ever come out of beta.

64. I’m sorry, but this is another distastful marketing bit by Yahoo. First of all, knowing your influence, did they think you would just shut up about it and not make fools out of themselves with a post like this? Now I’m not sure how much money they were actually losing off your affiliates, but doesn’t bad publicity mean more loss in the long run?

    I talked to a well known SEO recently and he had the same view on Yahoo…they know shit about marketing. I’m surprised they still have 30% of the SE pie.

65. Oh and maybe it’s another linkbait bit from Jeremy (I hope it is, if it’s real that you got kicked out of YSM all your work will be cut out from underneath you 🙁 ).

66. I think this is just to show one of the MANY major reasons why Yahoo is falling to the wayside and Google is taking over every aspect. If you can’t evolve with the times and provide quality service then people are going to go elsewhere and I think this is what is happening. People are sick of Yahoo and their sub par services when you can go with Google and other companies that provide you with not only better service but with more money.

67. un-friggin-believable. Thanks for the heads up on this. I have been in the internet marketing arena for a relatively short period of time and wow…this is an eye opener! Sheese…The quality control should be on their end of this. It will be interesting to see if they move forward to update their policy. Until then, we’ll all be watching.

68. Sounds to me like it’s just an excuse to get rid of you for some reason.

69. Damn that really dont sound good Yahoo is very restricted as I see.

70. @ Shoemoney….

    Do you actually believe those figures (65%) AND have they proved it?
    With the amount of credit card fraud that must involve surely there is a case for you to offer up some kind of investigation – you could bring down the mob!! 🙂

    and what are you going to focus on next? 😀

    regards
    James.

71. This proves what i’ve been saying for a long time – and i’m surprised that others havn’t realized it sooner:
    YAHOO IS RUN BY A BUNCH OF IDIOTS..

    There really is no other explanation.

72. I was just directed here by someone, but I actually just logged into my bank account this morning and found that $1,000 was taken out of my bank account for Yahoo Search Marketing. So yes, I would say that it is true, that most of them are stolen. Also, crappy Yahoo has no support available over the weekend.

73. Wow. That is unbelievable. Stupid fraudsters.

74. Maybe this was a link bait to get more YSM referrals! 😉 Hahahha.

75. At least we learn 1 important thing. Yahoo average fraud rate is about 6.5%. Good to know.

76. Why is a company the size of Yahoo using CJ as a go-between in the first place?! I can understand the referral tracking being a problem if CJ isn’t passing them referrer data, but YSM has no excuse not to have an in-house system that can figure that stuff out for themselves. They must have the same idiots running this that are doing “quality review” of “search partner traffic” !

77. “we can’t continue with this partnership as we are losing money.”

    How on Earth is their basic merchant account fraud scrubbing not catching this to the point they are actually losing money…is Yahoo REALLY this pathetic?

78. she tried, but shoe left it up to her. he shoudl have proposed something like he did at the end of this post. i dont blame shoe, I think yahoo acted incompetent. shoe can just go make his moeny from someone else anyway.

79. That is absolutely amazing to me. They are losing money by retaining you? Losing money they can track or losing money they can’t track (when thousand upon thousands of us read this and make decisions about which services to use – and eliminate Yahoo from the mix) – I’d think there is no difference. I think that the potential to lose more than a couple thousand per month exists though as a result of this error of stupidity and laziness to fix it! Large companies still don’t get it… there are bloggers with power that should be treated to amazing and unseen levels of respect… or, they will lose a lot more than a couple thousand dollars per month! I’m still trying to come to grips with the idiocy of Yahoo… unbelievable…

80. Being polite is nice and all… but you can say yes maam and no sir all you want as your twisting the knife in someone’s side and you know what? Polite doesn’t count for anything. Yahoo is grossly negligent for TRYING to do something in my opinion… I don’t care how polite they were… who cares?

81. I really am worried about that myself. Everyone that runs with Adsense should worry. How am I supposed to screen who is clicking my ads across the world? If someone has a vendetta – then what? I’m sure Google must have many levels of escalation that would have to be surpassed before they’d actually cancel an account, but who knows? They can’t exactly publish their algorithm for getting kicked out of the program. It couldn’t be just one guy clicking from iceland that gets my site cancelled, could it? Scary stuff…

82. Wow they really are lost. I have dealt some in the adult web industry which uses heavy scrubbing to prevent credit card fraud. This is 100% on the payment system. They should be able to see which countries or area this is comming from. At 65% its not something that just happened. There has to be a person or group of people that is targeting his refferal code to commit fraud. You cant blame the refferal unless the traffic source is misleading or from crappy baught traffic. When its from a source such as ShoeMoney then you know that is total crap. They are the ones shooting themselves in the foot if they can not monitor and control the credit card fraud that the are running through their system.

83. Makes you really wonder about using any of Yahoo’s services such as their Yahoo Marketplace for your online business and products. if they can’t track fraudulent ip’s in this case, what confidence should a person have that they are capable of doing any better with their other services?

84. […] And finally Shoemoney wants to know why Yahoo! is asking him to check credit card numbers for validity… […]

85. It makes you sit back at the end of the day and wonder if monkeys are actually cranking the wheels that churn Yahoo!

86. I bet they are off a decimal place and it should be like 6.5% or some shit like that.

87. I really find it hard to believe, company like Yahoo won’t keep referring url!

88. I find that “I am all ears” part quite amusing. Sounds to me like “pls teach me how to do my job since I really have no idea”.

89. 50 says yahoo didn’t want to pay up anymore and made it up.

90. However, we can’t continue with this partnership as we are losing money.

    I think they are about to lose a whole lot more.

    Real subtle: Let’s “catch up” after Pubcon.

91. What idiots – they would rather lose one of their best affiliates than try to prevent fraud! That is just plain stupid.

92. Ummm….let’s see….has anyone hear of Yahoo Publishing?

    Probably not…

93. I doubt that this would be the case with the adsense program. I have heard that adsense is pretty hardcore in instances where they think people are cheating and clicking on their own ads, but I think it has to be a pretty egregious offense. If some guy is trying sabotage you, I think there would be some kind of communication between you and google about what was going on. I think you would be able to defend yourself if you were in the right and reclaim your account.

94. Man, Yahoo has really been struggling over the last few years.

    ~ Dave

95. I never really trusted yahoo. They seem to get by only with an extreme amount of luck. After this, i’m stumped !

96. Shoe, you have the weight and the clout to take this upstairs, that the only way you can get any justice here!

97. Upstairs probably knows about this. And from what I read on many blogs, upstairs Yahoo isn’t that bright or open to suggestions.

98. Yahoo control everything

99. That sucks. The reason they waited until after Pubcon is that they didn’t want you to announce this news to anyone else. A big company like that should be able to do something about than to terminate a client who did nothing but promote them and bring them more traffic.

100. well any program that runs like this obviously cant last long

101. no doubt and with 15 programs in that 1 cookie ….

102. so amazingly crappy

103. I think the problem is they go through CJ

104. Yahoo Search marketing really sunk low. I stop using them in July when they decided to start billing for clicks that never took place. When I questioned them and told them I have software on the site that even shows ip when people visit, they made up some lame excuse that all of my clicks went to the cache. What BS they are turning into. I imagine from fake charges that lots of people are quiting Yahoo. I can sympathize with you dealing with them as they are always right and you are always wrong, even if you prove they are idiots.
     It isn’t just to Show, it is taking place in smaller ways all over the net and many are jumping ship.

105. If they acknowledge it’s a problem, then they should be willing to offer you money or help to address it, i.e. pay to have CC validation on your site, since you are one of the more popular partners.

106. Part of the problem is that big companies hire legions of MBA bimbos that wouldn’t know if they’re punched or bored (I guess someone has to hire them). “Senior management” issues stupid directives and the a.. kissers march out seeking their glory. That’s why small companies get to kick butt over and over again, hehe.

107. It happened to me also just because I placed affiliate links and non affiliate links in same page 🙁 and I see that many in DP are doing the same and they were not banned 🙁

108. That sucks Shoe, though I wish I could say I’m surprised. Is Yahoo doing anything right lately? It over-acquired and under-integrated, losing scores of both technical talent and executive experience through years of mismanagement.

     There are few times when I will go out of my way to promote a specific program to outsiders, and each time I do they manage to let me down; I suppose there is a valuable lesson in there.

     For the record, it is very simple for a CJ affiliate program to traverse back through traffic (especially when just looking at just one PubID) — it is merely time intensive when there’s a lot of traffic involved…I chalk it up to laziness and the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing.

     I’m sure your backlog of advertisers will be very happy to learn that a spot has finally opened up.

     Cygnus

109. I was thinking the same thing about Yahoo being afraid of what Jeremy might say at Pubcon. But they also have to realize that he has this blog that is read by many people in the industry.

110. Thats why Google have been able to take and control the market 😉

111. They sure are…guess they want to loose revenue!

112. I’m glad you are making this public. Events like these need to be opened up for changes and forward progress to happen often.

113. Do you think the people at yahoo are smart enough to realise this?

114. No surprise that she decided to hold off until AFTER pubcon before a decision was made..

115. I have a problem with Yahoo SERPs, one of my Japanese sites is number 3 in US Yahoo but 50 in Yahoo Japan. So at Pubcon I went to the Yahoo booth and asked them about it and they said that if I bought more Yahoo Search Marketing ads in Japan, that my organic ranking would rise on yahoo.co.jp.

     I couldn’t believe it.

     I have always rooted for Yahoo as the under dog but they seem to have lost their ability to understand how we run businesses.

116. You just have to see how YPN compares to adwords to notice that Yahoo is way behind Google.

117. Ridiculous – Michelle/Yahoo are sounding like idiots without a clue in those emails. I would think a huge corporation like Yahoo could handle such a trivial problem with ease – without even having to contact you let alone ask for your advice.

     Ah, well – as you said: another day.

118. 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.

119. I agree with you – on one of my sites I use Cj and get tons of click throughs – the system is flawed

120. I always find it odd that my impressions on my adsenses accounts are always a lot lower than my page loads and impressions on my stat counters

121. I’m not happy with CJ right now – I get a ton of highly target traffic that clicks on some of my CJ links – but no sales when they leave my page

122. Yahoo controls nothing ! Not even their own business

123. Noticed the same thing. CJ does not convert

124. […] Well regarded online marketer Jeremy Schoemaker was until recently a leading affiliate for Yahoo’s Search Marketing program (for those not familiar with the program think Google Adwords, but from Yahoo.) According to Yahoo Jeremy was in the top three of the Yahoo Search Marketing Program in terms of dollars earned and seeing 5 figure monthly returns. Jeremy was even attending major online marketing conferences and not only recommending Yahoo Search Marketing’s affiliate program, but using them in case studies as well. Then things changed. […]

125. you would think YAHOO would be on top of things especially when it is one of thier top marketers

126. I agree i’m sure they are paying out a lot of money each month – I’m not nearly as advanced and I can tell where transactions are coming from on my site? If i can do it shouldnt yahoo be able to?

127. I look for yahoo to eventually become more of a holding company, than an internet company

128. the thing is he will probably make more off of this and the traffic that post generates than he did off the whole yahoo affiliate program – what a way to turn lemons into lemonaid

129. I look for yahoo to eventually become more of a holding company

130. […] Well regarded online marketer Jeremy Schoemaker was until recently a leading affiliate for Yahoo’s Search Marketing program (for those not familiar with the program think Google Adwords, but from Yahoo.) According to Yahoo Jeremy was in the top three of the Yahoo Search Marketing Program in terms of dollars earned and seeing 5 figure monthly returns. Jeremy was even attending major online marketing conferences and not only recommending Yahoo Search Marketing’s affiliate program, but using them in case studies as well. Then things changed. […]

131. […] Well regarded online marketer Jeremy Schoemaker was until recently a leading affiliate for Yahoo’s Search Marketing program (for those not familiar with the program think Google Adwords, but from Yahoo.) According to Yahoo Jeremy was in the top three of the Yahoo Search Marketing Program in terms of dollars earned and seeing 5 figure monthly returns. Jeremy was even attending major online marketing conferences and not only recommending Yahoo Search Marketing’s affiliate program, but using them in case studies as well. Then things changed. […]

132. […] Well regarded online marketer Jeremy Schoemaker was until recently a leading affiliate for Yahoo’s Search Marketing program (for those not familiar with the program think Google Adwords, but from Yahoo.) According to Yahoo Jeremy was in the top three of the Yahoo Search Marketing Program in terms of dollars earned and seeing 5 figure monthly returns. Jeremy was even attending major online marketing conferences and not only recommending Yahoo Search Marketing’s affiliate program, but using them in case studies as well. Then things changed. […]

133. The is un-f’ing-believable. How can companies this big exist with this lack of professionalism? Their solution is amateurish at best.

     So tell me Yahoo…how am I supposed to prevent credit card fraud? I put up an affiliate link and you or CJ provides the mechanism for the transaction, but if someone clicks on my link happens to be a con man you can’t stop him?

     You are a joke. Your shareholders should do a mass selloff and bail because your house of cards is about to crumble.

     Twits!

     The Mad Ape

134. […] spoločnosÅ¥ pochovávaÅ¥ vlastný biznis. Viac o tejto kauze sa môžete dočítaÅ¥ na Jeremyho blogu. Pridaj na: vybrali.sme.sk, Jagg, Linkuj.cz, […]

135. […] Well regarded online marketer Jeremy Schoemaker was until recently a leading affiliate for Yahoo’s Search Marketing program (for those not familiar with the program think Google Adwords, but from Yahoo.) According to Yahoo Jeremy was in the top three of the Yahoo Search Marketing Program in terms of dollars earned and seeing 5 figure monthly returns. Jeremy was even attending major online marketing conferences and not only recommending Yahoo Search Marketing’s affiliate program, but using them in case studies as well. Then things changed. […]

136. […] According to Shoemoney, Yahoo can’t tell where spam traffic is coming from and have shut him out from their affiliate network–despite him being one of their top affiliates. […]

137. That’s pretty ridiculous how they would drop one of their top clients for something you have no control over. Now I know not to go into business with YSM 🙂

138. I used to work for Yahoo.

     They have NO CLUE what they are doing.

     Seriously.

     That’s why I quit and became an affiliate marketer. 🙂

139. any updates, this sounds kinda crazy. seems they would stop the perp?

140. wow thats just bad… I wonder what will happen next…

141. […] Yahoo Search Marketing’s affiliate program, but using them in case studies as well. Then things changed.Jeremy received an email from Yahoo saying that 65% of his traffic is signing up for YSM with […]

142. C’mon – A big company like Yahoo has to be logging everything. This sounds like a case of complete laziness on their part.

     I would see if I can escalate this to a supervisor if I were you.

     Oh wait – I think you just did.

     🙂

     Sean

143. […] reading Shoemoney’s post about YSM canceling his account on his site and then seeing it again on TechCrunch, I can only […]

144. So sad. Why can’t Yahoo get their sh*t together. It’s not rocket science. If Google can run a good program so can the next man/company. Are Yahoo employees under the influence or something??? Microsoft should just buy them out and call it a day.

145. ” dont even know what to say… I was told last summer from a YSM person that I was in the top 3 of the Yahoo Search Marketing Program $$$ wise. In 2007 we had a few 5 figure months 10-18k promoting YSM.”

     It sounds like someone wanted you bumped from the program and perhaps intentionally did this to you.

146. […] Yahoo Search Marketing – "We Know We Suck", ShoeMoney […]

147. wow, that is a load of bs? they make it sound like you are purposely sending fraudulent traffic to YSM to raise your income through that source of revenue.

     Last time I checked you haven’t made a post about or targeted the use of stolen credit cards for the purpose of signing up through YSM.

     Would you continue to work with them if they offered you a new Affiliate ID to promote them with?

148. Wow. I feel bad for the lady you had to deal with; I’m sure the decision wasn’t hers, but reading that makes me better understand why their stock is in the tank in an industry that is growing at a ridiculous pace. Sucks to be you Shoe (for once).

149. it is interesting that they will acknowledge that you are a knowledgeable and experienced marketer, that the fraudulent traffic is not your doing, and they can’t track it, yet they will introduce the issue by telling you first that you are going to be dropped from the program unless you can prevent the fraud that you are not causing from happening…?? ayayay… like sidelko asks, are you going to continue doing business with YSM, if possible?

150. Was there any further followups with yahoo?

151. I don’t understand why no one has referrer information. You would think that someone would setup a way to make sure that people who commit fraud could be tracked down. Maybe Shoe was just making too much money.

152. I’m sorry, but you guys can’t be serious. Losing Jeremy isn’t going to be the end for Yahoo. Obviously they weren’t worried about the little bit of business he provides them with or else they wouldn’t have cut him, Yahoo and all their products will still be here tomorrow.
     Still, what they did was stupid. And, I have to say, embarassing. For christsakes, my mother runs a credit card machine at weekend craft shows and even she can stop credit card fraud. I don’t get it, it’s boggling.

153. crap..yahoo is down 😀 i think they never go international…(i posted before on wrong post) litle confusing your “add comments” link 😀

154. could it actually be the type of audience here? 65% of people trying to make money online are also trying their hardest to find the best scam. Seems pretty good to be able to sign up with a false cc – free!

     Having said that though, considering how much money you’re making them, surely Yahoo could track down the offending IPs and block them.. or give you a new PID so that you can see if it is because someone has hijacked your PID.

155. We use CJ as a source for some of our affiliate programs in our ad network, and we can track individual transactions without problems.

     What you can do with most affiliates on the program is populate the SID value dynamically. You can easily use a GUID and track the data through. The Affiliate must be able to see the SID and should be able to tell you the actual transaction that had the fraud. You can see the reports with the sales linked to the transactions, so there shouldn’t be any BS getting fed to you.

     You simply store the URL, IP etc along with the GUID and you should be able to identify the problems and track to individual users/sessions/pages.

     Shoe, I can walk you through this if you want, and show you the reports etc that we get.

     – Jan

156. Wow, so more obvious proof why The Big G has stomped them in the dirt. Very very sad. You’d think they could hire a few more developers up in Sunnyvale to get a grip on this end of their program. That is disturbing to think a company of such potential for technical prowess is behaving like that of someone that says “nested loop — what?” paa-the-tic

157. […] Well regarded online marketer Jeremy Schoemaker was until recently a leading affiliate for Yahoo’s Search Marketing program (for those not familiar with the program think Google Adwords, but from Yahoo.) According to Yahoo Jeremy was in the top three of the Yahoo Search Marketing Program in terms of dollars earned and seeing 5 figure monthly returns. Jeremy was even attending major online marketing conferences and not only recommending Yahoo Search Marketing’s affiliate program, but using them in case studies as well. Then things changed. […]

158. Communication? Google? You have got to be kidding me. At least Yahoo has human people responding to your messages. Yahoo even calls you if you’re in big trouble. I know people who got banned by Adsense, two of the guys were making over $10k/mo with it, and neither managed to even get through to a human being (they received constant bot responses only).

159. […] Why Can’t Yahoo Search Marketing Block Fraudulent Transactions? Well regarded online marketer Jeremy Schoemaker was until recently a leading affiliate for Yahoo’s Search Marketing program (for those not familiar with the program think Google Adwords, but from Yahoo.) According to Yahoo Jeremy was in the top three of the Yahoo Search Marketing Program in terms of dollars earned and seeing 5 figure monthly returns. Jeremy was even attending major online marketing conferences and not only recommending Yahoo Search Marketing’s affiliate program, but using them in case studies as well. Then things changed. […]

160. That’s pretty amazing considering it’s coming from Yahoo. I can’t understand why they can’t audit the traffic, it’s not really the hardest thing to do, especially if it means keeping one of your largest publishers on board. Their loss..

161. Most companies do have such a thing. You think Yahoo would as well. This one is bizarre.

162. THEY USED YOU! Plain and simple. They we happy to have you push their service but they don’t want to pay you for it. That’s why they dropped you for this “65% Fraud Rate” bullshit reason.

     …and they got some little girlie to tell you to f#$k off in a polite way — AFTER the PUBCON of course!

     F#$KING SCUM!

163. Did you notice they never said anything like,

     ” WOW, since we know it isn’t your fault we would really like to get to the bottom of this fraudulent and illegal behavior and try to find out who it is that’s committing this crime!”

     Doesn’t seem they even question or care about who the culprits really are.

     Cheers!

     WineGuy

164. This is so ridiculous, since when was it not ok ‘to follow the rules.’ Its simple they can just have more accurate fake credit card tests, then just blame you. You should still keep the ysm link up just to spite them, even if you do not get paid.

165. Besides the fact these guys are retarded, you make 10-12k. Holy crap.

166. Wow, I am really surprised that Yahoo! isn’t sophisticated enough to track the incoming traffic. That is quite unprofessional, and they need to be more sophisticated in their analytics.

167. Jeremy – Not sure what’s up with your traffic – I’m pretty much in the top 5 of YSM affiliates based on the stats you posted (well, maybe even top 3 now since 65% of your traffic was deemed bad), and have never had more than 1-2% of transactions reversed for fraud. Hell, I’ve even picked up on a lot of foreign IPs in the same ranges hitting my signup link multiple times (I track by SID with a time & ip variable, passing through my server first), but blocked the IP range myself before any more fraud could go through. In a deal like that (or with MSN), you may want to try and implement some fraud measures yourself.

168. Hello. Somebody know about YSM 20-21 of December. I try to sign up a new account – success. But nothing clicks anytime. Whats happend ? Thanks

169. Surely if you were in the top-3 in sales for YSM they would have said:

     “Shoe, we need you to come out and meet with us. We have a round-trip ticket and hotel waiting for you. Just give us a call at xxx-xxx-xxxx.”

     This is obviously a huge error on their part. Good luck with the resolution.

170. I’ve dealt with YSM in a PPC campaign where they are letting other people bid on keywords they won’t let me bid on and then they lie to me about the whole thing. They’re just lame!

171. Wow, that sounds very crappy of Yahoo. I’m glad I use Google Adwords and not Yahoo’s publishing network. I realize Adwords isn’t much better, but this correspondence you posted seems completely sketchy. How on earth are you supposed to control your traffic? That’s absolutely ridiculous!

172. I am a small fish but I have had major issues with Yahoo! as well, of a similar tone. There is a reason Google is #1 and Yahoo! is #2…

173. That is a pretty interesting dialog Shoe!

     Looks like Yahoo don’t care about the money involved, Bad reffere?? Bye Bye

     Damn..

174. Sounds like Yahoo should be using Google Analytics! 😉

175. Nice post. Just another reason why Yahoo are not #1.

176. I think someone is copying your PID number and using it everywhere. It’s a huge security whole in Adsense, too…

     I don’t know why more people haven’t said anything about exposing your publisher ID code… It’s easy to duplicate, I guess.

     Kenneth

177. wow – i thought you can rely on those guys!

178. […] Well regarded online marketer Jeremy Schoemaker was until recently a leading affiliate for Yahoo’s Search Marketing program (for those not familiar with the program think Google Adwords, but from Yahoo.) According to Yahoo Jeremy was in the top three of the Yahoo Search Marketing Program in terms of dollars earned and seeing 5 figure monthly returns. Jeremy was even attending major online marketing conferences and not only recommending Yahoo Search Marketing’s affiliate program, but using them in case studies as well. Then things changed. […]

179. If they do this to someone in the top 3, I wonder how their cust srvc is with the “little guys”… f u yahoo…

180. It’s not surprising why yahoo is not dominating the web. With idiotic moves like these, they have nowhere to go but down!

181. […] Yahoo Search Marketing – ‘We ..How To Fire SomeoneJohn Reese Interviews ShoeMoneyGoogle Adwords Arrow Trick To Incre..10k ppc experiment part2DefCon To SES – Some Security Issue..My Top 10 Worst Ideas To Make Money […]

182. Imagine a bigshot got ill treatment from Big Y, I cannot imagine what will happen to the little ones….

183. […] on his blog about Yahoo Search Marketing affiliate reversals. I’d recommend taking a quick read about the situation, but in a nutshell, Yahoo are running an affiliate program for their search marketing program via […]

184. Actually, I was notified without any prior communication that my adsense account was terminated due to click fraud. I can tell you with absolute certainty that the click fraud did not originate within my organization. Some possiilities… if everyone in a specific business uses our website – which is the case – then hundreds of people could be generating clicks from the same IP address. Of course given that scenario, it would most definately be possible for someone to sabotage the account, regardless of what google says. It happened to us. And though it’s been several years since the action, I am still a bit bitter because it implied that we were dishonest and even after apealling, google replied “…after review we have determined that this is definately click fraud.” That’s arrogance and it proves that the system is flawed becuase it was not click fraud. Adsense was never a big source of income for us but it was the principle and the arrogance which disturbed me. With regards to both Yahoo! and google, remember that public perception is critical. If google can “determine” that 2,000 NON-PRODUCING accounts were involved in click fraud, they can report that they terminated 2,000 accounts for click fraud. Sounds great and it actually makes it seem as though they have some sort of grip on the problem – which they don’t. Same with Yahoo! If they can say “…we terminated a bunch of accounts – and look at this – not just meaningless non-producing accounts but one of our top three – we’re really doing a great job of detecting this stuff…” Click farud and credit card fraud are obviosuly different, but they both require action to maintain confidence in the product. If they can’t actually stop the problem, at least they can make it look like they are controlling it.

185. On Nov 29, 2007, at 12:47 PM, Michelle Nakasone wrote:

     Hi Jeremy,

     We are going to hold off expiring your account. Let’s catch up after Pubcon.

     Michelle

     OF COURSE THEY WANTED TO WAIT!!! Fraud on top of bad PR. Hard to believe some can’t properly ID cards. Or at least say they are all coming in via Russia or somewhere, but to cut it off 100%…

186. alot of people rely soley on adsense, those people should be worried

187. Now that Microsoft bought Yahoo maybe they will think of a way to force people to use Yahoo the way Microsoft forces you to load Outlook Express. Go to the folder Outlook Express, Delete the program files, Windows puts them back. Or how they stop shipping the old O/S as soon as the new one ships, even if lots of people prefer the old one.

188. I agree. Google banned my AdSense account because a person with a vendetta clicked my ads repeatedly. I got no warning, no Michelle, no phone number and no response to emails.

     At least Yahoo provides some level of customer service.

189. Well well, what a mess. Here in The Netherlands YSM is also trying to gain some marketshare. Irritating daily (spam) messages in my mailbox.

     Way to go Yahoo!

190. I thought they were really serious bussiness man which you can trust and rely.

191. I have said it before, but the MS adCenter is a better tool and easier to use. They also respond when you have a question!

     Competition will be good for all of us!

192. That is some major crap. They should obviously have a way to track down this fraudulent traffic and see where its coming from exactly. That data has to be recorded somewhere. Sorry for that, really sucks.

193. […] Yahoo Search Marketing – ‘We Know We suck’ – ShoeMoney® __________________ NeverblueAds <- Best affiliate program I’ve found so far. Reformed […]

194. Wow, maybe they just don’t want to pay you the money you deserve. I wonder if there can be any legal actions taken against this because they can’t just terminate you without any proof.

195. I always say, one word can explain yahoo – USELESS Staff.

196. Their interface and how their system works is not great, but YSM does convert well for me. I think it’s also good for people who just starting out in PPC besides Adcenter before you move to the big boy Adwords. YSM let you for example use redirects, this is a different story with Adwords. Though a good online buddy of me is still able to make through Adwords using redirects a few hundreds dollars per day this way. That surprised me a bit!

197. I’m tracking you on this one. They have the worst of all of the PPC. Long waits for campaigns and words getting killed for no reason.

198. I was thinking of giving Yahoo a try until I read this post. I guess NOT!

199. I have had a couple of similar issues with PePCs and have had similar responses in that they weren’t prepared to help me unless I did all the detective work – as if I have the resources and not them !? Sometimes the lack of proper customer service skills really shows with some online companies when you have a problem of some sort. They are well set up to take your money but have no idea how to resolve issues. Soloution: fire them

200. this was a sad and disappointing ending from a big name like yahoo

201. YSM seems so unfriendly, limited and complex to start with when compared to Google. Their biggest advantage and attraction is that they are an alternative to Google. But Yahoo leaves many people wanting to “boo-hoo” instead of Yahoo. In that respect, maybe it shoudl merge with the residue legacy of Jeeve’s Ask.

202. I think yahoo search engine marketing department need a couple of new executives or business development. Personally, I can see yahoo stocks keep tanking!!!

203. wow i just signed up with them yesterday everyone bad mouths em so much i wanted to see for myself, they pretty much suck as i havent gotten one click for 2 days yet my ads in 3-4 in the sponsored list. And they’re features pretty much suck. im going to use up the little 100 bucks they gave me in credit and close the account.

     1. Hey, Exactly. Yahoo completely sucks with that division. I also hate it and use other programs only. Although its $100 credit is great. I am going to use it too.

204. […] Reese Interviews ShoeMoneyGoogle Adwords Arrow Trick To Incre..DefCon To SES – Some Security Issue..Yahoo Search Marketing – ‘We .. […]

205. […] great example for how unskilled many of the representatives of major web companies really are is Yahoo! Search Marketing. Just because someone is working for a major firm doesn’t mean he/she knows any more than you […]

206. they do suck … someone needs to buy them.

207. Thats why I love Google. Yahoo needs to get it right or they will continue to lose more money. You did a great job composing yourself with the emails too.

208. […] a buzz (online attention), Neil Patel from Quick Sprount, Muhammad Saleem of Web Urbanist and Jeremy Schoemaker a.k.a. Shoemoney are just a few that come to many people’s minds. The average joe or jane […]

209. O.K. that”s enough answers for me today.thanks

210. Yahoo marketing department should know better then that.

211. Shoe, has there been any changes with Yahoo? Interesting that they would not attempt to preserve the relationship even if that met holding things off a bit to make correct diagnostics. Hate it when companies look at these situations as lose/win situations. It thus becomes….lose/super lose situations

212. I guess, it is yahoo who lost another great marketer.

213. LoL, so more obvious proof…

214. Hmmm so all your hard work and efforts for promoting that specific product is down the drain. This is no good.

215. Google basically runs it and they know it, all other engines may as well quit.

216. wow, bummer

217. yahoo search marketing really sucks. and their level of censorship is really bad like communist china. google , aol rules.

218. I have been reading that Google will actually buy Yahoo in the near future.

     You can never say what’s the Big G is up to..

219. I smell bull shit. This all comes down to yahoo paying more commission than it could handle per click. Seems someone their sucks really bad at math. The email was just an excuse. I don’t even think it is possible to generate 65% credit card fraud for one site. Its not like Shoe has a hacker site or anything like that. As soon as I seen that number I know it was a load of donkey crap.

220. Hey Jeremy,
     Really bad to read all that. I think Yahoo is in some debt or kind of that thing that they are taking such bad steps.
     Obviously there can’t be 65% of them using stolen credit cards at all.

     By the way, your last few posts were damn awesome.

     Regards
     Laksh
     http://makemoneyonline-withme.blogspot.com/

221. At one time Yahoo was my favorite search engine just simply for its homepage. Their search results do not not give the best results and I have drifted away from using them altogether .

     Regards Greg

222. Hum wow Black Hat marketing tactic

     that trickles into raw content…awesome!

     The new search! give it 180 days ….Cuil!

223. It amazes me how big companies even make it to where they are when they pull mickey mouse crap like that. But like you said Jeremy it is their loss.

224. Dude I am not a cursing man, but that’s B@L/SHI7. That’s not good business.

     I can’t believe that. And they wonder why they’re losing ground with Google.

225. What can you do, if they can’t do the proper checks then how can you, this is why google is the very best and will soon own the whole Internet, well you never know. thanks for sharing this.

226. I don’t like yahoo search marketing.I loge google.

227. I like google

228. We need Yahoo! Search the Marketing account makes the promotion, you may provide?

229. LoL, so more obvious prof.

230. very goood site. thanx.

231. Hhmmmm so all your hard work and efforts for promoting that specific product is down the drain. This is no good.

232. This is the reason i do not have any deal with yahoo.Thats why I love Google. Yahoo needs to get it right or they will continue to lose more money. You did a great job composing yourself with the emails too.

233. Taken raspberries are available all year long as well as consist of quantities of nutritional requirements just like home picked out raspberries. Blueberries tend to be of course sweet and are great for dessert immediately after supper, on top lv outlet of the oatmeal salad having cut up peanuts plus barbequed steak in the course of lunch break, maybe in a new smoothy early morning.

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