What's the worst that could happen? (6)
To keep in short in simple,
I'm running a blackhat-ish Adwords campaign that's been generating $XXX/day. The affiliate terms say first of all, not to send paid traffic to a link (which I'm doing) and also not to use the words "coupon", "save", "discount" when promoting your link (which I'm also doing).
They haven't caught me yet and they pay out every month. (The affiliate program is none recommended or showcased by STM btw).
I'm worried if I do get caught, they could possibly sue me, or rather, my LLC; especially if I were to somehow get un-noticed for 'X' amount of months/ years and generate a up a hefty affiliate commission.
What's the worst that could happen?
EDIT: The affiliate terms also say something along the lines of, "any affiliate found to be violating these terms will be removed from the program and all unpaid payouts will be removed"
XXX/day is too low to sue you. Just make sure that they pay you very fast because the moment you get caught I'm confident all your pending payments will get suspended.
That being said, I would also recommend to find a way to run traffic whereby you respect the affiliate program's terms and conditions. That will make you the most money in the long run.
BTW. What affiliate program doesn't allow paid traffic??
This is a legal question, and as far as I know none of us are lawyers. Questions like this will depend heavily on things like the jurisdiction you're in and the affiliate program is in.
You can pay for an hour of a lawyer's time with one day of your profits. There's a good chance you can get a solid answer within that hour.
If you're concerned about legal problems, go talk to a lawyer. It's a good investment. 
This is the worst that can happen
...which is a fair point.
When you're doing something you know is going to piss someone else off, it's always worth remembering that people are not always rational.
Sure, it might not be rational to bring a massive lawsuit - or indeed pick up a shotgun - over $15k. But that doesn't mean it doesn't happen.
The odds may be on your side, but "the odds are on your side" and "you're completely safe" are very, very different statements and it's important not to get confused between the two.
This also doesn't mean you should never piss anyone off. I would be a massive hypocrite if I was to suggest that as a life strategy.
But accurate risk projection is an important and useful skill, and part of that is understanding that humans don't always act rationally.
Originally Posted by caurmen
Let me give you a real life example that I always use to demonstrate how quickly things can go south, even when all the odds were in your favor.
I knew a guy who was running an adult site, the site was posting links to picture galleries on other sites in order to "trade" traffic. It was done in the form of "posts" that consisted of a large thumbnail and some text, then it linked to the actual gallery on someone else's site. Owners of the other sites were submitting these posts themselves.
Now there was some girl who posed for a few nude shots, the problem was she used a fake ID and she wasn't of legal age when she did it. The photo series were sold to some people who used them in members area of their paysites. One of the paysites used these photos as promotional sets and handed them over to their affiliates to promote their sites with. One of these affiliates made a gallery from them and posted in on the site of my friend. Just that one thumbnail tho.
After some time, the info about the girl being underage went public, so everyone who hear about it, pulled the content. Obviously, the friend of mine didn't have a clue, it was 1 out of 1000 thumbnails posted on his site with the last few months. However, the girl herself somehow found that photo and sent her lawyers his way ... you can imagine this didn't have a nice ending, it wasn't easy nor cheap to settle this.
Now tell me what were the odds that he will face this kind of problems? But it still did happen. Never think you are safe to break the law or business contracts just because someone tells you the odds are low
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