ACME People Search: New Rules (again)
Tissa Godavitarne’s affiliate program ACME People Search is constantly targeted by blackhatters and otherwise dishonest people using virtual credit cards, virtual PayPal accounts and other evil means to get to the sign-up bonus, which is added in new A.P.S. affiliates back office upon completing all of the three steps in their account. In August 2009 Tissa and his team made it compulsory to register a GDI-based e-mail account in Step 2, due to numerous fake accounts and credit cards created in an attempt to exploit the People Search program.
Effective from November 19 2009, in order to get paid referral commissions, all A.P.S. affiliates must subscribe to Step 3 for at least 45 days before they are eligible for a payout. This in addition to the first steps, meaning a total monthly cost running at minimum $39.95. More if you choose to subscribe to GVO and/or Wealthy Affiliate as well.
Also, the commission system for Step 1 through Step 3 has changed:
You now earn $1 when a referral completes Step 1, $2 for Step 2 and $3 for Step 3. These amounts no longer depend on each step’s success rate, something that aggravated affiliates before. Additionally, a %15+ success rate in Step 3 adds a $32 bonus, although this is 100% voluntary.
“I am poor, how am I supposed to earn anything with ACME People Search now?”
- Register in the Support forum after registering as an ACME People Search affiliate.
- Read and learn, start posting helpful answers in the forum on a daily basis (important!).
- Subscribe with Step 3 via PayPal (the first month is free).
- Continue subscribing with Step 3 via PayPal until you have become a Super Sponsor.
- Alternatively, wait with Step 3 and promote A.P.S. with only Step 1 and 2 activated.
You need a plan for how you are going to promote ACME People Search. Many prefer Google Adwords. I was recently banned for life from their program when promoting ACME People Search with it (I am not bitter, just frustrated at how Google treats their paying customers), but there are many other PPC companies around, most being more affordable than Adwords. Also look into utilizing SEO for articles, blog posting, e.t.c.
“Okay… but, I think ACME People Search is not for me after all… what about GDI?”
If money is an issue, I recommend GDI (Global Domains International) at $10/mo. With 10 active referrals your membership fee is covered and you’ll profit from there. GDI pays on time, offers a $100 bonus for every 5 active referrals recruited by you in a week and they have been around since 1999. GDI‘s requirement for the bonuses is that you purchase one of their 10-packs with promo DVDs. This is a one time purchase and each DVD comes with your personal GDI affiliate code, for giving away to friends, family, colleagues, e.t.c.
The first week of your GDI membership is free of cost, then you will be charged $10 for the first month and onward. If you are (still) worrying about the money, I help my referrals by showing them ways to easily earn enough money to cover the membership fee until they have enough active referrals to make it sustain itself. It is important to get past that point, because it means one thing less to worry about and gives you peace to try out different free and affordable ways to promote the program.
Also: I am not promising you anything, but if you show a genuine interest in succeeding with GDI, I’ll move new sign-ups under you to help you build your own downline. I believe in paying it forward, and I always ask my referrals to help their own downlines. This way, everybody wins!
Click here to find out more about GDI
Click here to learn more about ACME People Search
In conclusion:
This most recent change in the ACME People Search policy means more effort and money required in order to earn money with it. Tissa Godavitarne has confirmed additional changes in their policy is coming. I don’t know the details, but I will post and update whenever.
Related posts:
Tagged with: ACME People Search • affiliate programs • business • Global Domains International • internet marketing
Filed under: ACME People Search • Global Domains International
Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!
Hello and Hafa Adai Tissa,
I got this got this alert as one of the ways to keep up with what’s going on. I work with another company as well and still continue to use GDI as my primary website because it’s affordable to anyone who wants to learn more about it. I also signed up for the Mylife.com network as an Affiliate. What do you mean people are “black hatting” Advise me of this issue. Was there bonus of something I am not aware of? Just want to learn what’s going on with latest on GDI trends. If I can help in any way please let me know what I should be sharing with the new members. I am here to help if you need it too.
Check back on this question okay?
Be strong and Be safe.
Cathrina Palomo
Affiliate
Hello Cathrina,
Sorry about the delay; I noticed your comment but forgot to follow up with an answer. Sorry about that!
I admit that I am not well-informed on the details regarding use of fake e-mail accounts in an attempt to trick the ACME People Search program. Even though I still think Tissa’s decision on changing the requirements for his affiliates to receive their commission payouts was perhaps a little dramatic, he must have had good reasons for doing so, and he and his team did discuss in length whether it was the right decision to make. I believe it was not something they took lightly.
As for “Blackhatters”, or “bluefarts” as Warrior Forum renames it whenever someone use the former, they are basically people doing something unethical and being aware of it, and it usually involves breaking the law. Whitehat SEO means getting traffic by “playing by the rules” to avoid risking punishment by Google or other major search engines (or just using common sense).
ACME People Search has a kind of new bonus in that, the required success rate system for each step has been removed. You will now earn $1, $2 and $3 in commissions for those of your referrals, who complete and maintain Step 1 through 3 for at least 45 days. If the conversion rate for Step 3 reaches 15% or higher, you’ll get a $32 bonus on top of that.
The somewhat unfortunate side of it: the affiliates must now subscribe to Step 3 via PayPal and thus pay a recurring $29.95 fee in order to become eligible for getting paid their commissions. With enough GDI referrals though, this should balance itself out, and after doing a little thinking (I probably wrote my post too soon) it isn’t all bad news. The problem is telling new prospects they have to pay minimum $39.95 per month (GDI + Step 3), and I know that is a bit more than most beginners are willing to pay or can even afford, which makes it a new challenge to deal with
I was working on a new landing page for A.P.S. With the new rules in place, I have changed my plans and will create one for GDI as well (I used to promote only A.P.S., killing two birds with one stone). Like you said, GDI is quite affordable at only $10/mo, and it is still a great opportunity, it has a supportive community and webinars, and I would advice anyone who cannot afford to maintain Step 3 in their A.P.S. back office to focus on their GDI link and team, for now, then re-open Step 3 when their GDI commissions can cover it.
I wish I could make it sound less complicated, but you should have seen some of the lengthy discussions in the A.P.S. forum, especially with the new rules.. Phew!
Both programs are solid opportunities, and it’s only a matter of getting used to the increase in the A.P.S. affiliate account. With all the affiliate links in your People Search engine earning money when you feed traffic to it, the “secret GDI sign-up sauce” and being able to add GDI as a forced hosting option in Step 2, I can’t see any good reason to give up on A.P.S., at least not yet.
Regards,
Haavard
Hi
I enjoyed reading your posts. I understand that many people are unhappy with the changes that tissa has made.I particularly like the new recurring commissions bonus and retro active bonuses for step 3.With these new rules it ensures that we get people who are serious about making money online and not to join just to claim the $125 bonus.
Eleanor
Hi, thanks I was looking for something right along the lines of this. Do you offer a subscription service? If so, how can I subscribe?
Also, just letting you know that your sidebar image is displaying strangely for some reason.
Hi and thanks for your comment. I will implent an Aweber list subscription for updates and freebies later, although you can always subscribe to the RSS fee by clicking the link in the top right corner. Thanks for the heads up on the image, by the way; I had a loook in Internet Explorer to make sure, and discovered something is way off on the front page. I’ll look into it as soon as possible (don’t want to scary away those of my visitors who are still using IE!).
Thanks again for the heads up! I am still experimenting with the layout and functions, and I appreciate your input!
Great post! To be honest SEO, marketing and online business in general as is important as it’s ever been. How can I subscribe?
Thanks for the comment, and yes: SEO, Internet Marketing and online business are common areas that goes hand-in-hand. Even though Google will put less emphasis on SEO from January 2010, and more on LSI, Latent Semantic Indexing (short version: Google will care more about content written by humans, for humans), SEO will remain a powerful way to get free targeted traffic from the search engines.
great insight and very nice blog how long did it take you building your blog?
i admire what you done here …visit mine if you have enough time 
Arabic Girls names
Hi Lynn,
Thanks for your words of encouragement
To be honest I am never fully satisfied with how my blog looks, but I could never blame the theme (Flexibility 2 – free Premium quality WP theme, get it here). I launched the blog in February 2009 I believe, and kind of forgot about it, then I built some back-links using one or two of Angela’s Backlinks packages, and it went from PR0 to PR3 within the next couple of weeks.
I love the look of your blog and I wish you success with it!
Haavard
Hi,
I closed my Acme account last month for security reason, somebody gained access to my email account without my permission. For fear that the intruder might access my existing accounts, I canceled my subscriptions with Paypal, GDI and Acme. I registered for a new email address to reopen my accounts. Got no problems with Paypal and GDI. I signed up with Acme (using my new email and my personal details) and received my username and password. However, I can’t log-in with the username and password. Tried it over and over again but still unable log-in. I entered my new email address but the system has no record of it. Tried my previous email and the system said that account is closed. Am I not entitled to create a new account even if my previous account is already closed? Can I just ask you guys to reopen my previous account? Or am I already banned to join Acme? Need some clarification here. Thanks a lot.
Hi Mohli,
First, I am sorry to hear about what happened; I can imagine you must have gone through a lot of trouble with your e-mail account being hacked. You should contact the A.P.S. support team as soon as possible, as this blog has nothing to do with that. Explain the situation, and they should be able to reinstate your old account easily. This is most likely a matter of their strict security policy preventing you from registering a new account using the same personal information.
Just contact them, and the problem should be solved in a timely manner.
Good luck!