Interview with a reader: confessions of a scheme traffic handler | "It's not a crime if there's no such article"

Many gambling affiliate programs willingly accept scheme traffic. One of our readers spent many years creating and processing scheme traffic, earning thousands of dollars from it, and was eager to share everything about how he entered the world of gambling, why he chose schemes, and who he was earning from. He talked about the amounts involved and the emotions that came with his earnings.

Beginning: Trials and failures, initial projects

How did your journey in online earnings start, and how did you get into scheme traffic?

I'm originally from a small town. My family was middle-class, and I earned my first money through copywriting, making $300 a month at 14 years old. At that age, I had the idea to start my own Facebook group. That's where the first income from advertising began, and I got hooked.

One day, a webmaster contacted me, wanting to buy ad space for a cream that supposedly increased manhood. I found the creative to be too audacious and declined, but the idea itself stuck in my head. I started googling, trying to find out more about the topic, and eventually stumbled upon affiliate programs. A week later, I was flooding my feed with creatives related to adult content and weight loss, buying posts from everyone I knew. Gradually, I transitioned into schemes for online casinos.

"I didn't have any barriers or thoughts that it was wrong": starting to generate scheme traffic

This was in the spring of 2018. The old topics had run their course, and adult content had stopped being profitable. At the moment when I found myself jobless, a friend started testing the gambling niche. Of course he started with schemes. We were both newcomers to the gaming industry, but we had nothing better to do, so we started active testing. And it worked!

In two months, we injected traffic worth $3,000 per each of us. The amount wasn't huge, but the investments were minimal, and processing didn't require much effort. Plus, we had a crazy conversion rate, where every other request led to a lead attempt, and if a person successfully made a deposit, it turned into a lead.

Working with one player took 40-60 minutes, and it was effortless. The initial message promised golden opportunities, followed by a few answers to questions, a link to the website, and then the game itself. I didn't feel like we were doing something wrong. Yes, my conscience bothered me at times, but I vividly remember my first lead when, after a simple scripted conversation with a stranger, I earned my first $30. It was a decent rate per hour. 

Where did you source your traffic? 

We sourced it from Instagram public pages. Pictures depicting a luxurious lifestyle and success from every friend's feed did the trick. "Click the link and earn $500 an hour!" The audience couldn't resist, and we counted our steadily growing income.

By summer, we got disconnected from the first affiliate program. JoyCasino started paying more attention to profitability, and repeat deposits didn’t seem to work out for us. Looking back, it was due to a human factor: I simply felt sorry for people who deposited money to play and spent it in vain. Over time, when my income started to depend on this, such feelings disappeared.

Growth and scaling: bringing in friends led to increased volumes

"No crime is too great when there's a chance of a 300% profit." We joined gambling.partners, negotiated a lucrative deal, and from that point on, all I cared about was scaling up. More traffic, more repeat deposits, more payouts.

I brought in my friends and acquaintances, setting them up for processing. We had individual agreements, but I didn't undercut anyone on their rates and gave them a good percentage. One processor was making $1-3К in pure profit per month, and I also handled customer communication myself because you can never have too much money.

How did you feel about the people who contacted you? How did that attitude change over time?

At first, it was emotionally challenging, and every lead felt like a "don't wanna do it." However, that didn't last long. Over time, I became more cynical and driven by consumer morals. A person wouldn't become poor from losing $15, which he could’ve spent on any other form of entertainment. That's how I reasoned, and I still do to this day. Yes, this may not be entirely ethical, but think for yourself: isn't there a clear logic in this?

Was everything always so smooth? Or are there also scam cases?

We aimed to work with serious companies whose reputation was worth more than a couple of thousand dollars. However, there was one case. It was a betting website starting with "B", which I'd rather not name, but those in the know will understand:) We worked through a trusted affiliate program. The idea was simple: the advertiser was entirely new to such schemes. They gave the green light for this type of traffic to increase the number of active players on their platform. After the initial verification, they increased the payout for all webmasters, including us. The rate was around $30-40 per lead.

After a few days of driving traffic, the advertiser praised the quality of the traffic and encouraged us to inject more, but as it turned out, they hadn't been transferring anything to the affiliate program from the beginning, and we were unaware of this. In the end, we didn't generate much, around $5К, before the first payouts. We had been directing almost all of our remaining traffic there and diverting players from other platforms. You can imagine our surprise when the payment didn't come through, haha!

Many affiliate programs accept schemes? Did you always have something to send traffic to?

In general, yes. There were short periods when major advertisers halted schemes, especially at the beginning of our "career," but it’s really uncommon. Scheme traffic is alive and will live on. KPIs might get stricter, and the traffic type itself may not have the best reputation, but you have to understand that there's a lot of money involved, and everyone comes out ahead. 

What do people who contact you with the desire to win with online algorithms think? What is the average user profile?

Let's start with the latter. Typically, it's a man aged 22-30, not from a big city but not from a village either. The primary motivation is to earn money, plain and simple. I wouldn't call these people gullible, and these conditional $30 were hard to come by for them. But they wanted to try, and they came to me. The path was standard: they registered, topped up their balance, played, didn't get the expected results, and disappeared. This is the most common scenario.

Women also wrote, and quite often, about 35-40% of the inquiries came from them. The female nature is more trusting, and it was easier to convince them to make repeat deposits. And overall, they seemed to be more compliant, I suppose. Men often rushed, deviated from the algorithms, made hasty decisions, and, in general, it was more challenging to communicate with them.

All the people who wrote to me shared a common trust in making money on the Internet, a difficult financial situation, and a desire to earn. My legend wasn't something new; many arbitrageurs were promoting schemes before me, but I carefully worked on it and added credibility. Plus, there were various proofs like player reviews with faces and videos of winnings right on casino websites.

Has it ever happened that a person lost an amount equivalent to a house or a good car?

There was a girl who played at several different casinos through me, deposited $50 at each one, and lost it all. I genuinely felt sorry for her and explained that it was time to stop. I didn't say it was all a scam but explained that schemes were currently not working well, and it would be better to suspend this activity for an indefinite period because neither I nor other algorithm creators could help her right now. It seemed like we reached an understanding, and then, a week later, she writes saying she lost her apartment. How? How did the idea even come into her head to make such a bet? I don't know, and I was powerless to help her.

I consoled myself with the thought that she had been playing in casinos before meeting me, as she herself had mentioned, and she fell for the thrill rather than the schemes, which was a potent drug in itself. Nevertheless, this was an extreme rarity, and I don't recall more cases like that.

Were there any opposite examples? Surely someone must have won?

Yes, and it always happened in a funny way. I was afraid to let players win too much because it negatively affected the profitability of the traffic, and our payouts could’ve been significantly cut. Nevertheless, there were lucky players.

There was a guy from somewhere in Eastern Europe who contacted me with a desire to earn. The guy was spinning the slots as if he had honey spread everywhere. At first, he won $200. I gave him a scheme to rollover the balance and on the next screenshot he had $400. And this happened several times, the balance kept growing and at some point, it reached $1500. At the last moment, I gave him an algorithm where the bet was in the range of $5-10K at a time, and we finally cleared his balance. He ended up roughly at the same amount, maybe $1-2K in profit, and we saved that settlement,which would have definitely caused issues if one player had withdrawn such an amount.

Were there cases where you encountered "undesirable" clients? Did they try to identify and locate you?

Many attempts were made to de-anonymize me, but not very professionally, they were done by ordinary people. I only had an Instagram page as a resource; even with a police report, it’s extremely difficult to uncover a real location and identity of a person. None of the losers knew my wallets, where I was, or what I looked like, if they even understood that I wasn't the person in all the photos.

Are you still doing the same thing now? 

I stopped promoting schemes about a year and a half ago. I now drive traffic from Facebook to India and LATAM. People are the same everywhere and behave similarly, with regional nuances taken into account. However, I've moved away from scheme traffic and consider that chapter in my life closed. Everything needs to end at the right time. I've transitioned into a different line of work where I don't have to deal with my conscience, and it suits me just fine.

Tell us about working with "foreigners". How does processing requests from places like India, Third World countries, and other geos differ?

Indians ask multiple times before making a deposit, verifying if the opportunity really works, how much they can earn, and share their entire life story. They'll send photos of their diffcult lives, of a relative who had his leg run over by a train, children they can't feed. In the process,they'll be very persistently asking about who you are, how you achieved such success, and how long you've been working with casinos.

At the same time, players from very poor countries don't ask the question that Eastern Europeans like to ask: why are you helping strangers at all? There can be many theories developed about mentality or the fact that people from Third World countries are accustomed to humanitarian aid from the "white man". I won't provide a definitive conclusion.

What do you think about the future of scheme traffic? 

People get burned and get vaccinated against one form of deception, only to eagerly embrace another and part with their money just the same. Human psychology has been forming for a very long time, and those who work with scheme traffic know this well.

Yes, old legends are not as effective anymore, and many more people are aware that schemes for casinos don’t lead to success and often work in the opposite direction. Well, someone will come up with a new legend, competitors will pick it up, and the faceless scam machine will start working again. Something in this world is eternal, and social engineering is one of those things: it’ll always work as long as humanity exists in the form we know it.