Avoid Scams - Real Deal Affiliate

Fake Affiliate Marketing Companies. Be on the Lookout.

July 16, 2018July 16, 2018 by Kyle

There are many companies and individuals out there deeming themselves to be within the affiliate marketing space, operating an affiliate marketing business, and worse, stating they are affiliate marketing experts…when they are not.

In this little rant here, I want to explain what affiliate marketing is, what it certainly isn’t, and what to look for when aiming to determine if an individual or company is misleading you about whether they are “affiliate marketing”. There are a lot of fake affiliate marketing companies out there and they are having an adverse impact on the affiliate marketing industry as a whole, so I want to bring some clarity as to what is affiliate marketing and what is not.

The Biggest Emulator. The MLM Bait and Switch.

The biggest trend we are starting to see is companies and individuals indicating they are operating an affiliate marketing agency, when in reality they are using it as a mask to cover up the fact that they are an MLM (Multi-Level Marketing) scheme.

Not to say there is anything wrong with some MLM companies, there are definitely some legitimate ones out there. However, you can almost assume that any MLM that is trying to say that they are affiliate marketing is running an unethical operation, and borderline (if not) illegal one.

There have been several take downs by the FTC in this space, with many more to come. It is my hope that they continue to tackle all the misleading programs out there operating businesses that are built around people joining and paying money, for the ability to promote that same program to others. That is the most common type of scheme that you see, with most people within these schemes losing money (95-97%).

There are some traits that you can look for in these programs that will be a key decider

Anything With Multiple Levels is NOT Affiliate Marketing. Affiliate programs are single level. If you are part of a program with 3 or more levels (including you), these are deemed multi-level marketing schemes. This is NOT affiliate marketing, in fact far from it.
Anything Where the Goal is to Promote the Same Program to Others. If you join something, or you have to pay for a program simply for the opportunity to sell that same program, then you are not getting involved in affiliate marketing. These companies have the tendency to call their “participants” affiliates, when in reality they are a notch in the MLM scheme and they are in reality network/multi-level marketers.
Anything High Ticket ($2,000+). The most common trait of “fake” affiliate marketing impersonators are those that are charging $1,000’s for information. If these companies offer $1,000’s in commissions, they are almost certainly operating their business in a way that relies on “baiting” participants with high compensation. These companies usually end in demise (or in the hands of the FTC) because their goal is to rip a few people off for $1,000’s to earn lots of money, versus actually offering a quality service to people for a realistic, market driven cost.
A Facade Entry Point Price. You will often times see a program actually offering an entry point into their program that operates in a true affiliate marketing fashion. However, once you join at the $49/$99 level of the program (or some smaller amount), you are encouraged to join at a more expensive level or BUY into some sort upline/downline platform, you have been misled and tricked to think you are affiliate marketing. This is a simple facade that has been set up, but in reality you are joining in on an affiliate marketing scheme.
Has an Income Disclaimer or Compensation Plan. All MLM companies are required to have a compensation plan as well as an income disclaimer on their website. If you scroll down to the bottom of the page and you see either of these, the given program IS NOT an affiliate program or affiliate marketing. It is an MLM.
There is a Cost to Join. Affiliate programs are free to join. If you have to pay to join an affiliate program, you should be skeptical. Some companies have a small, nominal fee to prove that you are real, but if you are paying $99 to join an affiliate program it is NOT an affiliate program.

What Affiliate Marketing Really Looks Like

OK, so now that you know what affiliate marketing is not, what is affiliate marketing? I have explained it in detail on the following affiliate marketing breakdown page already, but I want to show you two side by side examples of a program that is affiliate marketing, and one that is not.

The diagram offers you a good breakdown of the differences between real affiliate marketing, and the companies that are pretending to be affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing is the relationship between an affiliate, a company selling products and/or services online, and a customer. As an affiliate, you can add affiliate links on your website or elsewhere, and if someone subsequently clicks on your link and buys something, you get a percentage of gross sale. This typically ranges between 1% and 75%, and will vary from company to company.

For example, if I run a website dedicated to selling “golf equipment” and I link off to Callaway to their website through my affiliate links, they will pay me 6% commissions for any sales that I drive to them. This allows Callaway to in essence have 10,000’s of people, across the internet simultaneously promoting their products.

As an affiliate, it gives me the opportunity to potentially promote MILLIONS of products through my websites, social channels and email and earn a great deal of affiliate income in the process. It is a brilliant business model and one that is only continuing to grow online, but there are a lot of companies abusing the word “affiliate marketing” when in actuality they are an MLM or worse, a pyramid scheme.

Affiliate programs are not multi-level, nor do they require you to pay money in order to promote a product or service at a particular level. If someone is trying to get you to join something that is multi-level or that is paid, it is NOT an affiliate program.

There is a proper process, and a proper ethical procedure that all successful affiliates are following these days, and I am going to take a minute to explain this.

Establishing Yourself as An Authority Marketer

There is a right way to create a sustainable and long term business online, and there are many wrong ways. I am not going to focus on the wrong ways, rather the proper way. Becoming an authority.

The most natural way to do this is to choose something that you are truly passionate or interested in and build a business around this. That is not the only way, but it is a great starting point. That way you can truly build a business around something that you love to do.

Let’s say I love basketball, which I do, I could create an entire business and work to become an authority website in a particular segment of the broader basketball category. Let’s say, Basketball Skills and Drills.

I would then build a website, and start building out the content, all while being able to integrate relevant promotions into my website through affiliate programs. There are all sorts of things that I could promote in a niche like this, some examples would be:

Amazon (1,000’s of products related that pay 6% commissions)
Ballers Institute Skills Guide/Training (pays 51% commissions)
Vertical Jump Bands (6% commissions)
JumpUSA (15% Commissions)
And 100’s more

This is just brushing the surface, as I build out my basketball skills website and discuss many topics within this niche, I will be integrating highly relevant and useful product/service recommendations to my audience. Through time, I could have 100’s or 1,000’s of pages on my website, driving 1,000’s of unique visitors to my website daily, generating far more than a typical full time income ($1,000’s per day).

To grow your business, you scale your content and traffic. That is the approach that can be taken within any niche, and that is the most scalable and lucrative way to build a thriving affiliate marketing business. So whether you are interested in building a mommy blog, a cats and dogs website, a tech gadget website, a knitting site, sports related site, or a hobby car website, there are literally 100,000’s of directions that you can head.

That is the reality of the affiliate marketing business, and that is how affiliate marketing works. If you are interested in building a thriving affiliate marketing business, there is only ONE place in the world that you should consider, Wealthy Affiliate. It is a community & platform that offers an “all-inclusive” environment with the training, live classes, research tools, websites, hosting, coaching and networking under one roof. Get more info here.

I hope I have offered some clarity on the differences between the REAL affiliate marketing opportunity, and those companies and individuals out there pretending to be affiliate marketing when they are not. I would love to hear any stories you have had, or if you have any questions about the legitimacy of any program (or affiliate marketing in general) I would be more than happy to help you out.

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Is Clickbank Legit? A Thorough Review.

May 2, 2018May 2, 2018 by Kyle

When choosing an affiliate network or product to promote, there are many things that you should take into consideration. I have been in the affiliate marketing space for many years now and over the years one of the affiliate networks with staying power has been Clickbank. But there have been underlying problems and issues with Clickbank, therefor I am going to uncover whether Clickbank is a scam or whether or it is still a legitimate network.

I am also going to share some insightful stories and experiences I have had with Clickbank over the years to help you decide on whether this network is right for you.

My Personal Introduction to Clickbank.

I started marketing online back in 2002. Clickbank was absolutely the top digital product network then, and I would argue that it still is today.

During the next 5-7 years, information marketing products became more and more popular. The idea that someone was paying for information was typically left to our Universities and Colleges, but when the layman person like you or I realized they could package information up and sell it for a good deal of money, popularity of Clickbank truly started to explode.
You saw dieting products, software programs, and then around 2005 you saw a big surge in make money products teaching people how to make money online for sale on the Clickbank network.

A merchant, someone that owns the digital product, could amplify their sales through Clickbank’s large network of affiliates. Instead of trying to promote their information on their own, they could literally have 1,000’s of affiliates promoting.

One of the biggest successes in the make money space back then was The Rich Jerk, written by Kellly Felix.

This was an innovative product, had some really great ideas (like arbitrage) and although it didn’t cover anything I was doing at the time, I would say for many people this book within the online world and for affiliate/internet marketers had the same sort of impact that the “4 Hour Work Week” book had by Timothy Ferris.

I think Kelly was able to generate a $1,000,000 dollars or so in sales within his first week, which a big deal at the time.
I digress. Over the years I promoted MANY products and services on Clickbank. Ranging from dieting products, to people finder/lookup, to internet TV, to make money guides. I promoted them as an affiliate.
Through 2005 – 2008, I also launched 3 Clickbank products as a merchant (Beating Adwords, Inside the List, Who Loves Money). These were digital info products, helping people within three completely different categories relating to online business and they were all very well-received (and had incredibly low refund rates, which at the time was very unusual for Clickbank).

They were very successful and people still buy these products to this very day. So I come qualified with a great deal of experience with Clickbank and before I move on to some unraveling that has taken place within this particular affiliate network over recent years, I wanted to share a pretty cool success story.

A Story About Clickbank Success.

In 2008, there was a huge event. In fact, the biggest even every four years worldwide is not the Olympics, rather world cup. At the time there wasn’t an efficient way to watch TV on the internet and Facebook Live simply wasn’t a thing. But there were millions of people worldwide trying to find a way to watch the World Cup online, while they were at work.

We took advantage of this opportunity. We set-up a paid advertising campaign in Google targeting search terms like “watch world cup online” or “watch USA versus Germany online” while the games were playing (which were usually during the working hours of those in the US).

Anyways, we set up this campaign and we ended up pulling in around $60 per minute in affiliate revenue (yes, PER MINUTE) as the result of this promotion. It was definitely short-lived as the World Cup doesn’t last forever, but there was a huge demand for a product of this nature and we filled the void.

Anyways, that is just one of many success stories I could share about my last 16 years online, but this is one that is certainly the result of having access to a wide array of products like are available on Clickbank.

And One About Frustration.

OK, so not all is good with Clickbank. Yes, they have an easy to use network. You don’t have to be approved for every single affiliate program, and the commission rates are typically very high because it is a digital product network.

So what are the downfalls of Clickbank?

The first one happened a few years back. Refund rates started to spin out of control on Clickbank because they were allowing (knowingly or unknowingly I am not sure) some biggest shiesters online to churn out digital e-books and sell them on their network.

They were supporting their sales schemes by allowing them to offer all sorts of OTO (one time offers) in their sales processes, so people were buying a relatively low ticket item ($17-$47) and then getting sucked in and pressured in spending much more within the up sell process, often times $100’s. This lead to unhappy and disgruntled customers, which lead to people contacting Clickbank and demanding refunds.

Clickbank was good about refunds, almost too good. Some products ended up getting 10-30% in refunds, and for an affiliate that is potentially paying or traffic to promote a product, that is unacceptable. As a result, many affiliates ended up frustrated, losing money, and leaving Clickbank for other sources.

Clickbank started booting low performing and high refund products from their network, which was a great move, but it also alienated all the “gurus” pushing their crap and they have since moved onto other networks that have looser rules and policies about product quality like Clicksure and JVZoo.

Clickbank has definitely recovered from this and has started to obtain and maintain a higher quality on their network since, but there is one significant problem with how they are operating as a business. I will explain.

Is Clickbank Leveraging Its Merchants Traffic?

A great portion of Clickbank’s early success came from a certain segment of products.

The make money online and online business crowd. Whether it was a drop shipping program like SaleHoo, a keyword research platform like Long Tail Pro, or a make money book like the Rich Jerk, the Internet Marketing crowd and product categories were driving a good deal of business to Clickbank.

Also, people that wrote about affiliate marketing had the tendency to recommend Clickbank as one of the top networks out there, myself included. However, a few years back Clickbank came out with a program called Clickbank University, and although I am not a member, I know the devastating impact this can have on someone trying to co-exist in the make money world.

Why would you send your traffic to Clickbank when they have created a component product that they will then promote to the VERY people that you have referred to their network? It doesn’t make lot of sense.

Because of this, the internet marketing crowd, those running legitimate businesses in this space (such as myself and my company, Wealthy Affiliate), refrain from pushing Clickbank as a network. They simply cannot afford to give over traffic to a company that is creating a competing product. It is not the job of an affiliate network to create a paid “membership” on how to promote their very network, in my opinion.

No sane marketer would drive traffic to Clickbank, nor would ethically recommend them under this premise.

Clickbank is Legit, With a Few Complaints.

So this leads me to the pros and cons of Clickbank, as a network. I actually have a lot of nice things to say about Clickbank. I also have some things that I can efficiently summarize about what I do not like about Clickbank.

Pros of Clickbank

They have great affiliate technology
They pay on time (and offer many types of payment)
Their programs tend to offer higher commissions
They have a large network of products
Auto-approval on products (don’t discriminate against new affiliates)
Have both tangible (physical) and info products (digital)

Cons of Clickbank

They try to up sell you on services like Clickbank University
Some lower quality products
Doesn’t allow certain countries to join
Have to make commissions from several countries to get paid

All in all, what you promote at the end of the day depends on what is relevant to your given audience. If Clickbank has a product/service that you think would have a good fit with your given audience, then you could certainly try to promote it.

Clickbank is a LEGIT affiliate network, with some quirks.

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How to Avoid the Top 5 Affiliate Marketing Scams.

March 11, 2018March 11, 2018 by Kyle

Affiliate marketing has been gaining more and more popularity in recent years, in particular as a result of the proliferation of social media and the fact that so many more people are using affiliate marketing to promote products/services to their friends and family through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.

The problem is that any time there is opportunity and money to be made, it attracts the vultures and unscrupulous that are in the business of “taking advantage” of people. As a result, there are many companies portraying themselves as affiliate marketing, and many affiliate marketing scams popping up.

I want you to be very careful out there. In this post, I am going to break down what an affiliate marketing scam looks like to help you avoid getting taken advantage of.

The Industry is Changing, Be Careful.

When I started out online back in 2002, affiliate marketing was just gaining popularity. You had mostly tangible products (physical) and service based companies starting to realize the potential of having a base of affiliates promoting their companies.

Instead of these companies relying on “in house” marketing team, they were able to attract 100’s if not 1,000’s of affiliate marketers to promote their services. They didn’t need to pay them unless they generated revenue for them, so it was completely performance based and they didn’t need to pay the salary of expensive employees or deploy significant ad budgets…they let the affiliates do the work for them.

Move forward to 2018, the industry has changed and in recent years we have seen a cross over of companies trying to set foot in the affiliate marketing industry, that actually are not affiliate marketing. We see companies charging WAY too much for affiliate education. We also see companies up selling the hell out of their customers, taking a low ticket product and then forcing a customer to pay several $1,000’s by the time they are done with their pitch fest.

This is unacceptable in my eyes. It is ruthless, and it is something that ethical affiliate marketers (the ones I associate with anyways) don’t stand for.

Fortunately for you though, there are obvious signs that you can look forward when trying to determine whether a program is an affiliate marketing scam.

5 of the Most Typical Affiliate Scams.

There are a few very common types of affiliate marketing scams. You can pretty much put every unethical company within this industry under one of these umbrellas.

(1) Low Ticket to High Ticket. There are many scammers out there that will try to sell you on a very low ticket item, stating the given price and everything you need to succeed is $7-$49, but in reality there are $100’s if not $1,000’s in up sells immediately after you purchase the given product. Not only that, they make you feel really guilty if you don’t spend more money (tell you things like “you are worthless”). It is horrible.

(2) Free Plus Shipping Book. You probably have seen these within your social media accounts. Companies pitching you on the idea of getting a free book, plus shipping. That sounds good in logic, but the problem is they are doing this to get your “contact details” which they are then going to used to promote all sorts of other stuff to. The “books” are usually completely promotional in terms of their intent, lacking actual value and substance.

(3) Join Program, to Promote (MLM). Often times companies that are within the MLM (multi-level-marketing) world will present themselves as being “affiliate marketing”. Anything that is MLM, is NOT affiliate marketing. The big difference, multi-levels. You have to be careful when you are joining these programs as they will get you in, often times at a very expensive price ($1,000-$50,000) and to recoup your costs, they will get you to promote the very same program to others.

Many of these programs are taken out by FTC every year for being fraud, pyramid or ponzi schemes. The problem: If you are involved in them and promote them to others, you are just as liable as a participant as you are being the owner of the company.

(4) Social Feed “I am in” for more details. You see this on Facebook or Instagram all the time, but you will also see it within Twitter, Pinterest and Snapchat as well. A marketer tells you how much they are making, how you can “change your life” and then pitch you on the idea that they are going to teach you how to make money just like them.

Firstly, most of these people pushing these videos on social media are not making any money (unless you buy into their crap), and secondly, they are almost certainly about to throw you into a network marketing scheme where you need to peddle the same garbage to others.

(5) Showcase Lifestyle and Money. You can pretty much chalk up any program that sells itself solely on lifestyle, on “mindset”, on flash cars or houses a scam. These companies tend to lack product/service substance. If you are being sold on this emotion and you want to be sitting on the beach or driving the Ferrari like the person selling on you on this idea in the video/sales pitch, make sure you know what they heck you are getting into first!

If are currently research a program and it fits into any of these categories, be careful. There is a good chance that you are about to get involved in one of the affiliate marketing scams that are present within the online world (IE, the wild west) these days)>

So if These are Affiliate Scams, Why Do They Exist?

They exist because they make money. They make money, because people get sucked into them. The FTC and other government driven regulatory entities that are created to protect you from such scams are very busy. Quite often they not going to waste their time taking down a company until it reaches a minimum of $10MM+ in revenue.

Thus many of the smaller programs will survive and survive for some time (sometimes forever). You can help prevent these companies from sustaining their unethical affiliate businesses within the online world simply by understanding that they are scams and avoiding them altogether. When you get ripped off, you are giving the monster in essence money.

If you don’t feed them with your hard-earned money, they are going to have to legitimize themselves at some point or completely get out of the affiliate marketing world altogether.

Go Affiliate Marketing Legit.

There are absolutely legitimate opportunities. If you have read this and are feeling a bit discouraged by the affiliate marketing industry as a whole, please do not be. The affiliate marketing industry is VERY ethical, it is vast, and it is full of an incredible amount of opportunity.

In fact, in my 16 years within the online world I have yet to see more opportunity. Affiliate programs are popping up everywhere, all major brands/services in the world have affiliate programs, and affiliates have a subset of over 550 MILLION (yes million) products and services they can promote in exchange for a commission.

Whether you are interested in cats and dogs, make up and beauty, sports, health & fitness, technology, etc… there is an opportunity for your to carve yourself out a very successful business within the affiliate marketing space. No experience necessary.

There is a legitimate process to building a business online though. It looks a little something like this.

Choose a direction for your business. This could be anything and there are a million and one niches out there.
Build a website/blog to promote your business. This is very easy to do these days. Within platforms like Wealthy Affiliate you can have your very own niche website ALIVE online in less than 30 seconds. Yes, 30 seconds.
Get Traffic to your business. There are MANY ways to do this. One of the primary methods is getting rankings in Google, Bing & Yahoo (which is free to do), but you can also pay for traffic, leverage social networks, and use email marketing just to name a few.
Generate revenue through affiliate programs. This is where the affiliate programs come in. There are millions of products, likely within pretty much any niche, that you can promote in exchange for an affiliate commission. These commissions range from 2% to 75% depending on the company and can lead to a HUGE stream of income.

That is it. The process in a nutshell, all you need is a platform that provides you with the training and the environment to create, grow and manage your business. This platform is Wealthy Affiliate and it is completely free to try through their elite Starter Membership (no obligations whatsoever).

By lesson 4 alone within the training, you are going to have step 1 & 2 above complete. By the first course alone, which is included in your starter membership, you are going to understand the process of getting ranked in Google with your website, getting traffic, and how you can build out you business in the most appropriate manner for long term success.

I digress. I hope this article has offered you a lot of insight into the “bad” side of the affiliate marketing world, and if you have been seeking out any of the FIVE types of scams that I have suggested you avoid, I hope you do so.

If you have any bad or good experiences within the affiliate marketing world you would like to share, opinions or questions that you want to get feedback on, please leave me a comment below. I would love to hear it, I could chat about this stuff all day!

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