Work At Home Information

Incentivized freebie websites (IFWs) operate by running advertisements (offers) for different products and services.  Some offers are completely free to try and others might have you pay shipping and handling.  Still others are a “get your money back if you don’t like it” type of deal.

Whatever the case, the company who puts out the offer is doing so for the purpose of gaining new customers. The company hopes that people will try their product or service and like it so much that they’ll keep it and move on to be full paying customers.

These types of offers are not only confined to IFWs. They can be found anywhere on the net since the IFWs themselves pick them up from affiliate networks. If you had a website, YOU could run one of these offers, and you would be paid for any “leads” (people who sign up for the trial) that come through your website.

As you know,  the whole incentive industry operates by offering prizes, cash or otherwise, to people to entice them to sign up for these offers.  The IFW gets money for every “lead” and shares its profits with each “lead” in order to entice them to bring in more “leads.”

“Offer fraud” comes in when people only sign up for the offers in order to get the prize and never had the slightest interest in trying the offered product or service.  Since they have no real interest in the product, there is no chance that they will become paying customers, and advertisers do not like this.  Offer fraud is not signing up for a free trial, trying the product as intended, deciding it is not for you and canceling before the end of the trial to avoid unwanted charges.  As long as you have an interest in the product, and try it out, you’re not committing offer fraud.

There is always going to be a percentage of true “offer fraud” in any incentive marketing campaign because human nature is human nature. Most companies that run these types of campaigns understand this and account for it in their advertising budget. “Offer fraud” does happen and it does hurt the incentive industry since it might discourage companies from running incentive campaigns.

Having said that, some advertisers are pushing the concept of “offer fraud” a little too far to avoid paying for their advertising.  They cry “offer fraud”  in order avoid paying for their leads, regardless of how many turned into paying customers.   In turn, the affiliate network revokes any credits issued to the IFW and will not pay the IFW for their leads.

This hurts the affiliate network, the IFW, and the freebie trader sending leads to the IFW since no one is paid for their work. This is just as wrong as true “offer fraud” and should be frowned upon equally as much. Unfortunately, as the economy continues to sour and belts continue to tighten, false claims of “offer fraud” are on the rise.