Tips to Avoid Affiliate Marketing Scams!

Affiliate marketing is a perfectly legitimate, modern industry.  That means it attracts scam artists, too.

So if you are new to affiliate programs, you should approach it sensibly, like any other business venture.  This will help you to avoid the many affiliate marketing scams and rip-offs that this successful new industry attracts.  Take Jennie's example here:

Here are some tips for avoiding Affiliate Marketing scams:

• Don't Pay for Membership: Affiliate programs are fr-ee. Any company that tries to charge you a fee for joining an affiliate program is not really an affiliate program. It is more likely a multilevel marketing company that has adopted the trendy “affiliate marketing” label to attract Internet curious newbies. You should not have to pay anything for the privilege of working to promote someone else’s products on commission, should you?
  
• Too Good to Be True: Just as in other fields, offers that sound “too good to be true” usually are. In the affiliate marketing space, the most common scams offer you guaranteed or unexpectedly high returns for little investment. Often this is a promise of tremendous traffic for a small price, inclusion in a “network” that claims to deliver such traffic for a fee, or a package of "turnkey" web sites or software that will "automatically" make money for you online. Don’t let your unfamiliarity with affiliate marketing cloud your good judgment. If something smells funny, it probably is.
  
• Fly-by-Night Merchants: You may also encounter companies that operate an affiliate program unethically. They might have professional looking websites and well-reviewed products available for you to promote, but when it comes time to cut you a check for the commissions you’ve earned, they are suddenly less available. You only want to promote products from companies that you are confident will pay you. Just as you would not go to work unless there was a paycheck coming, you don’t want to just “trust” a shady company to pay you. There many well-established and reputable affiliate programs in which you can participate.
  
• Pyramid Schemes: If a company’s only product is that you can make money by investing money and recruiting additional members, it may be a pyramid scheme. These scams take the fees or investments from new members to provide falsely inflated returns to earlier members or customers without any substance to the underlying business. This kind of activity is illegal in the United States. (Hello, Bernard Madoff??)  A “real” affiliate program sells real products (and/or services), not just the opportunity to make money by recruiting new members.
  
• Improper Partnerships: Affiliate programs are generally based on standardized legal terms that set rules for promotion of a clear set of products. If the “affiliate program” company wants too much information about you or to engage you in more customized “joint venture” strategies, be wary.  And if those strategies require you to invest real money, it is likely a con game. (It is okay, however, to disclose your social security number or other tax identification to a legitimate affiliate program operator. They really do need it in order to stay in compliance with federal tax law when paying you.)

Please stay tuned to this blog for next week's follow-up article:  "7 Ways to Tell a Legitimate Affiliate Program from a Scam".

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Comments

[Amyrhiz]

Hey, thanks for that tips. You are right there are so many affiliate programs that are scams. I am a victim of that before. :-)

[Amyrhiz]

Hi, Thank you for sharing this with us. It will really be great helped because I am a totally newbie about this. Thanks again. Keep posting more about affiliate marketing. :-)

[Angela parker]

I think it's now literally possible for anyone to quickly become financially independent through affiliate marketing