Understanding The Pitfalls For Affiliate Marketing

When you talk with people who have had experience with home based businesses you will typically get two types of answers. Some will say working from home is the best thing that every happened to them while others will say that they would rather go out to work every day. Having a home based business is really up to each individuals own preference. There are some that work better at a traditional job while others work better with the freedom of a home based business.

While work at home moms are often the favorite target for Internet scammers, website owners are a close second. You own a website and are possibly paying a bit of money to keep the site running. Do you not wish you could make some money with the website you work so hard to maintain?

Yet there is a bit of a seedy underbelly to the affiliate marketing industry that will actually jeopardize your good name as a webmaster and will also result in payouts that are pennies on the dollar. For example, have you ever been surfing the web only to suddenly stumble across a website that touts an amazing nutritional supplement that does it all? Weight loss for the overweight, hair growth for the bald, an increased sexual stamina for those lacking it and a host of other items are cured or corrected with a pill after breakfast, lunch and dinner.

These miracle cures are touted on the website via a long list of testimonials, and you can almost always recognize the feel of these sites simply by the long list of text they sport, the varying fonts employed, and also the different colors these words are written in. You may simply shrug your shoulders at such a site until – about halfway down – you see a copy of a commission check the webmaster has posted and suddenly he or she has your undivided attention. The check is small enough to be realistic yet big enough to have you consider what you could to with the money and how it could ease the tension at home from lack of disposable income.

When you are hooked, the spiel usually involves a site owner who is so successful that he or she has decided to take on two or three qualified novices and train them to do the business as well. This involves selling the
miracle product to your friends and neighbors and then just sitting back and waiting for the money to roll in.

Additionally, you will need to post banners on your website. What has just happened, in a nutshell, is an
affiliate scam that ties your success directly into a multi-level marketing scheme. While your links will attract more interested parties to the originator’s website, you are meanwhile alienating your friends and families by the legal drugs you are peddling.

In and of itself, affiliate marketing is a wonderful opportunity to share in the profits of a reputable company by displaying their links and banners, and allowing interested parties to visit those sites and perhaps purchase a product. When they do so, the company will often offer you a small percentage of the sale as a finder’s fee. Before joining any program, always do your research.Do a search on Google and go to marketing forums and discussion boards to see what others have to say about the business, it will pay off.