Schemed Traffic: What Is Easy Money Worth?

Schemed Traffic: What Is Easy Money Worth?

They appeared many years ago and quickly gained popularity, but they only regained widespread recognition last year. Training courses are conducted on them because people still fall for them. They change, but their essence remains the same.

These are schemes.

Just a year ago, the entire market was unanimously shouting that schemes were terrible, that no one accepted them, and everyone had a negative attitude toward them. Now, the market has changed its opinion. Article headlines, conference reports, and the entire arbitrage community on Instagram in the CIS region are proclaiming how cool it is. How cool it is to deceive people. How cool it is to make easy money and blow it on the same day. Meanwhile, in the Western segment, there’s a real witch hunt going on because it’s a full-scale criminal scam project that doesn’t stop at just deception. So, where’s the truth? Are schemes a great evil or a real gold mine?

From Shutting Down Brands to Human Trafficking—How Schemes Kill the Market?

Why is this source so popular, and what profits can be gained? What threats do webmasters face when deceiving citizens? What measures do advertisers take to combat this source?

All this and more awaits you in an analysis by BROFIST! Buckle up, and let’s begin!

What Is Schemed Traffic?

So, schemes. Attracting players to a product by selling them some sort of trick to beat the system, in layman’s terms. Or a well-thought-out strategy, with large teams and centers that hire locals, train them with scripts to extract money. Not exactly hiring them honestly, but more on that later. It’s an entire structure that won’t stop at anything to trick players out of their money.

But for simplicity, let’s move away from the massive criminal syndicates abroad and consider the most basic working model of a typical schemer in the CIS market.

A landing page is created to attract freeloaders eager to use “magic” schemes to beat the casino, often through Telegram channels.
The resource is filled with luxury content that evokes emotions: a combination of a rich lifestyle and incentives to get the “scheme.”
Promotion is launched, and an army of “hamsters” is gathered. This can be done through any of a dozen tools: from organic traffic on social media to context and spam.

Next, when someone visits the landing page, the goal is to convert them into a dialogue. The final task is to convince the user to register at the casino, deposit money, and not run away after the first loss. That’s what schemes are for—to hook the person and convince them they’re on the verge of making a profit. “Spin this slot five times at 20 EUR, then increase the bet to 35 EUR, reduce the lines—and catch a big win,”—that’s what schemes look like. Need it be said that they don’t work?

There are other variations, too. For instance, manually processing traffic directly in dialogues on Instagram, Twitch, and even TikTok. But the essence remains the same—traffic is funneled to a referral link, and the webmaster gets paid per CPA or RevShare.

It might seem simple: fooling people out of money has always been around and always will be. But in reality, schemes are as much a business as a classic arbitrage team. Online, you can find videos and articles where the owners of large teams explain how they’ve set up entire departments to work with this type of traffic. Besides buyers who attract potential leads, the “company” has an extensive infrastructure. The team includes:

Buyers, driving traffic to the project.
People generating ideas for funnels, traffic-driving approaches, and further processing.
Creatives, preparing not just ads but the content to fill the resource.
Copywriters, translators.
SMM specialists/scriptwriters—participating in the same content generation for various platforms, assigning tasks to bloggers (for filming, activities on the account, themes for speaking heads, writing scripts for the blogger to implement).
Blogger—“actor” from whose name the resource is run, warming up leads. Their task is to make people believe they are just like them. If they can do it, so can the leads. The blogger is typically a local, with a characteristic appearance and native speech.
Handlers—communicating with leads (supposedly on behalf of the blogger showing off their life). Their task is to close the user on a deposit and convince them to make repeat contributions (upsells).

Buyers, driving traffic to the project.
People generating ideas for funnels, traffic-driving approaches, and further processing.
Creatives, preparing not just ads but the content to fill the resource.
Copywriters, translators.
SMM specialists/scriptwriters—participating in the same content generation for various platforms, assigning tasks to bloggers (for filming, activities on the account, themes for speaking heads, writing scripts for the blogger to implement).
Blogger—“actor” from whose name the resource is run, warming up leads. Their task is to make people believe they are just like them. If they can do it, so can the leads. The blogger is typically a local, with a characteristic appearance and native speech.
Handlers—communicating with leads (supposedly on behalf of the blogger showing off their life). Their task is to close the user on a deposit and convince them to make repeat contributions (upsells).

Essentially, scheme teams are full-fledged companies that scam people out of their money. Some teams are so large that they even have HR, psychologists, call center operators for lead calls and phone persuasion, and many other “unexpected” roles.

This is about the CIS teams that find this source profitable and scale it. Abroad, things are very different, and spoiler alert, far scarier.

One way or another, the ultimate goal is to extract as much money as possible from the player. It might seem like both the webmaster and advertiser benefit, but is everything really above board?

Global Trends

Worldwide, there are hundreds of centers for schemed traffic, with news of their shutdowns circulating in chats daily. Asia, South America, East Africa, and even Western Europe are regions where people are kidnapped and forced to extort money from unsuspecting citizens. Ordinary players who have lost significant sums in these schemes might be sold into slavery to these very centers if they’re lucky. These cases number well beyond hundreds. We’re not talking about simply hiring money seekers to the team anymore.

But forced labor and human trafficking are just the tip of the iceberg. The schemes lead to dozens of murders and hundreds of suicides. For significant amounts lost in casinos, you could end up disappearing with dangerous individuals. And never return.

Comparing the approaches of schemers in the West and the CIS is like night and day. Asian and American companies are entire criminal syndicates. Their goal is not just to con fools into depositing $30-300. They literally drain every last cent from a person. Their entire structure is built on scamming.

These criminal groups not only take billions of dollars from residents but also terrorize those necessary for their operations. This ties back to kidnappings, forced confinement in offices, and KPI for the number of “closed” (scammed) leads. And in charge of all this are not luxury guys openly saying that the blogger should be local, and everything will be top-notch. At the helm are serious men who don’t broadcast luxury life on Instagram or see it as a joke.

Our local schemers, though they drain significant amounts and numbers of leads, still can’t compete with representatives of truly large-scale black businesses. For our guys, it’s just entertainment—scamming someone in Telegram for a few bucks. Though even that is enough to live comfortably and buy expensive cars. But let’s get back to the point.

Trusting schemers, people who wanted to make easy money and solve their problems end up losing everything. People become desperate and take their own lives. Studies show that in clinical groups, up to 81% of people suffering from gambling addiction have suicidal thoughts. 30% have attempted suicide. In Italy, the suicide rate among those diagnosed with gambling disorder was 93.72 compared to the general population.

And schemes are part of all this. It’s deception. Deception that leads to irreversible consequences. But why think about that, right?

“If I don’t scam them, someone else will. And people are idiots if they fall for it.” (C) The Credo of CIS Schemers.

The public actively fights against schemers. Raids are conducted, resources are blocked. But it’s not enough. As they say, the mammoth won’t go extinct, and schemes of deception only continue to modernize and evolve every day. Many arbitrage teams only work with schemes, and even entire products are created exclusively for this type of traffic.

Why Is THIS So Popular?

Not long ago, we discussed this in one of our posts. Here’s a brief reminder of the main reasons:

No Need for a Big Budget: Quality tests require large budgets. But with schemes, you can convert any secondary traffic or even work individually with a couple of leads—that’s enough.
No Need to Worry About Quality: Whether the traffic plays or not; whether it pays off for the advertiser or not—it doesn’t matter. The focus is only on the amount and size of deposits at the moment.
Simplicity: No need to break your head over setting up ad campaigns and other technical aspects to improve performance. The schemer’s task is to use any means to get the person to deposit and keep them hooked with promises of golden mountains to multiply their money.
And, most importantly, the coveted ROI: How much can the top webmaster make with honest traffic? Let’s say 200%. On average, the ROI is around 100%, in rare cases 150%.

Going over 200%, the webmaster might be willing to cross the line just to maintain and increase the ROI. They taste the money. Reaching 300% and above, there are no boundaries or rules left. Only income matters.

We could talk for a long time about how our entire field is essentially a scam. About the moral aspect and how the whole world pushes us toward this. But now, having examined the issues of morality and conscience, let’s move on to the technical, more familiar and understandable questions.

What’s Inside the Industry? What’s on the Traffic Side? Let’s Move On.

Products and Webmasters

In affiliate marketing, schemes are a very popular method of attracting leads. Both newcomers without big budgets for tests and top players with strong infrastructure for working with schemed funnels resort to them. But what’s it like for a casino to work with such traffic?

Schemed traffic for a product is just empty. The user is not interested in the game AT ALL. They came for what they saw: to use a scheme and win. And what do they get? A total loss of money, sometimes their last and significant amounts. An advertiser who thinks even a little long-term needs such players even less than the casino does as a whole. It’s unlikely that a product working long-term will continue to collaborate with a webmaster bringing in one-time depositors looking for easy wins.

Yes, yes, it all comes back to quality, not surprisingly. But let’s go further. There’s another reason. And it’s called reputation.

A person, unless they are a fifth-generation gambler, will leave the product after losing. And they’ll leave very upset because they trusted and lost a lot of money. And a scammed player is worse than an old lady whose utility bill went up by 10 kopecks this month. And what will the product get? Correct, a flood of angry reviews on various review sites:

“I lost money at this casino, even though they told me it was easy to win using a scheme.”

The brand gets the worst possible image. As a result, even those players who just wanted to enjoy a couple of spins for fun will stop going to the casino. That’s how psychology works. No one will play at a product that scams. And that’s a colossal loss for the brand.

Of course, many advertisers accept schemed traffic. Some started their path to the top of the iGaming business with this. Many large and well-known market players still eagerly buy schemes. But most products that work heavily with schemers eventually change their strategy or shut down.

It’s not that all advertisers dream of creating an honest community with the goal of entertaining people. It’s just that products that get too deep into schemes and make this their main traffic source often lack terms like LTV, retention, and profitability. They don’t even break even because there’s no traffic that comes to them out of genuine interest in playing.

That’s why companies aiming for billion-dollar valuations and immeasurable profits strive to legitimize their activities: buying expensive licenses, accepting player complaints, and, of course, rejecting schemed traffic. Yes, you can make money on it in the moment. Yes, it might even seem like a lot. But reputation is worth more than money. And in our field, profits and the long-term prospects of a company directly depend on it.

Conflict of Interests: Schemers vs. Casinos

Even though offers clearly state whether you can drive schemed traffic or not, webmasters often stray from the pouring conditions. As a rule, when there’s infrastructure for generating schemed traffic, leads cost tens or even hundreds of times cheaper. If you funnel them to an offer where the advertiser pays for quantity rather than quality, you can achieve insane ROIs. For example, the total cost to generate a lead was $10, but the payout for a European product is $200. Tempting? Extremely…

But here, the hellish machine called the anti-fraud system throws a wrench in the works. When a product pays, it knows exactly what kind of players it expects. These are depositing, playing, active users. They follow the casino on social media and participate in contests. They try different slots and respond to bonus offers.

And how do motivated leads behave, who came to make quick money through a scheme or complete minimal actions for CPA? Activity is at rock bottom, interest and engagement are zero, and there’s a clear pattern in bets. And that’s just the surface by which the advertiser will detect low quality.

What About Us?

BROFIST is a direct advertiser for several casino brands: Billy Billion, Dazard, and Dazardbet. And NONE of them accept schemed traffic. We are a licensed Curaçao and MGA brand that focuses on quality and long-term partnerships. We expect the same from our webmasters: quality traffic will be paid accordingly. Thanks to quality, our partners receive rates up to $300 and favorable terms on RS or Hybrid.

If we started accepting schemes, the company would last a month—a year—three, but what then? Make some quick cash and disappear? We are building a reputation as a partnership for successful webmasters who want to earn consistently and significantly, not survive “from scheme to scheme.”

Similarly, our products. Players know they won’t be cheated and will receive their winnings, they know they can play for fun with us. That’s the message we recommend partners promote our products with. Because if a player is interested, you can earn a lot on them.

In Conclusion

Schemes are indeed a viable option. They generate profits for arbitrageurs who know how to work with the right funnels, for partnerships as intermediaries, and for products if they do accept this type of traffic. But.

Schemes are open deception of ordinary people, a type of scam. The legal consequences of working with schemes are appropriate. And for products that value their brand, schemes are just a tool to avoid. Otherwise, the brand will be destroyed.

This is our opinion on schemed traffic. And global trends in general. If you think this source isn’t as bad as it seems, if you make money from it and scale into entire teams—that’s your business. We’ve thoroughly detailed this source from all angles, explained its popularity and negative aspects, how it works long-term, and the consequences for all parties involved. The choice is yours.