Affiliate marketing is one of the most popular ways to make money online today but finding the right opportunity can be a nightmare.
The one major concern for anybody looking at ways to make money online is the ridiculous number of scams that are out there.
It doesn’t matter what you are looking for, if there is money to be made you are sure to find people plying their trade.
How to avoid affiliate marketing scams is often not easy to spot due to the complexity of some of these fraudsters but is critical for finding the right product.
Fraud amongst internet marketing is a huge business, and whilst a large proportion of these programs are somewhat legit, there is a fair amount that isn’t and preys on the newbie by giving them false hopes and claims.
Having some idea of how to spot these will help you to avoid these unsavoury characters, and hopefully, stop you from wasting your money, so having some form of checklist that you can go through would be a good thing, right?
[Affiliate Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links which means I may earn a small commission if you purchase anything through one of the links. However, this will not affect what you pay!]
Learning how to avoid affiliate marketing scams comes with experience which often means wasting money sometimes.
However, this is why I am here passing on my personal experience and hopefully helping others like yourself to not make the mistakes that I did.
Hidden Costs
All the affiliate marketing vendors do it so there are no surprises here.
You always need to be cautious when buying into an affiliate marketing program because often what you think you are buying is in fact not what it seems.
I remember when I first started looking that I used to get excited often because I believed a lot of the BS from the sales video.
The one-off fee, that was going to expire when the time runs out.
It never really does and if you mess about with the purchasing process, meaning clicking to buy then backing out you can sometimes get the product at a lesser price.
The onetime fee offer, never is just that, and you usually don’t find this out until you have paid the initial fee, then you are hit with a number of upsells, for which they make you believe that you need to purchase for the system to work
Even if you didn’t purchase all the other upsells, you are more likely to purchase an upsell immediately after you have paid the initial price and it will be another convincing sales video.
Then another upsell, with the “TOP SECRET” bullsh’t that will be convincing and before you know it a $10 product as now come in at $50+.
Now they have your email details, be prepared for more spam to flood your email account with other product offers, blah, blah.
The sales video is usually professionally done and very convincing, so remember not to be taken in by all the false claims.
A reputable affiliate marketing product will…
Show you up-front all the costs that are involved before purchasing the product.
Will have a free option so that you can check out the product first before you decide that this is the one for you.
Will not ask for credit card details upfront
However you will find it extremely difficult to include all of the above.
I have fallen prey to a couple of these types of products in the past and I guess it is all a learning curve, well it was for me anyway.
I started to be more thorough with my research and started making lists of the type of product that I was looking for and if they didn’t fit a criterion then I discarded them.
There comes a time when enough is enough and knowing that to become an affiliate marketer is going to take, finding a training platform that really works and that’s where I am today.
Income Reports
Many income reports are legitimate but until you actually know the marketers who are responsible, which will only come with experience, then you are best assuming that those documents are fake.
The make money online niche is full of people making claims of earning vast amounts of money with ridiculous timescales.
They are all over the internet standing in front of mansions, expensive cars and often with large wads of money bragging about how easy it is.
You will see their claims on sales pages showing “actual” earnings to convince you that you could do the same.
It is so easy nowadays to falsify income and payment slips and can be achieved in a matter of minutes.
This does have the desired effect when you are starting on this journey, so I know where you are coming from, but now you know just have that in mind when you are researching products.
These affiliate marketing vendors might come across as genuine people (and some are) but a lot are using these tried and tested methods not to help you but to con you.
A quick way to find out whether the income report is fake or not would be to put the cursor over the image and right-click the mouse and “SEARCH GOOGLE FOR IMAGES” because many of the affiliates do not cover their tracks.
Making Unrealistic Claims
The above image comes from a new product that as just been released on Warrior Plus and from a very popular affiliate marketer.
If you go to the Warrior Plus affiliate network, most products are related to affiliate marketing and every sales page that you will come across will have similar adverts making ridiculous claims.
If you aren’t familiar with email lists, this is another way of marketing and creating a passive income stream.
To build an email list can take years because what you are trying to achieve is a list that relates to what your business is about and an email list will allow you to build a rapport with your subscribers.
Not sure how this software is going to build an email list when it takes the subscriber to physically enter their contact details.
From the same sales page and 100% automated.
Let me tell you something here, automation is a complete lie.
Only because I have the experience, that I can stand by what I am saying here, but you as a newbie will not know one way or the other and that is how you get tricked.
Fake Testimonials and Reviews
We all use reviews to determine whether the service or product is a good choice and if you aren’t then you should be doing.
Companies thrive on customer reviews which tells the consumer whether this is a reputable company or not.
However, many people just don’t realize how easy it is to fake customer reviews.
Google reviews, social media, company websites, Trustpilot, Feefo, Amazon, etc
Reviews are literally everywhere and it’s even known that companies even pay people to write positive reviews.
Testimonials and reviews are there to help in your decision making of whether to buy or not but can be a difficult process whether to trust the reviews you are reading or not.
So…
Compare the reviews
Read the reviews rather than the ratings
Check the number of reviews against the rating
Check out the reviewer
Check out social media platforms
Even review sites like Trustpilot monitor for discrepancies like when there are a number of negative reviews against a company.
A significant number of recent reviews tells you something just isn’t right.
Vendors who Launch New Products every Month
Vendors who bring out new products every month might seem a little trivial but when you think about it, it all goes towards the credibility of the products and that starts with the vendor.
Whilst it is obviously a good thing for the vendor, it shows me that they are not devoting enough time to the previous product and are more interested in making money rather than helping people.
A great product takes time to develop, I should know coming from the software development background but what you are getting here is a re-hashed product with a new name.
It also tells me that they know the product doesn’t have merit and besides they never tell you or show you everything that you need to know about how to really make money in affiliate marketing.
These “done-for-you-systems” simply are not the way to build an online presence.
If you are serious about becoming an affiliate marketer then finding the right training platform is key.
Fake Products or Services
Anything new has a learning curve but when you start affiliate marketing there is a very steep learning curve if you want to excel in this industry.
Affiliate marketing isn’t a skill where you learn a certain amount and that’s ok because there are so many things to learn and probably the main reason why so many people fail.
Fake products and services are all over the internet and sometimes you only find this out when you pay your money.
Done-for-you-systems which are out there in an abundance should be avoided, not because they may not work but because they don’t teach you affiliate marketing in a manner that best serves you.
Paid Membership Programs
Paid membership programs are all the more popular nowadays, but be careful of making a commitment.
Most of these programs try and get you to commit by getting you to pay upfront first.
However, this can cause a problem especially when you find out that the program isn’t how it was explained and you want to cancel your membership.
What you often find are difficulties when trying to cancel your membership and with money that still is taken from your account.
If a membership site is something that you are looking for then find one that offers a free membership first so that you can research the training platform before you make that commitment to become a paid member.
I know they are hard to come by, but there are a few good ones about, like Wealthy Affiliate who have been around since 2005 and seen over 2 million people come and go.
Fake Information
I can’t stress enough about doing thorough research before you make a commitment that way you can eliminate most issues.
That means checking all the information related to the product such as the company details and owners etc
You might think fake owners and companies are not that common but they are actually more common than you think.
I see this more often with multi-level-marketing businesses and still, people end up joining.
It often means checking social media accounts like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin etc to try and determine whether the owners are legit or not.
Paying $1 to Check out the Product
This is a trick that many vendors do to get you to purchase the product and normally this offer expires after 7 days.
What happens for many is that they forget to keep tabs on this time-period and they often forget and end up paying the full amount.
The 30 or 60 Day Money-Back-Guarantee
I know when purchasing a product or service is that we look and hope there is some form of guarantee.
A guarantee is something we expect automatically and we do with physical products but often the guarantee isn’t worth the paper it is written on.
With digital products, there is normally a guarantee like the one below.
However, what often happens is that once you have decided that the product isn’t for you, then trying to get your money back goes on death ears.
Meaning that your emails either are deleted or they are left so that the cooling-off period expires.
I know this because this has happened to me.
How to Avoid Affiliate Marketing Scams – Final Thoughts
Learning how to spot affiliate marketing scams is something that comes with experience and the ones I have covered are what I personally think are the most important.
Learning how to spot an affiliate marketing scam, and how to spot legit affiliate programs is something that eventually will become second nature.
Watch out for the words and statements like…
SIMPLE
SECRET
UNLIMITED
INSTANTLY
GAME CHANGER
Nothing like this exists
AUTOMATED
UNIQUE
This is a complete business
FAST RESULTS
Get a massive discount
Whenever I see these words which you will normally find on the sales pages, I begin to get suspicious.
Find the Right Affiliate Marketing Training Platform to Avoid the Scams
Finding the right affiliate marketing training platform can be a long process if you don’t know what you are doing.
A training platform I can recommend 100% is Wealthy Affiliate for complete beginners, is free to join, with no credit card details and with a community that is prepared to share with you what works for them.
Go on, give it a whirl and see what you think.
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Hey Guys and Gals, great to meet you and hope you enjoyed this post. We created this site to help people like you avoid the pitfalls of making money online and hopefully steer you onto the right path. ENJOY!
View all posts by Mick
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