Studiotraffic

Studiotraffic was a "get-paid autosurf" site which was launched in late 2003 by an unknown person, going by the name of John Horan. It paid its users to watch advertisements every day. For each day that its users watched the required number of advertisements, they got paid 1% of their account level - for example, if they had a $100 account level, they got paid $1 each day they watched the advertisements. All users started out with a free $10 account level, and they could purchase upgrades to increase their account level up to a maximum of $80,000. The rules later changed, allowing users to have only one account, and to earn a maximum of $21,000 per month.

Studiotraffic is now defunct; its domain names have been taken over by MyFileHut.com. Many of its former members found themselves almost bankrupt as the site shut down without prior warning. The owner of the site disappeared and has not been heard from since.

Criticism

There have been accusations about Studiotraffic being a ponzi scheme. Practically this would mean Studiotraffic did not gain much revenue from its other programs and advertising, but that the payments came from new investors ('upgraders'). There is no certain data about this as it is impossible to know how many people bought advertising credits or banner ads from Studiotraffic. Studiotraffic refuted this accusation and pointed out that they did not have to rely on upgrade fees to pay their members because they use the proceeds from their other online businesses to supplement their payout fund. They had their own web radio station, an on-line shop, and a web hosting business among other revenue-generation programs. Studiotraffic U.S. did not seem to be able to pay off the monthly withdrawals, and Horan stated that if and when the US becomes too much of a burden, he will have to close off the US section of Studiotraffic. In November, US members' accounts were blocked from surfing for "in-profit" members whilst all accounts were audited. In December the same occurred with UK accounts.

From January 2006, members of Studiotraffic in the UK who wish to keep earning money are required to join "sales teams" or contribute in some other way to avoid losing their accounts. Horan stated publicly that the UK was selected for reasons of poor member contribution, rudeness to staff and lack of profitability. Members from all countries were encouraged to donate to a fund called the Global Advertising Campaign (GAC), essentially asking members to contribute to Studiotraffic. GAC states that a percentage of the money members earn must be returned to help Studiotraffic.

In March 2006, after months of uncertainty, with many members being forced to surf in the hope that they will one day be allowed to earn money again, the issue of Studiotraffic's validity has more or less been solved by outside influences. In February of that year, the payment processor, Stormpay, started freezing accounts of organisations it regarded as contrary to its own trading model. Whether this was justified or merely a subterfuge to cover Stormpay's own lack of liquidity is another matter. Stormpay members had to sit back and watch the processor seize their funds, charging them back in an arbitrary manner to where they saw fit. Eventually, Studiotraffic was affected; with their own Stormpay accounts frozen and unable to even see the state of their accounts, the top management resigned.

Contributing to Studiotraffic failing was also the emergence of many other Autosurf programs offering a high return which competed for members spends/upgrading dollars.

Forums

It is significant that the program had a forum at all. Many other programs online would not do it, as a lot of them were organized scams which would run off after a certain period of time. John Horan posted regularly on Studiotraffic's forums, often every day.

To date, out of the tens of thousands of forum posts, there seem to be little if none at all posts by people not being paid, and hundreds of posts by people who have been paid. The cause of this is strict moderation and anti-negativity rules in the forum - any complaints about a lack of payment were deleted as "account issues", and general negative comments resulted in banning. Adding links or sharing messages sent by admin to a user could also result in banning or instant thread deletion. Since there were a large number of moderators this usually took only moments. In this way, the forums did not present a balanced discussion of Studiotraffic and it would have been inadvisable to judge the site based on them. But on the other hand there were other forums were anyone could openly discuss Studiotraffic and it was in one of those a crusade to stop Studiotraffic started.

Customer support

Studiotraffic offered live chat-based help and a feedback ticket system whereby users can get responses directly from the administrator. There had been reported cases of Studiotraffic staff telephoning clients to verify that a payment had been processed correctly. The Studiotraffic website was available in four different languages at varying stages of completion.

Money related issues

Unlike ponzi schemes, it clearly appears that one does not need to put any of his or her own money into the system in order to earn money. It would take a long time to withdraw cash out of the system if the client never upgraded their account with their own money, but it was possible. To achieve this, heavy use of the monthly compounding facility, or the recycling of earnings at month end was needed since the account level needed to be at at least $100 in order to withdraw, and accounts can only be upgraded in multiples of $10. It took about four months before the account level could be raised to $20, thereby earning slightly more money than before.

Compounding this was the fact that accounts needed to have accumulated at least $5 before withdrawal was possible. Posts on the forums indicated that many users had accounts with levels higher than $100, and were earning hundreds to thousands of dollars a month. Clients were forced to use Studiotraffic's own payment system, Studiopay (similar to PayPal, which charged a fee to transfer money from the user's Studiotraffic account to their Studiopay account, and also from the Studiopay account to a real bank account.

When you register for a Studiopay account, you had to "verify" who you are. They asked for a copy of a photographic form of identity, eg driving license with photo or passport.

Ongoing investigation

Email from ic3.gov:

Studiopay/Studiotraffic is the subject of an ongoing investigation by the FBI and Onondaga County Sheriff's Department. Investigation of this matter has developed information that you have had financial transactions with one, or both, of these companies. If you have been victimized by either of these companies please file a complaint with the Internet Crime Complaint Center at the following website:

http://www.ic3.gov/

Please reference Studiopay as the subject of the investigation when filing your complaint. Provide as much detail as possible pertaining to monies invested, individuals contacted, method of contact (telephone, mail, E-mail etc...), amounts, and dates of payment and any amounts received from Studiopay. If possible, include dates of contact, the Studiopay employees contacted and brief summaries of the conversations.

External links