Some may think that the best what to know how to avoid affiliate marketing scams is to simply not participate in anything. The good side of that approach is that you will absolutely be right. However, on the bad side there are actual opportunities such as Wealthy Affiliate that will be missed. When I first got started with WA I did so as a free member without any commitment nor interest in upgrading. I went through all their free training, checked out support and participated in the corresponding community.
I did this for good reason. I’d spent over $1500 on a program before, just to name one of many investments. Unfortunately, I had nothing to show for it. It wasn’t because this was a scam necessarily, but rather it just didn’t fit my personality though I was hoping it would. After completing all the free training with WA I realized there was something here and upgraded. In the first 30 days, I made over 3K. I’m not going to suggest that it will be the same for everyone, because it won’t. However, that has been my experience.
Affiliate Marketing Scams And How To Avoid Them
Affiliate marketing, as an industry, is one of the most legitimate ways for making money. However, there are several affiliate marketing scams out there. Here’s how you can avoid getting caught up in all the hype and truly understand how to start your own affiliate marketing business.
Find the Best Program
For beginners, the best option is to review the affiliate training program and enroll in their free program if one is made available. If they don’t have a free option for you to look under the hood and see what is going on it is a good reason to be concerned.
Rookies are particularly susceptible to affiliate marketing scams. Therefore, the greater the amount of knowledge you have on the niche, the easier it will be for you to avoid the corresponding trouble.
Avoid Get Rich Quick Schemes
Almost every get rich quick scheme you come across is a scam. Yes, you can make money on the web but it won’t happen over-night or in a week. It takes work and lots of it. Therefore, if you come across anyone who promises that they can help you make tons of money using their affiliate marketing secrets, you should be wary. Read what they are writing and make sure it sounds real.
If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
If you had a secret for making millions of dollars without putting any work in it, would you want to share the secret? Probably not, unless it somehow benefited you in the process. Multi-level marketing (MLM) opportunities are prime examples of these. MLM is not a scam and it does work if you are the right person to work it. The problem with MLM and most any business opportunity is there are far more people that jump into it than succeed. Not everyone is cut out for this type of opportunity any more than everyone should be an Affiliate Marketer.
While there certainly are cases of people having learned how to earn passive income without working too hard the examples of success are rare.
Legitimate affiliate marketing programs often teach you how to run a successful business online. This is because that is all there is to affiliate marketing. Therefore, sign up for affiliate training to learn about how to create business plans and strategies, and build a sturdy foundation for the future of your new affiliate marketing business. This is the only route to making good money from marketing various products and services as an affiliate.
Ignore Income Reports
Although some of the income reports you will see online are legitimate, most of them are not. Unless you are aware of who the real affiliate marketing industry experts are, you can never be too sure about these reports. Numbers can be fabricated quite easily, just as possessions secured can be misrepresented.
Instead of offering true value within free business studies online, far to many scammers have adopted the unfortunate deception of offering photoshopped bank statements and income reports to draw people in. Some have taken it to the next step and created cloned websites that resemble bank accounts and PayPal accounts. By so doing, they can come up with videos showing them logging in to check their account balance.
Even further, when you see fancy castles and cars you should know that these commodities can be rented by the day.
Upselling
When you feel the urge to splurge on an affiliate marketing course, you should be cautious about upselling. This trick has become prevalent within the affiliate marketing community simply because it works. It works within most any niche which certainly includes affiliate marketing.
People are more likely to put their money in something they have purchased before. Therefore, you could potentially get lured into a training course for a tiny fee. However, once you have entered your payment information into the course, you will be hit with more sales pitches in-order to experience the real power. While Wealthy Affiliate does use this approach, the results of what I have received are amazing.
For instance, after signing up for the course, you will be promised VIP access to another even bigger secret to winning as an affiliate. This won’t come free and you must pay for it.
Most of the time, upselling works because the original purchase you made will seem like it is not enough to get you the affiliate marketing success you are looking for. The best thing you can do, therefore, is to go through their entire free training course.
Checkout support.
See how active people are.
Then make your choice based on experience rather than momentary excitement that ends up with you having nothing other than less money in your bank account.
Concluding Thoughts On Avoiding Affiliate Marketing Scams
Scamming existed even before affiliate marketing came up. Therefore, the tricks scammers use are mostly the same. Learn how to spot them and ward away from any website/blog or person who promises you the world – they hardly ever live up to these promises.
This is not to say that real deals aren’t available online. But rather, be cautious and test things out before spending a dime. In the long run, you will be glad that you did.
Guy Siverson
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Guy,
Your article should be required reading for people looking to own an affiliate marketing business but have no experience at running one.
As mentioned there still are unheard of bogus opportunities that truly do prey on the greed of many human beings who look for the quick/simple solution that will allow them to achieve to success in a business. And if this “success” involves making a lot of money all the merrier as these these naive people go all with that tired, worn phrase called “attaining financial freedom”!
I know all of this because I WAS that silly individual. I brought into all of the junk that you discussed in your article – promises of a lot of money earned if I just followed a program’s “proven system”, testimonials of people who became millionaires in believable vids/screen shots that I know today were all fake.
Finally there were the upsells that always had a “what’s behind door #2” notion. They don’t reveal anything more about a program providing other than the very basics which do practically nothing in allowing you to even get the very foundation of your business built. You can not advance any further without going all in behind that door and buying the upsell – for a tiny fee of XXX amount of dollars.
Sadly the more foolish people still buy into these scams, the more that will be created online. The very individuals who create them are well aware that there can always be money made coming from gullible people who buy all into these fraudulent opportunities without conducting research first!
Wealthy Affiliate as you stated is without question the #1 opportunity for newbies to learn the right way through training, community support and tools to allow a person to slowly grow an online business.
Furthermore as you stated the fact you can join for free and still benefit from a lot of training makes WA even more of a logical choice for any person to get involved with it.
Great article, sir!
Jeff
Hello Jeff
I actually almost didn’t get involved with Wealthy Affiliate because I’m way past the beginning stage. Still I was intrigued enough to join for free, which led to my becoming premium and then a yearly member because of the great savings. I too have been involved with many of the other wannabee programs and have nothing to show for it. WA makes all the difference and I appreciate you sharing your experience with it. I wish you much success on Wealthy Affiliate and beyond in the days, months and years ahead.
Guy