Making money online is one of those tricky businesses that a lot of people try to do but not a lot of people do well. Finding legitimate ways to make money is like searching for a needle in a haystack – the real opportunities are far and few between, while the scams are readily available and screaming for your attention. If you’re new to the world of internet marketing it can be difficult to determine what’s real and what’s going to end up being a waste of your time.
But there are a few ways to tell if that lucrative money-making opportunity is actually going to bring you the big bucks, or if it’s going to leave you scraping to make ends meet.
Research pays off
You do your research on a company before you start working with them, so why wouldn’t you do the same for someone you’re interested in partnering with for an affiliate marketing opportunity? Do a quick internet search on the company and see what other people have to say about it – are the reviews all complaining about how the company was a scam or have people had positive experiences working with the company?
Paying for programs
A genuine affiliate marketing opportunity shouldn’t have you paying money to sign up – after all, you’re there to earn money not spend it. Anything that asks you to pay a one-time start-up fee or anything of the sort should set off little warning bells in your head. What is more likely to happen is that you’ll never see that money again and you’ll still have to find an affiliate.
You’ll be rich in the first month – GUARANTEED!
Outrageous claims like this should make you question their tactics. Let’s be honest, not everyone is going to hit the big bucks right away. Making money online in an honest fashion isn’t easy to do – if it was, everyone would be doing it. Blanket statements like this are usually said to lure people in but typically don’t pan out like they promise.
You have to bring in a certain amount of sales each month
You should never have a specific amount of sales you are “required” to bring in each month with a penalty for not achieving those goals (usually in the form of purchasing products to make up the difference). Affiliate marketing should have no out of pocket expense to you.
Contacting customer support is virtually impossible
There should always be at the very minimum a reliable email address to get in touch with someone from customer service/tech support if you run into any problems. If you can’t get in touch with anyone quickly then you probably don’t want to do business with them. While there are plenty of legitimate affiliate marketing opportunities out there, there are definitely a lot of opportunities out there designed simply to scam you out of money. Be careful before you jump into any sort of partnership – making a little bit of money and actually receiving the compensation is better than the promise of a lot of money that you never actually see.
Hi Melanie,
Some great points, I’ve noticed such advertising and always remain cautious about them. I never subscribed them or paid them anything. 🙂
Unfortunately, there seem to be more unreliable companies involved in Affiliate Marketing than there are reputable, it is very important to control the company you are going to working with before and not after.
Great article, Melanie! Reading it now, I recognize all of these points as being obvious indicators, but I have fallen victim to schemes like this in the past. It’s great that people like you are continuing to warn gullible minded people like myself of the potential dangers of affiliate marketing! Thanks!
Hello Melanie
Yes perform due diligence before you spend time promoting any affiliate program. There are plenty of forums online that deal with affiliates and affiliate programs, ask some questions at these sites to see if anyone has negative experience of the program you’re interested in.
Internet business has come a long way and so are the online crooks who want to take advantage of nicer people. Well, we can’t stop them but somehow we can avoid these scammers by being wise and watchful on everything we get into in the web. We have to think that our investment is something that we worked for so we have to be extra careful.
I find all these points very useful for me. And I guess that they all should be taken into account and should be implemented in life
These scams are really tempting and we could fall right into their game. Some scammers even plant viruses in your PC. I would like to hear any experience of those who are fooled by scammers, so that we can learn from them too. Nice article Melanie.