Can An Ethical Affiliate Make It?

[mr.durden7]

Hello everyone. I recently took interest in AM after some good buddies of mine were making ridiculous amounts of money at it. I also thought the skills would be highly useful in the workaday world so I started to study up.

After studying my tail off I starting looking into what my first campaign would be. I found some interesting offers on Neverblue and Clickbank and started to research them. Nearly every offer I looked into seems to screw the customer over to some degree. Whether it's a rebill offer taking $80 from the customer after 14 days, an ebook that offers no valuable information, refunds not given, debt cures that leave people further in debt, etc. there seems to be a lack of legitimate products that are valuable to the user.

A quick check on google of either the product name or domain name shows plenty of people reporting these products as a fraud or scam to some degree.

I even met a guy in my area who is a multimillionaire making a lot of the health and diet pills on networks while admitting they don't do ANYTHING for the customer. He even said, "I make millions producing ***** pills. Do you really think I make pills that make your d*ck bigger?! Hell no but I make money on it".

So...Are there niches or networks that offer a legitimate product (besides stupid work out tapes or ab rollers)?

I'm no angel, but also am not interested in screwing thousands of people out of their money.

I know there are plenty of guys out there who think it's the customer's fault for being stupid or feel they should be taken advantage of if they're that dumb (just read forums on the subject) but I'm not interested in that.

Should I stick to email and zip submits, lead generation, etc. ?

Any advice would be great. I'm sure this is the proper forum to as this question as everyone on here seems to be quite nice.

Thanks

 

[Linda Buquet]

Hi mr.durden7,

Welcome to 5 Star. Thanks for joining us.

Thanks for starting off with a great topic! You have been exposed to 2 segments of the affiliate marketing industry - info products and CPA offers. These are often the scammy offers and by FAR the loudest and most visible part of the industry, so depending on what type of forums or blogs you read it may seem this is the majority of the industry. Far from it!

There is a 3rd segment of the industry that is reputable and mainstream. Retail affiliate marketing. That's the part many of us focus on and it's bigger than the others, in terms of sales volume by a long shot. Walmart, Macys, Sears and almost every major etailer has an affiliate program, plus there are thousands of niche etailers selling every type of legitimate product you can imagine. You'd be promoting actual products (or in some cases leads, like insurance) instead of scammy offers and ebooks.

You won't find these types of affiliate programs on Clickbank or Neverblue or other CPA networks. You'll find them on the affiliate networks like CJ, Google Affiliate Network, Shareasale, ShareResults and Linkshare.

Read the stickies in our newbie forum for some ideas about how to get started and ask questions if you have any. We're happy to help!

 

[Joseph Ratliff]

There is a 3rd segment of the industry that is reputable and mainstream. Retail affiliate marketing. That's the part many of us focus on and it's bigger than the others, in terms of sales volume by a long shot. Walmart, Macys, Sears and almost every major etailer has an affiliate program, plus there are thousands of niche etailers selling every type of legitimate product you can imagine. You'd be promoting actual products (or in some cases leads, like insurance) instead of scammy offers and ebooks.

You won't find these types of affiliate programs on Clickbank or Neverblue or other CPA networks. You'll find them on the affiliate networks like CJ, Google Affiliate Network, Shareasale, ShareResults and Linkshare.

Very sage advice provided by Linda here mr.durden7...heed it, and I'm going to expand on it a little with a bit of my patented outside the box thinking...

Affiliate Marketing is an extremely lucrative business model that is very similar to commission based sales...and you don't have to get "boxed in" to thinking that it's all done online.

Plus, there are no rules that say you have to join a network of any kind to build an extremely profitable AM business at all. Networks seem to provide the easiest path to viewing offers and setting up links to promote etc... I challenge they're not an overall "easy" route as painted in various ebooks and courses in the big picture, but that's for another time and place, and I don't want to give the impression that they aren't a lucrative way to make money as an affiliate either...because they are.

Sooo...

That leads us to another alternative (in addition to Linda's advice above).

Private relationships.

Just to provide a little insight into this BIG opportunity. You can, as an affiliate, generate leads or sales for ANY business that has an opportunity to capitalize on risk-free sales or leads generated by an affiliate (let your mind wander a little here, you'll think of a few right in your local area).

There's also another opportunity that lies in helping offline (or online) businesses put together an affiliate program for a fee, then managing that program and its affiliates or helping find an affiliate manager etc...

I realize those are HUGE conceptually based opportunities to consider, and I couldn't go into enough detail in an entire WEEK to cover it all...but should give you more to chew on.

 

[mr.durden7]

That is great news. Linda thank you very much for clearing that up and opening my eyes to that. I think between reading certain blogs and forums and the fact the the people I know who are making money in AM are doing it promoting questionable products, I had the wrong impression of the industry.
I assume that since they are bigger name products the conversions would be better but also assume the payouts may not be as high...?
I applied to a couple of the networks you mentioned but got shot down as I am new to the industry. But I'm sure one of them would pick me up.
Joseph, I think that is a great idea and certainly an area I would like to get into once I learn the ropes and actually know I can get a product for that company. I was planning on getting going with networks and honing my skills and then going to companies who could use my services. I know plenty of businesses in my area, especially in this economy, would could use targeted promotion. That would be a great service to provide them with.

Thanks for your replies and look forward to hear what others have to say.

 

[tl_c]

mr.durden7, thanks for bringing up that topic! As I've been doing research to prepare for my blog launch, I've been feeling a bit discouraged, because it does seem like there are so many marketers out there who are making their money by promoting "icky" products. Hopefully, our integrity will be rewarded!

Thanks to you, too, Linda and Joseph for your reassurances!

 

[victorm]

Nice topic, indeed.

I am doing "traditional" Affiliate Marketing for some years now (what Linda called retail). It's a well-established model and there are plenty of spins on it (I for one have ACTIVE participation in some 2500 affiliate programs over the reputable networks mentioned above, which is not easy to chew on). CPA and Clickbank alike are a different universe - where AM dropped any pretense of acting decent or ethical and moved full speed ahead into the "if I don't do it, somebody else will" mentality. As I said it earlier on another thread, just be true to yourself - don't think that you are doing a service to your visitors when promoting most of these offers, you're just out for their money.

With Google massively correlating user data and invading privacy while running an affiliate network at the same time, I have a hard time looking for ethics champions. They have been proven to tweak SERPs manually to serve more or less obscure purposes. The scale of their actions is the only difference from what ruthless merchants, careless networks or even black hats do. I suggest you rent and watch "Lord of War" - I find arms dealers very close to Internet Marketers in certain aspects.

I recommend you don't draw a very clean line between what is acceptable or not for you at this early stage. It will just waste more of your resources later, when you find the reasons to redefine it one way or the other. You don't become a powerful affiliate overnight - you grow into it. Good luck!

 

[Slygun]

You could also promote non digital product from sites such as Amazon. The commissions are small but if you can get targeted customers to buy High ticket items like TV's and digital camcorders I think you can do very well. There are some legitimate products on Clickbank. Like virus software and such. Also you can promote EBay items with Wordpress. There is a plug-in that allows you to put targeted pictures and items that are on eBay and you get a commission if they buy them. Although the commissions are also small, they can be sold very quickly because of the nature of eBay. It is very hard to find a brand new item cheaper than you can find on eBay. And the great thing about it is you can also promote vintage items or used items that people need or want such as car parts, baseball cards, guitars, ect...ect...

 

[mr.durden7]

@Victorm...Wow. First at your active participation on a massive amount of programs and also your information on the industry as well. I'm not out to save the world one click at a time, but just didn't want to completely screw over someone or make them lose $80+ so I can make $30. But what you said does make sense. I've seen Lord of War and there are examples of major industries (and governments) screwing people over but getting away with it just because of the scale. Sad fact. But thanks for the input.
@Slygun, very good advice. I just read up on the eBay program which sounds interesting. Ebay changed their policy I believe, to paying you per click you send their way and they determine the value of your click. I would think the old way is better but maybe I have more to learn.
Thanks for all the advice guys.

 

[stephenhartnett]

Affiliate marketing in my oponion is saturated to be honest and i think there are way to many scams out there. I think clickbank should have a more rigourous checkthrough of a product before they should allow you to promote it. I there are alot more decent products and less scams we affiliates could make alot more money

 

[mr.durden7]

I agree. I think it's a shame that these networks will allow products that completely screw over the customer. I am pleased that I have found products that actually provide value to promote. Still building the sites but looks good so far!

 

[Laura61]

Experiences like yours are unfortunately all too common. It's one of the reasons I was originally dead set against trying to get into the info product game. But then it became the reason I got into the info product game!

I just hate that so many scammers and shady products have basically made a mockery of the affiliate marketing industry to the point where I'm almost afraid to tell people what I do. They get this look on their face that clearly says, Uh-oh, I can't believe she got mixed up in Internet scams, or, Change the subject! Change the subject! So have you been watching the Olympics?

But as others have mentioned, there are definitely excellent info products out there and ethical marketers; it just may take a little more effort to find them. And you can't go wrong with regular retail products, as Linda suggested. (Well, I suppose you could go wrong, but it seems less likely!) It's been the backbone of my online business since I began.

It always makes me happy when I run across someone who makes ethical behavior in this field a priority. We need more good guys.

 

[stephenhartnett]

I loved reading this. It just id like to find something to advertise to my subscribers that actually lives up to the hype that they say on the sales page. Thanks for your comment i enjoyed it