I was signing up for a Photobucket account the other day, and I was quite surprised by their aggresive attempt to monetize new signups. On the registration screen, you are asked to provide your cell phone number. If you enter your cell phone number, a pre-checked bx appears which reads “
If you keep the box checked, a text message with a “coupon code” will be sent to your phone, and you will be asked to enter your “coupon code” on the next page. If you enter the code, you will be charged $9.99/month to be a member of Bid4Prizes. Bid4Prizes is a cell phone based auction system owned by the same company that operates the popualr mobilesidewalk ringtone affiliate program.
Photobucket is making at least $7.50 per user who enters a coupon code. They are probably making even more based on the significant volume they are driving to the offer. Considering the relatively young demographic of Photobucket’s users, I am sure that they are generating a ton of signups, and there are probably some surprised parents out there looking at cell phone charges from Bid4Prizes. According to the May Photobucket newseltter, they are registering 85,000 new users per day. If the offer converts at 1% of new users, they are generating over $2.2 million dollars in revenue per year from the offer.
This monetization strategy is very aggressive, and it will be interesting to see how long Photobucket maintains the practice.
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they got my son this way, totally unbeknownst to him, and I am furious. unethical and repulsive way to make money.
Curious how many of these texts will they send me. I hesitate and usually put in my old phone number which is no longer active. Dumb me put in my new one. I didn’t respond or put in the code but I did receive two text mess. Anyway to stop this or will they keep texting me?
The thing that’s terrible about this scam is that it’s so subtle - you can easily leave that box checked. And if you hit submit, you can’t go back - you’ll get a test message at some point, and once you do, you’ve already been charged $10.
This is bad, bad, bad business behavior. Nobody wants to be subscribed to “Bid4prizes”. But it’s pretty easy to do it accidentally. I already contacted the CTO - we’ll see if he writes back. But you don’t want a legitimate website to be connected with scams…
I agree that it is a shady practice, but in their defense, you are are only charged the $10/month if you enter into the site the confirmation PIN that is sent to your phone.