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 The Secret Shady Practices of Affiliate Marketing
First Published: August 2005
Last Update: August 2005
Author: Keith Rougvie
You've probably heard it a hundred times...affiliate
marketing is a great way to make money online.
What if I told you affiliate marketing was basically
unethical or that the field is dominated by shady
practices?
You disagree?
Well let's explore affiliate marketing from the merchant,
affiliate and customer viewpoints.
Affiliate marketing is a revenue sharing partnership
between a web merchant and one or more affiliates,
where the affiliate is paid a commission for referring
clicks, leads or, most often, sales to the merchant.
The affiliate signs up to the affiliate program via an
online application form, receives an affiliate link, and
can then promote the products and services of the
web merchant via his own website, ezine, pay per click
search engines or other advertising means.
The affiliate's role, then, is to introduce the potential
buyer to the seller acting as a kind of middleman.
In return he is paid a commission of any sales resulting
from referrals.
But haven't we always been taught to cut out the
middleman where possible?
Well, yes, but in affiliate marketing the customer pays
the same price regardless of whether he arrives at the
web merchant's site directly or via the affiliate's link.
Or at least that's how it should be.
How does the web merchant benefit from running an
affiliate program?
The main advantage to the web merchant is that via
his affiliate program he can recruit a large sales team
of affiliates at zero cost and make many more sales in
a way that his website alone could never hope to do.
How does the affiliate benefit?
The advantages to the affiliate are that he can make
money in a business where he doesn't have the
upfront costs of creating his own product, and doesn't
have to worry about ecommerce, bookkeeping, or
customer support because that's all handled
by the merchant.
How does the customer benefit?
The customer gets a solution to his problem (provided
the product or service does what it says it does) that
he may not have found without the affiliate's help and
does not have to pay extra.
So it's a win-win situation for everyone involved.
Or at least it is in principle.
However in the real world both affiliates and affiliate
program owners can be involved in some shady
practices.
Shady Practice #1
Unscrupulous merchants close down programs without
warning and without paying commissions or tempt new
affiliates with high commissions then drop those
commission rates dramatically a week later.
Affiliates - protect yourselves from this situation by
selecting the affiliate program carefully.
Ask yourself these questions.
Has the site existed for more than a year? Is it clear
what the site is providing and are the terms and
conditions of the affiliate program explained clearly and
comprehensively in simple language? Are there good
online reviews of the program in websites or
discussion forums? Does the program provide realtime
commission stats online? Are ready-to-use affiliate
marketing tools available?
Shady Practice #2
Affiliates are sometimes guilty of misleading or false
advertising - making claims or promises about the
product or services which are totally untrue or greatly
exaggerated.
Shady Practice #3
Illegal use of logos, trademarks or other branding. This
includes infringement of intellectual property rights and
violation of copyrights.
Shady Practice #4
Spamming.
While legitimate affiliates are jumping through hoops
to comply with the can-spam laws, the shady
characters continue to find their way around it.
Shady Practice #5
Affiliate link hijacking is the replacement of your affiliate
id with the hijacker's in the affiliate link.
You dont get your rightful commission - the hijacker
gets it instead by buying through his own affiliate link.
It's best if you can avoid displaying your affiliate link
and affiliate ID in the browser address bar.
One technique uses a zero-frame or invisible frame to
make it appear you are sending visitors to a page on
your website when, in fact, you are really sending
them to your affiliate link.
To prevent the hijacker from viewing the web page's
source code to see that you've loaded an affiliate link,
use javascript encryption to scramble the page code or
software to prevent the source code from being
viewed.
Make no mistake about it...
In any area of human activity, particularly where there
is money to be made, there will always be people who
try to cheat, exploit the gullible and do harm.
The proper way to engage in affiliate marketing is to
act ethically, build a relationship of trust with your
prospects and customers then provide value by
consistently exceeding your customers expectations.
And this applies to any business either online or offline.
About the Author:
This article was auto-submitted on behalf of Keith Rougvie using article announcer software.
For details about how to speed up and automate your article submissions visit this site:
http://www.make-money-online-website.com/jpaa.html
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