Should You “ContactThem”? A Tempting Scam…
There is a rash of emails going around, and you may have seen one of these in your own Inbox. It goes something like this…
Subject: I’ve visited your website http://www.clicknewz.com
Hi,
We’ve seen your website at http://www.clicknewz.com and we love it!
We see that your traffic rank is 61113
and your link popularity is 162.
Also, you have been online since 4/20/2004.With that kind of traffic, we will pay you up to $4,800/month to advertise our links on your website.
If you’re interested, read our terms from this page: http://www.contactthem.ws/hit.php?s=10&p=2&w=103047
Sincerely,
Tony Gagliardi
The ContactThem Network
After having received a large number of these emails, all referencing different sites or specific pages on my sites, and all from different senders in “The ContactThem Network” with different referral links, I decided to check into it…
When you click on one of their referral links an audio begins and reads the content to you. Its very convincing and compelling – but gives you that “too good to be true” sense.
It didnt take much digging to find the name behind the network: Stephan Ducharme. Ring a bell? You may remember him as as “The FreeAdGuruâ€.
Ducharme is selling the ContactThem software which extracts details out of databases and allows you to do a mass mailing with all of that personalized information. In fact, if you’ve received an email like the one quoted above, that’s exactly why you got it – one of Ducharme’s affiliates extracted YOUR details out of a database and spammed you with their ContactThem affiliate link…
While it sounds like they are going to pay you “up to $4,800/month” to display links on your website or blog – which sounds like an offer for text link or banner advertising – they are actually trying to recruit you into the multi-tier affiliate program.
Basically you are being spammed, with a request to join the band of spammers.
Stephan Ducharme is known for good copy, and also for getting a viral campaign kicked off with a huge buzz. But he is also known for bad customer service, not honoring refunds and under-delivering.
When in doubt, do your research. But as for this particular email… if you receive one like it, hit the DELETE key and move on.
Best,
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Thank you SO much! I was almost tricked into joining this but of course I wasn’t going to join without doing some research first. Your post explained it best & I will NOT be joining! Have a great day.
Docs,
Have you considered getting quantified at Quantcast? There are several advantages of doing that not the least of which is that they seem to be most accurate rankings site right now.
But also, they are specifically set up to allow other sites to search for places to advertised based on various criteria, including site affinity (you put in your url and it will list and rank other sties it believes to have close affinity with yours).
Then it seems Compete is the next most accurate, and then Alexa.
I know Alexa keeps claiming that their fixing their algorithm, but so far I haven’t seen much evidence of it. They still seem to be subject to artificial ranking inflation or at least don’t seem to the TrafficExchange type traffic whereas somehow (I don’t know how) QuantCast seems to be able to do that.
As for ContactThem. What’s not to love?
I can make money receiving spam! Every spam I receive from the ContactThem network has the potential to generate “up to” $4,800/month (I think ZERO) qualifies in that equation.
Paul Schlegel
http://www.workathometruth.com/ContactThem-Spam-Income-Calculator.php
I got of these emails too! Thanks Lynn for the info. I deleted the email.
[...] A little more information about this ContactThem Network. [...]
I too received one of these emails today. I went to the website, entered my information and was just about to hit “submit” when I realized the page was not secured (https) and yet it was asking for my SS#! That was enough to send up the red flag.
Thanks for saving me many headaches.
I found the same in emails many times. I was looking to see if it is even more common now since I got one per every 10 pages on my site. It is getting really bad on spam. Also be careful in scam busting if you read the news on http://www.zolaenterprises.com you can find out how a scam buster got in trouble for busting a politicians known scam companies.
[...] Opportunities: ContactThem.com Scam! Should you “ContactThem”? A tempting scam Ducharme’s latest scam WorkAtHomeTruth.com Blog ContactThem.com [...]
I got one of these emails today and was really excited thinking this was it! Thought I’d hunt around first, THANK YOU SO MUCH, I nearly fall for this awful scam.
Grateful for the warning
Sonia
Sounds very tempting, what do you think im being too gaulible could this be a scam?
I just got this from one of my page,he left his phone number on the bottom too and altrnetive email i could use 30% of 5.5 million lol but BIG SCAM YES OR NO??I didnt put it n coz im suppose to be a trustworthy person…!!
well i guess it is a scam, i would appreciate more information about it before coming to any conlusion. And if its no scam its fantastic. Please let us know
I just got one of these emails! Thanks so much for confirming my suspicions that $4,800 dollars is way too good to be true!
If it sounds to good to be true it normally is a scam.
Great discussion. I always enjoy revisiting here. Always learn something
“People will believe a lie because they want to or because they are afraid it might be true.”
There are many scams out there. And everyones deffinition of what a scam is, is different based on there attitude and choices in the past.
If Contact Them has a viable product and actually pays for what work you do when they say they will pay you then it is not a scam.
Most of the damn ads on websites say free ipod or xbox or whatever and then require you to fill out 50,000 different “surveys” and whatever else thats my deffinition of a scam.
Now obviously if we got contacted with correct information that they shouldnt be able to get without looking on whois and everything else like that which in order to build an email list of any meaningful length is highly inefficient if done manually, then there product is viable.
I got an email from them for a page on youtube!
Read more about there product. It is software that scans websites for there publicly accesible information and compiles it into a contact list. Now if you are working there business you want to target people who would benefit from being able to pull contact information from anywhere on the web or to advertise there business or NPO or even themselves.
You can etiher make money or make excuses but not both.