Affiliate marketing has been gaining a decent amount of buzz as an incredibly valuable career opportunity. It has proven itself as a worthy source of income, and because there is money that can be made in this area, there are also vultures that are using affiliate marketing to take advantage of others.

Scammers can be quite a nuisance in online businesses – or even businesses in general- and if you’re not properly aware of the tell-tale signs, you might fall into affiliate hoaxes and wind up losing a lot of money, as well as your credibility as an affiliate marketer.

In other words, it’s something you should certainly avoid. Here are some strategies to protect yourself against affiliate scams and help you stay on the right track:

1. Sometimes it’s best to judge a book by its cover

Anyone with an internet connection who spends a significant amount of time scrolling through websites can tell you that some websites just don’t sit right with them based on the way they look.

Scammer websites, especially affiliate marketing scammers, might check one of these boxes:

• The website is displaying a lot of low-quality stock images
• There are too many ads framing the website
• The website is filled with malicious browser extensions
• The website keeps asking for different permissions
• The website has a cluttered appearance and occasionally has pictures of dollar bills all over it

 

You can probably tell if a site’s legit or not just by looking at it. One look at a credible website, like Wealthy Affiliate, can instantly let you know you can trust that website.

However, beware that scammers are getting smarter and now they’re capable of walking the extra mile and making sure their website looks legit so you have to look out for the other signs as well.

 

2. Stay away from promises that sound too good to be true 

If it’s too good to be true then it probably isn’t true after all, especially when it comes to affiliate marketing.

Apart from hitting the lottery, there is no such thing as somehow becoming extremely wealthy quickly. As good as affiliate marketing platforms can be, it can never promise that you’ll become a billionaire overnight or even in the span of months, and any deal promising to make you a large amount of money in a matter of days or hours is rarely trustworthy.

If someone is asked to choose between a long-term and a short-term return approach, they’d probably go with the latter. After all, why take the long route when you can easily take a shortcut?

However, “get rich quick” schemes are a real problem in the affiliate world. New affiliate marketers are trying to seek out methods to make huge amounts of money online, so if someone claims that they can earn thousands of dollars with little time and effort, some may actually fall for it.

 

3.  There’s always a free program

Another red flag is if there is no free involvement. If they want you to invest a great deal of money initially without even gaining an understanding of what the website is like, then find something else. They are quite likely to steal your money and disappear, leaving you with a useless product.

Legitimate Affiliate marketing platforms almost always offer a free program in addition to their paid ones. The reason for this is quite simple, to gain the customer’s trust and let their client know that they’re legit.

Wealthy Affiliate, for instance, offers a free program with incredible services, including core training in affiliate marketing!

 

4. Take a moment to think before putting your money out there

It’s the everlasting question, to pay or not to pay? To be fair, while a very common affiliate marketing scam method is asking people to pay for a membership or a program, it can be justified in some cases.

The fact that someone urges you to pay to join an affiliate marketing program, on the other hand, should raise a warning signal. The majority of these pay-to-join organizations are nothing more than pyramid schemes.

However, this is not a rule.

Sometimes, an affiliate marketing platform offers services that cost money, and, in that case, you should make sure that you’re getting your money’s worth when you decide to pay.

For instance, the paid services that are provided on Wealthy Affiliate (such as web domains or web hosting) don’t cost more than their original price. In fact, you can actually end up saving a lot of money.

If you’re serious about finding an affiliate marketing program, you should do some research and look around to ensure that the people involved with the network are authentic and that the platform is genuine.

 

5.  Look out for fake products and services

Another popular affiliate marketing fraud is the promotion of phony goods or services. This one is a sneaky method that can end up costing you, not only a lot of time but also your reputation as an affiliate marketer and in some cases, money.

In certain circumstances, scammers may develop fake products or services and even advertise them under the cover of a well-known company. Fraudulent affiliate programs can be quite detailed and walk the extra mile so that unsuspecting marketers may indeed believe that the promotion is legitimate. Here’s how they do it:

• Scammers will frequently create whole product catalogs and write phony customer evaluations for each item.
• They’ve even been known to use hired false spokespeople to advertise their services.
• They even use sophisticated infographics, and their items have unrealistically positive ratings.

This is all essentially a pyramid scam. The scammers will encourage you to pay a fee to participate in the scheme, promising that you will soon experience tremendous profits. In some cases, they might even have the audacity to ask you to recruit a large number of people to the program before disappearing.

How to not fall for this trap:

• Be wary of all you see are overly complimentary compliments. Even the best-known companies receive unpleasant feedback or comments.
• Genuine sellers will always attempt to glamorize the items they sell. Anything fuzzy and with low quality is most likely a fake.

 

 

Because many people are gaining success through affiliate marketing, many people are trying to feed off that success. There is an increase in the number of fake programs, questionable claims, and blatant frauds.

Wealthy Affiliate understands the struggle and believes it’s critical to understand what to look out for if you want to become an affiliate marketer. It stands out as not only a credible wealthy affiliate platform but a community where you can grow in Affiliate marketing and learn from its courses and others’ experiences.