"Business Offerings" on YouTube, Possible Scams?

[S0NIC-Keyblade 007]

So I've had a YouTube account for about four years, I love making GMVs of my favorite video games. Ever since I saw some amazing videos people made off Sonic games in 2006, I wanted to give video editing a try and making videos about my favorite gaming icon and uploading them on YouTube. However, a few months ago, my "Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games-Their World (Beta)" video reached over 1,000,000 views. Then on June 11, 2010, some guy named Timdonovan106a sent me a message saying:

Hello..

I really like your video, "Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games-Their World (Beta) " , SonicToadstool .

I wanted to know if you'd be interested in making some money

out of your YouTube videos...

I have a product (that I own) that would sell pretty well

to your viewers... So pretty much you'd just advertise

my product in your video's "video descriptions" and

whenever a sale is made, I'll give you a percent of it.

(I'll update you daily on sales so you know exactly

how much is being made and all that jazz!) We can figure out your percentage cut if you're interested!

Just let me know as soon as possible since I'd want

to start ASAP so we can both start making some money. =D

You can reply back to this message or email me here: UTubePartners135@gmail.com

Thanks and hope to hear from you soon!

Tim Donovan

I was very cautious about this and told my mother and her boyfriend about it, they said I should go for it so I contascted the guy back and said I was willing to do this business with him, I also asked how I would get a share of the profit and he responded:

Hey..

Thanks for getting back to me..

Alrighty so check it out...

So this is how it works. Instead of the person BUYING all they have to do is fill in their "email" and you'll get a commission. Now the commission wont be as high as obviously selling an actual product, but you'll get many more people just "filling in their email"...

This is what I'm talking about: http://tinyurl.com/2fabrgj

That offer of mine converts like crazy! You'll make 15 cents every time someone fills in their email and I know this may sound a bit small BUT think of it like this... If you can get 1,000 people to fill it in, that's $150 just for you. I have someone who's doing this daily through just one video... ha

Anywho, let me know what you think of this and when we can get things going.

Talk soon,

Tim

Hey!

Alrighty, let's get things going and make some money! =D

So it's pretty basic... This is your "custom" link I created just for you:

"custom Link"

You're just going to have to plug that into your video description at the TOP before everything else you have. You don't have to write anything about the link, just copy and paste it in... ha

Now for the important part, the annotation!

The reason why you need to have this is to tell the viewer to click the link or else there would be much less clicks and you know what that means... Less money for both of us. ha

So just add this into an annotation and keep it up the whole video if you can. I would put it somewhere out of the way so it's not interrupting the video.

---------

WOW... The new Apple Iphone 4G is so sweet. I just tested it out and think I'm in love... If you want to test it out too, click the link in the video description below! It's so freakin' awesome!

----------

I put it in between the dashes but obviously don't use the dashes... ha

As far as pay goes... On the 15th of month I will send you your pay via paypal.

Email me your paypal address and youtube channel name to utubepartners135@gmail.com

Anywho, that's it! Let me know when you put it on all your videos and I'll check it out for yah!

Talk soon,

Tim

So I put in the information on my videos and I had it up for about a month and once the 15th of July past he stopped responding to me completely. After a few attempts to contact him on Youtube I eventually gave up and removed the stuff about the iphone 4 off of my videos. However, my mother encouraged me to keep them on just incase the guy contacts me back. And just yesterday, some other guy named americaMarketing2010 contacted me on YouTube and wants me to do the same thing with his product that I did with Timdonovan106a.

We have completed your special link for your videos. We would like you to add them to your most populair videos so that we can start seeing results.

If you want you can set the advertisement up in every video, because more videos is more clicks.

This is the link we would like you to place in your video description. Make sure it's placed above any existing writing which is currently in there.

http://tinyurl.com/39fpgk2

Now for the annotations...

Frankly, I don't trust this garbage that these two want me to post on my videos and I don't really like the idea of my viewers getting involved in this mess either. I'm not 100% sure if these people are just trying to scam me and take advantage of the amount of viewers that I have on my videos to advertize their product but I would like to know if anything like this has happend to any of you guys and what would you suggest. Do you think it is a scam and I should just ignore these people completely? Or is this a great opportunity to earn money for doing something that I love?

[Tori Himemiya]

Ehhhh... I wouldn't trust it.

I mean I did got something like that and I tried something like that and I was like wait what? Also I gotten this before...

hey.

you have talent and i just wanted to give you a video on how to help get you featured.

www.earnsubscribers.com

if you check out that link you will get some tips and stuff on how to do so..

keep up the good work

alan c

Talent? o.0 I only posted cartoons and I get recognition for talent! Obviously these things should be scam.

So just be careful on what you click on.

[Badnik Mechanic]

It's a scam.

Or at least it's got every sign of a scam.

First of all, the youtube parners scheme is a real sceme, however youtube don't contact you like that. They've contacted me in the past about making money off my video (couldn't do it though due to it having some copywrite stuff in). They do it via a message to your youtube account, and by a message youtubes main page for you.

So why he's calling his group utubepartners which is an obvious attempt to pass it off as the official scheme... I don't know.

Secondly... there are a lot of people trying to get you to join these things, I had a message myself today, only the promise was more subscribers. Turns out it's a scam, hacking/fishing you name it... big scam.

Third. Does this sound familiar?

But the biggest clue, look at the language he's using, 'anyhoo' and the constant uses of ! and smilies. No serious company would do this. He sounds like he's trying to be your friend as apposed to negociating a business deal with you.

Theres a few other things too that don't make sense. Why would he bring Apples Ipod into this? Did he use their logos? Did he use any business logo? Did he give you a firm business address? Then it's garbage.

If it was youtube that sent you the message, then they would have changed your youtube homepage to tell you that you had been selected like they did with me and sent you a mail. Also, the only other time a company/fellow has asked if they could use my videos... was Best Buy, for their UK launch, even then I make a new account at their site and I would have had re-upload them to their own site.

If I were you, I'd change my Paypal password and maybe seriously consider cancelling the account just in case he's trying to access it as apposed to send you toot.

www.earnsubscribers.com

Thats the one I got the other day, it's a known scam and quite a bad one if you fall for it.

Edited August 13, 2010 by Gnasher

[Unionhack]

Google has been ad-scamming people for years. This is no surprise.

Youtube seriously sucks now.

[Tornado]

It is absolutely a scam. Even in the first message, he was already sending up tons of red flags.

[S0NIC-Keyblade 007]

Ok thanks guys, I feel much better now that I know for sure that this is a scam and that I'm not the only person that this has happened to. Alright I'm gonna remove everything about the iphone 4 off of my videos and I'm gonna ignore the guy that contacted me yesterday completely. If I get another message like this in the future, I'll definitely be prepared.

[bmn]

15c for an acquisition? I'd want a fair bit more than that...

Joking aside, this sounds very much like a scheme, either email farming for spam purposes or as part of a pyramid/ponzi scheme I'd guess. The other thing is, operations like these (including totally legit ones) always have minimum payouts, and I'd put money on you having gotten nowhere near to it, even if they did intend on paying you.

The bit where the selling items falls through and it switches to registering the email address is basically designed to get that initial interest. If they said they want to get peoples' email addresses at 15c a pop, you likely wouldn't be all that interested, but commissions for expensive products are a pretty penny when they add up, and also give the impression of legitimacy. The intention was always what they eventually asked you to do, though.

So, yeah, the others already said it, but you were taken for a bit of a ride. But no real harm done.

If you are interested in web advertising, and you have a website, then there are legit routes you can take that aren't too difficult. There's advertising provided by orgs like Google (paid by the click). There's also networks paid by each 1000 ad views, like AdBrite (easy to get in, iffy ad quality) and Adsdaq (more stringent, but pretty powerful). Then there's affiliate marketing which pays you a commission of around 5% when you link someone that later buys something, from e.g. Amazon. The "done" thing with affiliate marketing is that you'd have an article/video/review/whatever about, say, a Sonic game, and you'd have the advertisement on that page for the same game so the ad fits the audience.

Of course how well these programs perform would depend on your own site (and you need one in the first place), but at least then you're dealing with legit companies you can trust to pay you and not be involved in illegal activity.

[188Eternal]

Hmm... I guess that whether it can be automatically labelled as a "scam" depends on the situation...

If a person was to receive such an email for making videos of playing videogames which were designed by other people then it would be safe to consider such an email as "scam", since the uploader hasn't been demonstrating any personal marketable skills in their videos.

But if a person was to receive such an email for making trailers of videogames which are being designed by them as a hobby in their spare time, it would be safe to consider such an email as valid, since the uploader has been demonstrating some personal marketable skills in their videos.

As a good example, there's a young person out there who has a hobby of making videos of herself dancing to Jpop music in her bedroom. And guess what? She received such an email and is now a celebrity with a business contract.

So, like I said, the answer to this question depends on your personal situation.

If your videos are demonstrating that you possess a skill then the business offering is likely to be true.

But if your videos are demonstrating how you chill in front of your TV in the living room with an Xbox360 hooked up to it then the business offering is most likely a scam...

Cause see, gaming is mostly viewed as a relaxational activity which doesn't contribute any profit to the economy after the game has already been bought and is already being played by you. Therefore, pawning someone in a game is not a marketable skill. :P

Edited August 13, 2010 by DarkJedi188

[Mystwalker]

Earnsubscribers, movieswar... got both links in about 5 YouTube PMs before. I never bothered to check nor respond because I upload videos without any interest in statistics and just for amusement, to satisfy my Movie Maker needs. Therefore I know my videos are hardly ever "amazing" to be worth such praise anyway, and the amount of views I get proves that too.

It's not hard to distinguish a real person from an automated-looking message these days. Unless the person knows what he's talking about I don't pay attention to YouTube PMs. Besides money doesn't drive me into traps because it's not a big need for me right now.

[S0NIC-Keyblade 007]

Hey guys, I wanted to thank you again with your advice on these internet scamers, but I had one more dialema that I wanted to get some opinions on. So, I already gave some details out about the first guy but I wanted to make sure that this other guy, I know that I said that I was gonna ignore him completely but I just wanted to be 100% sure that he was a fraud. So anyway a few days ago he contacted me on Youtube shortly before I made this topic saying.

I am interested in making a deal with you to include a link to a product which your viewers may

be interested in purchasing. All you would have to do is insert a short annotation and link to my

product website (which I will make for you & help you if necessary) in your video & video

description. Thereafter I will pay you 10% of all sales made from your video. Once a sale is

completed, I will contact you immediately to let you know, and arrange payment. I can pay you

by PayPal or another way if you prefer. I will create an account for you so you can check out your commission 24/7.

If you are interested or have any questions please let me know as soon as possible since I have

only a few spots left. **Because your video is very popular and has many views, there is a possibility that you can earn a substantial amount of money. You literally would have to do nothing more than place our link in your video description, that's it. Hope you will consider this!

Thank you very much and looking forward to hearing from you soon!

Best Regards,

Michael

My mother and her boyfriend suggested that I should check out this guy (even though I should have probably just ignored him after my first encounter with a scamer). So I said:

Alright I'm interested, what do I have to do?

So then the guy replys

We have completed your special link for your videos. We would like you to add them to your most populair videos so that we can start seeing results.

If you want you can set the advertisement up in every video, because more videos is more clicks.

This is the link we would like you to place in your video description. Make sure it's placed above any existing writing which is currently in there.

http://tinyurl.com/39fpgk2

Now for the annotations...

This is what we would like you to put as your annotation which you will place on your videos.

Make sure you have the annotation up for the WHOLE video. This is very important because the longer it's up, the more people will click on it!

Annotation should say this:

Click the link below (in video description) to see how an 18 year old makes over $728 per day through the internet... This is the craziest thing I have ever seen.. It's so freaking cool!

Thank you and let us know when you've completed this.

To see your stats, please go to:

http://www.americamarketing.biz/affiliates/

Username: ****

Password: ****

When due, we will pay via PayPal. Please let us know what your PayPal emailaddress is.

If you have any other questions please feel free to ask.

Best Regards,

Michael

Although I find the whole copy and paste url link familiar to what Timdonovan106a wanted me to do so I replied:

I've already had someone on YouTube who contacted me and asked me to advertize their product, however they never payed me through my paypal account. So how do I know that I can trust you to pay me through a paypal account if I advertize your website?

Soon after that, I made this topic to get some opinions on possible scamers over the internet and then he replies 2 days later (which was earlier today):

Our system is directly linked to our payment provider. We really would like to have you as an advertiser. So we will pay on time.

If you have any further questions, please let me know.

Best regards,

Michael

This guy seems to want me to do exactly what Timdonovan106a wanted me to do, advertize his website and gain viewers email addresses. Apparently his site is about "how to make money quick online" and whenever I visit the website, some message comes up telling me that it doesn't want me to leave which makes me feel uncomfortable. But in comparison to Timdonovan106a, this guy seems to use better grammar and he even set me up some account to put my "payments" in, but does that alone make him legit? How can one pick out red flags when it comes to scamers? What do you guys think? Is Michael someone to look into? Or should I just ignore him like Timdonovan106a? Anyway, I greatly appreciate all of your concerns and opinions about this subject.

[Superstrider]

Every time I get one of those messages, I just block the user. I'm not stupid, and I don't want them to keep bothering me. I want people to watch my videos, since they are funny. But these guys don't even bother looking at them when they send you the message.

[DarkOverord]

Oh god these messages. My favourite was when one commented on my voice. When at the time I NEVER UPLOADED A SINGLE VIDEO WITH MY VOICE. I personally always report these users.