Alot of people think
affiliate marketing is a scam.
I live, breathe, eat, and sleep
affiliate marketing, and I can tell you now that it’s not a scam. It’s a proven and reliable business model that consistently makes people 6-figure incomes every year.
Let’s talk about the legitimacy of affiliate marketing and see if it’s the business model that you should enter into if you’re trying to make money online.
Is Affiliate Marketing Legit?
If you think affiliate marketing is a scam, what are the
common reasons that you feel this way? I want you to know that affiliate marketing can be an effective way to earn money online at home in your spare time.
While affiliate marketing is indeed legit, some scams exist in the affiliate marketing realm. Some people like to take this
proven and reliable business model and twist it for their own gain.
The concept of affiliate marketing is simple. You find affiliate programs in a niche and you sign up to promote a particular product.
When people
click on your affiliate link and buy an affiliate product, you get an affiliate commission. It’s incredibly simple, but alot of affiliates like to overcomplicate the process.
Now I do want to state that while most of the affiliate marketing industry is certified, not
every affiliate program is legit.
There are some bad apples in this industry, and there are
some things to look out for. A good rule of thumb to remember is that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
Common Affiliate Marketing Scams
Here are a few affiliate marketing scams to watch out for:
1) Non-existent Products
Affiliate marketing scams where there’s no product being sold or the product is fake are typically run in pyramid schemes. You’re told that you’ll see instant money, then you never hear back from the person or company again.
And before they vanish out of your life, they’ll typically have you recruit other people to join their fake program to sucker them into forking over their hard-earned money also.
Affiliate marketing scams like this can be hard to detect because scammers know how to make their schemes look sophisticated.
They’ll typically have a
professional-looking website with lots of testimonials and images of a “product” when in truth they’re running a con artist operation.
Be aware of these kinds of affiliate programs online. And check to see if anyone you trust can verify them.
2) Pay-To-Join Affiliate Programs
You should know that
most affiliate programs are free to join. Most companies won’t ask you to pay to join their affiliate program because they want to recruit as many affiliates as possible. So why would any legit affiliate program want you to pay?
There are some instances where a legit affiliate program may ask for a small deposit to get rid of spammy applicants, but even this is a rare occasion.
If you ever run into an affiliate program that wants you to pay to join, do the following things:
- Google the affiliate program and company in question
- Read reviews about the company
- Ask members in forums like Wealthy Affiliate, affLIFT, and AffiliateFix
- Call the company and ask to speak to the affiliate manager
Take these precautionary measures to protect yourself from this type of affiliate scam. You’ll be ahead of the game if you do so.
3) Get Rich Quick Opportunities
I’m sure you’ve been waiting for this one. This is probably what you have in mind whenever you hear the term
“affiliate marketing”.
But you should know that get rich quick opportunities aren’t always an affiliate scam.
But most are.
It’s a big issue in the affiliate world, and my biggest advice to you is to never join an affiliate program that promises you that you will earn thousands overnight.
One of the biggest
affiliate marketing mistakes people make is believing in such programs.
Some of these programs will even ask you to pay $100 – $200 to learn their “get rich quick system”, and then will ask you to go and promote their system to achieve the results.
So you’re essentially paying $100 – $200 to get other people to pay the affiliate company $100 – $200 to promote their affiliate program.
And etc. The cycle continues.
I want you to understand that get rich quick schemes like this are all over the internet. So keep your eyes peeled for
red flags like this.
How To Identify An Affiliate Marketing Scam
So do you think affiliate marketing is a scam? Hopefully, you see that affiliate marketing is a
real and true
business model, but there are just a few people in this world who want to convolute the industry.
The next time you want to
promote an affiliate product and join an affiliate program, make sure you look for these common red flags:
- Low-quality images of the product
- Promises to make you rich by the end of the week
- Advertisements all over the place
- Thousands of words of sales copy on the page
And when in doubt, do a Google search of the affiliate program in question.
Affiliate marketing isn’t a scam. It’s a
reliable way to earn money online. But be careful who you do business with. They may lead you down a rabbit hole that’s very hard to get out of.
