Phil Wiley drops a bombshell…
After mentioning Phil Wiley in a recent post, he dropped me a personal email pointing to this post at his blog.
In the post, Phil quotes from an email he got from Cody Moya. The contents are shocking. In order to boost his own affiliate sales, Cody suggests that people who have already bought a certain product ask for a refund and then buy again through his link in order to get his bonuses.
Ouch. That’s taking hard-earned commissions from other affiliates after they’ve been credited to the affiliate’s account. It also boosts the refund rate for the merchant, and costs the payment processor money to refund the transaction… which they’ll pass on to all merchants in higher fees. What’s more, it destroys the credibility of Cody. Can he really be that desperate for commissions to use such underhand tactics?
Definitely a step beyond acceptable affiliate tactics. Thanks for letting us know about it, Phil.
(interesting update to Phil’s post… “After reading my post Clickbank expert Harvey Segal reported it to his contact at Clickbank who quickly responded by suspending Cody’s account”.)
Clickbank said….
–> We have blacklisted this affiliate’s hoplink as well have suspended their account. It does take a few hours sometimes for the hoplink to be disabled after this has been done. They will also be notified that this type of activity is not tolerated by Clickbank. < --
Ouch! I guess Cody won’t be seeing his next commission check for a while. Congratulations to Clickbank for swift, decisive action.
November 3rd, 2006 at 5:44 pm
Neil, in an attempt to do something to ’stem the rot’, I posted to my blog a set of 5 ‘guidelines’ that have served me well over the years of affiliate marketing.
With some interactivity within the affiliate marketing industry, with additions and modifications to the core ‘rules’, this could become a guidebook for ‘Acceptable Affiliate Practices’
The blog post is here
http://www.ezinemarketingcenter.com/warrior/
Please take a look and share your thoughts about it.
All success
Dr.Mani
November 3rd, 2006 at 6:08 pm
Cody, your ship has sailed and it looks like you’re still standing on the dock. What a scoundral. To survive you are going to have to change your name. While you’re at it how about changing your morals too!
November 3rd, 2006 at 6:15 pm
I’m not defending Moya in any way, but as I recall the Rich Jerk did the exact same thing in trying to hawk Brad Fallon and Andy Jenkin’s recent massively-priced dealybob. Why didn’t anybody jump all over the Rich Jerk?
Because everybody expects him to be a jerk?!
November 3rd, 2006 at 6:36 pm
Tom, as far as I know, I’m not on any of the Rich Jerk’s lists so couldn’t comment on his tactics. As I said in the post, I was tipped off about Cody by Phil.
I often get people emailing me saying that they’ve already ordered through someone else’s link, but would still like my bonuses, what can they do? I give them my bonuses for free. I then say to wait to see if I’m offering bonuses before ordering next time. Everyone stays happy.
Neil.
November 4th, 2006 at 2:16 am
Man, I wish I would have saved that email.
But if I saved every marketing email I get, I’d be filling up hard drives like floppy disks!
November 4th, 2006 at 7:11 am
I hope Cody kept a few of those ATV’s he was giving as a bonus for buying Stompernet through his link. Might be needing to sell a few on eBay to make next month’s rent after pulling a stupid stunt like this one.
November 5th, 2006 at 4:15 am
I haven’t met Cody but I am on a few of his lists. May be I did not read about this offer because there are so many duplicate promotional emails, you tend to ignore most of them.
I did see Phil’s note and cursed Cody for stooping so low - happy to note that a serious action has been taken and all marketers thinking of going low to make a buck at any cost will get a fair warning!
A couple of years ago, a budding marketer who showed a lot of promise (30 days, Singapore, rings a bell?) was quickly annihilated when he broke the rules of decent marketing. Haven’t heard about about him for a long time
One can try aggressive means but not unethical means - they don’t have a long life!
November 7th, 2006 at 10:03 am
Internet marketing is so ‘incestuous’, it’s a wonder Cody thought he could get away with it. You do wonder whether a ‘bigger name’ marketer would have politely been warned, however…
November 8th, 2006 at 3:49 pm
Hi Steve,
You don’t get much bigger than Cody… he usually tops all the JV partner competition events he takes part in.
Neil.
November 10th, 2006 at 8:46 pm
Neil,
Thanks for exposing what Moya did……however it didn’t stop Michael Cheney from working with Moya!!! Moya is currently his number 1 affiliate for his latest product. As Gecko said in “Wall Street”…..”Greed is good. Greed works.”…..seems to be the case doesn’t it?
Personally I will never buy anything from Moya again, nor buy anything from any so called “guru” who works with him. I think others should do the same. Don’t forget we are all affiliates in some way or another and many people will have lost money because of what Moya suggested/encouraged.
Any by the way, terminating his clickbank account is meaningless. He’ll just get another handle and another company to pay his commission to.
The only way to stop such behaviour is expose it and then hit where it hurts most….in the pocket book….by boycotting the offenders products and endorsements. Unsubscribing would be a good start!!
Peter
Tom…..this is a copy of the Moya email……enjoy:
==================================================
Hi Peter
This is Cody Moya
Imagine having 113,181+ affiliates promoting a product *for you* that you
didn’t even create?
Just recently, a 24 year old High School Drop Out revealed his EXACT
system for doing this….
Learn how you can replicate his system with this ’step-by-step’ video
tutorial system….
http://codymoya.com/dominatingcb/
* How he got 40,879 unique visitors, generated over 384 new customers and
most importantly made over $25,430 of sales from a resale r ight product
* Using the power of Clickbank and Adwords I managed to bank over $1100.18
profit during the Christmas period for a campaign that took me less than 5
minutes to set up.
Andrew reveal’s all his tactics in this new “Dominating Clickbank” Video
Tutorial Guide.
http://codymoya.com/dominatingcb/
BUT…
“Dominating CB” is only almost prefect.
Why almost perfect?
You will get all info you need about ClickBank but you will not get any
software which will improve your effort and may be all the difference
between success and failure.
Also you will not get much information about three pillars of predictable
affiliate cash: how to make visitor to click through your link, how to
keep the cookie on their computer so you get the commission and how to
make visitor referred by you to want to buy now.
Here is where I come to supplement “Dominating CB”with software and
additional 79 minutes of brand new video recorded 2 weeks ago in the
middle of October.
Without my add-on “Dominating CB” is just good. With what I give you
“Dominating CB” is great and probably the best click bank course I have
see this year but only if you have software and additional 79 minutes of
video which is missing in original package.
If you already bought “Dominating CB” go ahead to clickbank and refund.
After that buy through my link because what you have is not full without
what you are getting from me.
If you get “Dominating CB” through my link I will give you follow very
important software and video:
- Affiliate Cookie Stuffer This is my proprietary $197 software. You can
not get it from anybody else. This is the secret tool I used to make
$45,500 in 10 Days with just one affiliate marketing product on ClickBank!
Using this software, you should be able to stand out from the growing crowd
of affiliate marketers and join me in the top 2% of the Internet’s
affiliate marketing earners!
This software will put you above everybody who bought “Dominating CB”.
- Ad Tracking software which is critical and can make different between
loosing and earning money
- Brand new 79 minutes video recorded 2 weeks ago in the middle of
October. Video is about three pillars of predictable affiliate cash: how
to make visitor to click through your link, how to keep the cookie on
their computer so you get the commission and how to make visitor referred
by you to want to buy now.
- 28 private label software you can start selling immediately like you
will see on “Dominating CB” videos.
Here For Your Succes
Cody Moya
P.S. Buying “Dominating CB” video without additional 79 minute video and
software is like buying a car without ignition key.
Get your “Dominating CB” now
http://codymoya.com/dominatingcb/
P.P.S. Make sure to clear the cookies before click on my link to make sure
I will get credit and you will get all bonuses. After you buy please post
receipt on my helpdesk to get download link. Help desk is here
http://customersupportserver.com
September 2nd, 2007 at 2:16 am
well he is still on clickbank already just has a new affiliate id visit http://www.codymoya.com/domainprofits/ and click on the order button
Seems Cody is now known as [affiliate = xodoxodo]
March 20th, 2008 at 4:06 pm
Horrible what Cody has done! But I think a lot of the problem lies with ClickBank as well! The refund policy is a little too easy, if you ask me. Maybe the “no questions asked” rule was a neccessary evil back in the day, but I think people have become accustomed to buying info products online now. I’m not saying refunds should be denied (God knows i’ve bought some real junk as of late- which i didn’t refund, by the way), but a stricter policy should be enforced for the sake of hard working affiliates everywhere.
April 26th, 2008 at 11:18 pm
That’s pretty harsh. Things must be hard for Cody to resort to these tactics. As far as refunds go, with my affiliate account I don’t see it as a huge problem. For the most part, the refunds I see are what I expect from experience. I don’t think their refund policy is too lax. With some of the products that show up in Clickbank, I think they are just covering their backs. People don’t like buying products without a guarantee.
May 17th, 2008 at 11:54 am
I don’t know how big name affiliates think they can get away with this sort of thing! it never goes un noticed
June 25th, 2008 at 7:23 am
Over the long run, as information becomes more and more available and equal on the internet, guys like Cody. In fact, I remember when you ran your website to eduacte people on hoem based business scams, and I still like coming back once in awhile.