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@Sockinvaders... Your project was also featured in the spam mails from this kickbooster affiliate. So you are fine with spammers sending spam mails to thousands or million people all over the world as long you get one new backer?

eazrael wrote:@Sockinvaders... Your project was also featured in the spam mails from this kickbooster affiliate. So you are fine with spammers sending spam mails to thousands or million people all over the world as long you get one new backer?

Really?? You saw it? Hmmm ok. I'm not saying its a good thing. I'm saying it doesn't outweigh the good.

Someof the booster results so far look like this:

Bacckers Today: 404 click, 21 boosts (very happy with what they've done for us)
Toby: 623 clicks, 2 boosts (probably a spammer right lot of clicks but low success rate)
Kickbooster itself: 8 clicks, 2 boosts (that for me pays for the service. everything else is a bonus).
Yan Fortin: 686 clicks, 0 boosts (also spammer?)

The rest are all low clicks, 0 boosts.

My attitude with this is that every backer gained today could very well be a free backer for us on day 1 for the next project. and the project after that. they may sign up to our future subscription service. In business, a premium is placed on getting a new customer. So as long as theyre not simply taking profit away from people we would have captured anyway, its a good thing.

My only disappointment is that there are clearly not enough good boosters using it. which is why for some people, it wont recoup their 30 bucks. with more boosters, everybody wins. major twitch, youtube and other social media stars should be latching on to this as an additional, easy revenue stream. So i'm actually considering whether the gap between how good kickbooster could be and how it is now - might create a little niche i could work in to bridge the gap.

And Backers Today ist exactly the spammer... and the links in the mails redirect to Kickbooster and Kickbooster redirects to Kickstarter with their campaign ID. Have you seen the mails they send out?

I never sign up for newsletters. I hate newsletters. The address backers today is using is only known to Kickstarter and the projects I backed in a certain time frame. Kickstarter was hacked in 2014. I doubt that Backers Today got the address from a legal source, so their spam should be considered illegal even by the poor US laws.

I wonder how good the tracking of kickbooster and Kickstarter is. Will they count multiple leads if I call the referal links from a dozen IPs per day?

Got a response from kickbooster.me today. They asked me to send the spam mails to a certain address at kickbooster. Hell, I sent them all the mails with full headers & source in 3 mails over the weekend..

eazrael wrote:And Backers Today ist exactly the spammer... and the links in the mails redirect to Kickbooster and Kickbooster redirects to Kickstarter with their campaign ID. Have you seen the mails they send out?

I never sign up for newsletters. I hate newsletters. The address backers today is using is only known to Kickstarter and the projects I backed in a certain time frame. Kickstarter was hacked in 2014. I doubt that Backers Today got the address from a legal source, so their spam should be considered illegal even by the poor US laws.

I wonder how good the tracking of kickbooster and Kickstarter is. Will they count multiple leads if I call the referal links from a dozen IPs per day?

Got a response from kickbooster.me today. They asked me to send the spam mails to a certain address at kickbooster. Hell, I sent them all the mails with full headers & source in 3 mails over the weekend..

wow! no way. Backers Today?! but they are a legit website/platform in the crowd funding biz. i just figured they had a mailing list and were using it. I mean, 400 clicks and 21 sales isnt exactly spam rate. The 600/0 seems more like spam. 1 in 20 is about right for a warm leads kind of mailing list. i mean, i have about a 1 in 3 or 4 success rate among people who watch the full video. i have worked out its more like 1 in 8 or 9 for people overall, as a lot of videos dont get played to the end. so 1 in 20, its ok.

Honestly, ill take the sales. each one of those 20 backers is worth a lot more than a few bucks today. they are my backers on future projects. Maybe im a sell out, but a sale is a sale. the people that got spammed, doesnt affect me too much. obviously wrong that theyre doing it. still say more good than bad though. clearly its hard to regulate.

http://5.10.172.2/tmp/spam/backerstoday.html
http://5.10.172.2/tmp/spam/backerstoday2.html
(removed all links & non-embedded images, f*cked up encoding)
Your are listed between "A f*cking bag" and "Bear B*** Taking on North Face with USA Made Gear". Perhaps not everybody likes words with stars in them.

sockinvaders wrote:Honestly, ill take the sales. each one of those 20 backers is worth a lot more than a few bucks today. they are my backers on future projects. Maybe im a sell out, but a sale is a sale. the people that got spammed, doesnt affect me too much. obviously wrong that theyre doing it. still say more good than bad though. clearly its hard to regulate.

Okay. You are part of the problem.

eazrael wrote:http://5.10.172.2/tmp/spam/backerstoday.html
http://5.10.172.2/tmp/spam/backerstoday2.html
(removed all links & non-embedded images, f*cked up encoding)
Your are listed between "A f*cking bag" and "Bear B*** Taking on North Face with USA Made Gear". Perhaps not everybody likes words with stars in them.

sockinvaders wrote:Honestly, ill take the sales. each one of those 20 backers is worth a lot more than a few bucks today. they are my backers on future projects. Maybe im a sell out, but a sale is a sale. the people that got spammed, doesnt affect me too much. obviously wrong that theyre doing it. still say more good than bad though. clearly its hard to regulate.

Okay. You are part of the problem.

Ok let me put it this way? Where is the harm to you personally as a creator? I can see people who have been spammed being mad. And i'm mad for them at the spammer. But like... thats what spam filters are for. And clearly 400+ people actually bothered to read it and click on my link, as they were kind enough to put the percentage funded and ours was fairly flattering at that point. And 12 people now have cheap socks coming to them that they wouldnt have if it wasnt for the spam.

Is it ideal? Of course not. But surely the aim of all of us is to get our products out there into world, we want to find potential backers. The main victims here are the people who keep getting these and whose spam filters are not picking them up. If a crime was committed involving the hack then fine.

Dont you think the other guy i listed is way more suspicious? 600 clicks and 1 or i think sales. seems worse.

Okay. Let me put it this way. There are always morons who click on a mail offering cheap viagra, easy money with bitcoins, hot girls or some stupid socks. As long as these morons exist, spammers will make money and this dirty business is kept alive. And with this dirty busines come illegal activities like hacking/leaking, selling of data and so. Maybe even the mafia or some terrorist fund their efforts with this.

So even if you have a high conversation rate of 1%, you are stealing time from 100 people to make one moron buy from you. Real conversion rates are probably much lower (600 : 1 ?)

I know what a spam filter is. I developed one on my own. This is my hobby. But you cannot block everything as with overblocking you will lose legitimate mails. Currently 98% of my daily mails get filtered out. The remaining 2% are either valid mails or they get a special treatment . Currently the Crowdfunding mails get this special treatment. The address data these spammers are using were from the kickstarter hack/leak. So you are funding illegal activities with this. Somebody hacked and sold the data and your favorite spammer paid most likely money for the data. Good data, as the data was obtained kickstarter, so the addresses of these people already invested in kickstarter projects.

What is the special treatment? Analysis of everything. Why and how was data obtained, try to find connections, And complaining. I will complain to any hoster where the mail was sent from, I will send reports to any hoster hosting any linked or mentioned URL. I will send complains to any intermediary and to kickstarter. If that does not help I will complain publicly.

Why I am investing extra time on this? To stop spamming being profitable and in the end to stop spam at all. I know it's futile, but at least I am doing my part in this fight.

And like I said: You are part of the problem. You pay spammers.

Jesus Christ dude. MY only point was that Kickbooster is a decent platform for creators to use. It got me quite a number of sales. Of it was done illegally then yeah that sucks. Did i intentionally pay spammers??!! no. Should i tell those 20+ people sorry, you cant have the socks you purchased because you saw the ad in a spam message? I get it, you hate spam. Congrats. For most people, spam filters work just great. I have not got any kind of spam messages like this through gmail and i pretty much never see a legit message in the spam filter. So its kinda funny you made your own spam filter, it filters 98% LOL and youre still complaining that its not right. Weird man.

Now, my point was you seem to be smearing kickbooster. and my point is that the platform is legit, its actually very very useful. Here's why. Traditionally you would have to agree to pay some amount for referrals. and that requires trust. but this platform takes all the risk away, meaning all you have to do is post a link and any backer through it generates you money right then and there. Nothing the creator can do. Perfect.

If you want to complain that there arent enough influencers, then yeah i agree. You want to say that there are spammers? I agree. You want to complain at KS for getting hacked, ok fine. But i'm not going to sit and listen to such a bashing of a platform that has brought me over 5% of my backers so far. I think it'll be a lot better one day. Infact i'm preparing to use it for a very big collaboration that could very well see 100+ sales go through it. The collaboration would require contracts and stuff if it wasn't for Kickboost

Really glad for these posts, thanks for posting! Will avoid them.