Affiliate Marketing Scams
The affiliate program idea is usually a win-win. The site makes money. The affiliate makes money. And then there are the affiliate marketing scams floating around out there.
The first thing to understand is there is no get rich quick affiliate program that works. Just like you can’t make $50,000 a month stuffing envelopes, you can’t join an affiliate program and make millions unless you have a lot of traffic. Like any business, you are going to have to spend time learning what works and what doesn’t. Don’t fall for any get rich quick schemes.
The second affiliate marketing scam to watch out for is the guru giving you all their priceless information. Ask yourself this. If it is so priceless, why are they selling it for such a cheap price? There is an old adage from the gold rush days in California that applies to affiliate marketing. There were a lot more people making big money selling shovels to gold prospectors than prospectors making money discovering gold. The same goes with affiliate marketing, so guard your money closely.
Then there are affiliate marketing scams that are not really scams, but you have to watch out for them. The number one issue has to do with phone numbers. If you are sending visitors to a site that pastes its 800 number all over the place, you should be wary. Any visitors you send that pick up the phone are no longer visitors you are going to be credited with if a sale occurs. It is not a scam per se, but it is something to watch out for.
And then there is shaving. What is shaving? It is the manipulation of data by an affiliate program to credit you with less revenue production transactions than actually occurred. There are a myriad of ways this can occur and there is almost no way you can control it. The key is to watch your traffic statistics and the stats of the affiliate program. If they are way off, drop the program and move on. Another approach is to use a bigger program like Commission Junction that controls a lot of sites and is legit.
Affiliate marketing scams are a dime a dozen. New ones are popping up as you are reading this. Remember the golden rule. If it seems too good to be true, it probably is!