7 Ways to Tell a Legitimate Affiliate Program from a Scam

Determining the legitimacy of an affiliate program can be challenging.  Typical big business credibility indicators like a listing with Dun & Bradstreet or the Better Business Bureau may not apply to a small software company, online retailer, or ebook publisher.

Here are some other ways to “check out” a company to determine if you believe they’ll be a good affiliate program partner.

1. The company must have a professional looking website. It should include contact information and likely also offer special contact details for affiliates who need support.

2. Determining the registration date of a company’s web site domain name can be one clue to the longevity of the business. You can check the age of any current domain registration by visiting http://whois.net. You can also use the “Wayback Machine” http://www.archive.org to view previous versions of the web site to see if any of them are incongruous with the company’s current pitch.

3. Google the company and the product and the names of any of the principal officers. Try combining the company or officer’s names with words like “fraud” or “convicted”, too. It’s amazing what search engines can turn up these days. 10 minutes of online research can save you thousands of dollars.

4. Examine the “terms and conditions” of the affiliate program (usually posted online). You can review this document carefully in 3 ways before joining the program:

a) Read it closely to make sure that you are comfortable with the obligations it imposes upon you. Also consider the remedies it specifies if you become unhappy with your new partner’s performance as the sponsor of the affiliate offers.

b) Look at the document to judge whether it looks professional. Does it read well and make sense in professional-sounding English? Or does it look copied and pasted from another web site. Does the business name listed match the company name you were expecting to see?

c) Does the document include real contact information? Locate the address on Google Maps to check if it looks like a real office building. Try calling the phone number or emailing the contact email address included to see what responses you get.

You can generally skip steps like this if you work with a major provider of affiliate programs like Commission Junction or Link Share, or directly with brand name companies like Amazon.com or Buy.com, but even then it can’t hurt to be careful...

As an entrepreneur your most valuable resource is your time. You want to invest that time only where you can reasonably expect a good return. Carefully examining your potential affiliate program partners BEFORE you enroll with them is a good way to improve your returns from affiliate marketing.

Visit my previous post on this topic "Avoiding Affiliate Market Scams" here.

 

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Comments

[debt relief]

Great suggestions for helping protect yourself and doing some basic research on a company and its principals. Anyone who is head of a company ranking on Google likely will show up in search results.

[Jeff Paul Internet Millions]

Hey there! Your post really helped me in my internet marketing knowledge. My girlfriend and I started doing a little internet marketing for a boutique’s site.