Is That A Scam ?

One day I was surfing the internet, and I came across a product on Google’s adsence program, the product looked liked something that I might be interested in, so I clicked the ad to find out more information about this wonderful new product. After reading the sales page, I thought about buying the program, but the product was a bit expensive! Then I spotted a affiliate program near the bottom of the page, it was kind of hard to miss, it was right next the contact link! After looking at the affiliate page, it advertised that I could make 50% for each sale. This means I could sign up for the affiliate program and pay all the money now but since I am buying the product under my own user name, I would get 50% back anyway!

What a deal! I could buy this new product for 50% off the normal price. So I cleared out the cookies from the browser and I saved the url in my clipboard and I restarted the browser, then pasted the url back into the browser with my new affiliate link. After I bought the product, I thought that I would promote the page, since it had a very powerful written sales page that it would convert very well for people who are also interested in this product.

So I grabbed the very same ad that I have seen before from the affiliate page and I got my credit card out and started to buy advertising to promote this product. Lucky for me the affiliate page told me everything that I need in order to promote the product such as keywords, sample Google Adwords Campaign text, Banners, Newsletter, and ways to promote their product using articles. Just thinking to my self with all this information at my fingertips how could I go wrong!

Well after spending $327.00 and around 900 clicks I made my first sale from google adwords program. I started to wonder why my ads had such a really good click through but nobody was actually buying the product. I thought that maybe I was trying to market my ads to the wrong crowd, so I tried to modify my ads and I even added some negative keywords in an attempt to weed out the people who would not buy, such as freebie seekers and that kind of thing. Then I realized something!

I realized that the owner of the site that I was promoting was scamming me and all of their affiliates! Just think about it! The owner of the site has their affiliate links on their sales page! What’s the purpose of this deceitful tactic? It’s there to convert the people you send to their site into affiliates and if they sign up under there own accounts then your just screwed! No matter if you spent $.15-$3.00 per click to get them there. It’s a Win-Win for the website owner because they are getting free traffic that you pay for and if they convert the visitor from a buyer into an affiliate!

Here are some examples:

It has become a way of business lately to do this, I guess that is because the website owners make so much money doing this and nobody has really complained that much to stop this tactic! If they continue this behavior it only means that they are wanting to make money anyway they can and they do not care about their affiliates or customers! They just want their money first and they will cut your throat to get it.

So how can a respectful site fix this ? The answer to this question is so simple!

REMOVE ALL THE AFFILIATE LINKS ON THE SALES COPY THAT YOUR AFFILIATES PROMOTE!

This is so easy but it’s unthinkable for website owners because it makes them so much money, because they are stealing from their own affiliates. If you continue to keep quite about this problem it will never go away! If your an affiliate and your sick and tired of being treated this way and you don’t know where to start here are a few suggestions!

1. Email the website that you want to promote and ask them to remove the affiliate links from only the page that affiliates are promoting. It would be very simple for webmasters to keep two copies, one for search engines and another just for affiliates!
2. Blog about this issue! You will be very surprised how much attention you will get from speaking your mind! Don’t let this crime go on any longer! If your using a blog that uses track backs, such as word press then grab my track back url below, blog about this issue and any experiences of your own, and I will display links back to your site.

If your affiliate program does not care about you then they will not remove the their affiliate links from the pages that affiliates promote. Websites owners enjoy and get excited that you are spending your hard earned dollar only to earn them more affiliates that will promote their own pages. I know you have seen this before where these websites show you huge checks, this always make me wonder how many affiliates that they scammed in the past, and nobody has complained. Who do you think is making all the money ?

This article was published by David Eaton from IsThatAScam.com

Popularity: 30% [?]

Tags: affiliate scam, backstabbers, stealing your profits, thief

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008 at 10:03 pm and is filed under Featured. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.