Sam Biddle - 

And you thought Pinterest was only useful for lonely pastry fantasy. This anonymous conman talked to the Daily Dot, and boy does he have an easy job: fooling Pinterest’s lonely materialists into clicking Amazon spam links. For money.

It works like this. Pinterest Spammer creates thousands of fake accounts, probably with regular breaks to stare into the mirror, bleary-eyed, and ask if this is really happening. Then he proceeds. Thousands more accounts. He won’t reveal his method, but let’s assume, for our sanity and his, that it’s automated. Then his spam accounts “repin” the same goddamn picture of boots or Christmas ornaments or sequined sock puppets, ad infinitum, rocketing each image to the top of the site’s popularity charts. When you click the thing, you’re delivered to This Guy’s Amazon account.

The terrifying part? People then proceed to buy the things they’ve clicked on. Enough to generate thousands:

As the days came my earnings increased and increased and increased. First week of doing this I made around $2,000 which was Feb. 20-29. I stepped my game up and changed the way I was doing some things, and I saw a dramatic increase in my earnings. Went up to $500-800 a day. Kept at it and for the past two weeks I have made over $1,000 a day with the highest earnings being around $1,900.

I fully expect next week’s earnings to be $2,000-2,500 a day. There are no guarantees in this business and it could all come crashing down soon. Not a matter of if, but when will it happen.

Think about what you did at work today, or think about the fact that you’re unemployed, and then think about this, and then punch a hole through a car. [Daily Dot]