My Website About Scams Gets 2.5M Visitors Per Month

Sorin Mihailovici

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Published: April 16th, 2022

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Sorin Mihailovici

Founder, Scam Detector

Founders

Employees

Scam Detector

scam-detector.com

from Toronto, ON, Canada

started May 2010

Founders

Employees

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My name is Sorin Mihailovici and I am the founder of Scam Detector Media, an online media portal also known as the Wikipedia of scams. The platform exposes the world’s most notorious scams in all industries and educates the consumers on how they work and how to avoid them.

Our flagship product is the Validator®, a powerful tool that gives every website a trustworthy rank, from 1-to 100, with 100 being the safest. This way, consumers can make educated decisions when it comes to purchasing from unknown sites, especially after the e-commerce boom during the COPVID-19 pandemic. The tool can be accessed and is free. But that’s not all.

The Validator® tool has been bringing to the Scam Detector website over 2.5 million visitors a month, but what’s more interesting is that I started the whole project by leveraging a dramatic personal story after my best friend lost $30,000 to an elaborate scam.

What's your backstory and how did you get into entrepreneurship?

I created Scam Detector Media and embarked on the journey of exposing fraud after my best friend was conned of all his life savings. One of the most brilliant guys I knew, ended up being scammed by crooks who, well, we're better than him at their ‘full-time job,’ which was scamming.

Pay for honest feedback from professionals, if necessary. One comma could change your life.

My friend got depressed and hid his embarrassment until one night when he finally told me what had happened. At that moment, I decided to create a platform that would expose not just that complex scam but all of them. It took me about a year to gather the content and feature it so that even older or non-tech savvy people would understand how scams work. Whether telephone, travel, social media, or employment scams, they all started to be exposed on Scam Detector for free.

Soon after, major media outlets including Forbes, ABC, BBC, CNET, CBS, and more featured Scam Detector and quoted me as a fraud prevention export. I also started hosting a segment on the morning TV show in Canada.

Take us through your entrepreneurial journey. How did you go from day 1 to today?

I started Scam Detector as a side project. Free, easy to access, more like a hobby that would help stay safe. While I was still managing to have a full-time job, the variability of my project soon made me understand that my platform needs space to grow and some TLC.

However, because the platform was free to access, the monetization process was the biggest challenge. I tried product placement and category sponsorships by companies wanting to show their brands as trustworthy and safe. Still, the lowest hanging fruit was the matched content with the Google AdSense ads. As Google’s algorithm gets smarter every day, the ads showing on our pages are from safe companies, and readers not only get educated on fraud but have options to purchase safely online.

At the same time, the Validator® tool gives the consumers the chance to verify every website before their buy.

Last but not least, we are launching the Scam Detector Marketplace, which is a powerful spot where only vetted companies will be able to sell their products.

How are you doing today and what does the future look like?

Our business grows by the day. We are expanding our operations in many niches, including the cryptocurrency ecosystem. Besides the advertising and the marketplace above-mentioned, we are launching a few other services by partnering with the best companies in every industry to provide consumers safe services and advice. If anyone is interested in joining our world-class pool of partners, they can contact us.

As of today, Scam Detector is an official contributor to the Federal Trade Commission, meaning they rely on us to provide them with suspicious companies, websites and individuals, so they can do the reactive work.

On a different note, hundreds of people sign up every day on our website to be notified by Scam Detector about the newest and most prevalent scams - and not only that. We have over 110,000 people (and counting) who are ready to be informed every week about fraud prevention or the latest tools and products that they can use to combat scams.

Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?

I've learned tons of lessons, and that's an ever-growing process. I would say that the most important takeaways (and advice I would have) are:

Don't believe everything you think. You might be surprised that half of the people think differently and they may be right. Don't be rigid.
Do mandatory A-B testing for everything you want to start.
People are sensitive to everything, especially after the pandemic started. Be humble and accept they're being if you want them as your clients.
Jump in with the mentality that you could make 100 mistakes, and that's a great thing. Because you will use the failures as educational tools. However, if you're just comfortable, sorry, you'll never make your business grow.

What platform/tools do you use for your business?

We created the website Validator tool from scratch. Our in-house team built it using 53 factors that are not to be revealed. However, we are using lead capturing software to get our readers to subscribe and email marketing.

As we are content-heavy and not a product website, most of our promotional tools are the millions of people who genuinely share the links on social media. As a result, all our traffic is organic and shared. We never bought advertising and I am very proud of that.

What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?

One book that changed my life was The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss. And I am not the only one. It’s old, but genius at any age - because of its concept.

It was not just about outsourcing your life but rather about the courage to leverage anything to improve your lifestyle. Next time when you look at an object, you should wonder, “how could that change my life?” After a few tries, you’ll be shocked to discover things you never thought of.

Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?

One of the biggest mistakes I’ve seen people make is to start projects and never finish them or nurture them. They quit too early in the game. It’s like making a baby and leaving him to grow by himself without food, shelter, love, education, or even spanking. Creating a product/business is just half of the success.

Another mistake is don’t ask only your family for feedback. People fall in love with their work and get their judgment clouded by subjectivity. Pay for honest feedback from professionals, if necessary. One comma could change your life.