Affiliate Marketing Scams

Although there is unquestionable potential for lead creation and improved revenue, you should be wary of several affiliate marketing scams.

The astonishing amount of affiliate advertising scams reached over $65 billion in 2020 and may reach over $100 billion by 2023!

Affiliate marketing scammers may con you out of enormous sums of money if you don’t know what to look for. Eight of the most widespread affiliate marketing scams of 2022 are exposed in this guide. In order to prevent you from falling into these costly traps, we’ll explain how affiliate marketing scams work and expose the warning flags.

What Is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing allows you to suggest or advertise items and services to your audience on your blog, website, social media platforms, and YouTube channel that you appreciate or are unfamiliar with. You can get a small commission on any purchases made by your readers when they click through to you.

Commissions might be paid as a flat fee or as a percentage of each sale, and the product or service owner will have provided you with affiliate links to track sales.

Affiliate marketing scams exist in a variety of business sectors and are becoming more widespread as a result of their difficulty in detection. These fraudulent actions can be identified in the browser’s search engine results, on social networking sites, on YouTube, and in website advertisements.

As for businesses, it’s critical to keep an eye on your web marketing strategy because scammers frequently use this medium. Knowing what kind of scam activities to watch out for and how to avoid them is crucial.

Why are Affiliate Marketing Scams So Common?

It should go without saying that the internet has created a wide range of employment options. Since there are more opportunities than ever to earn money online, almost anybody may control their own financial future. However, vultures are usually present when there is money to be made.

Online scammers prey on people’s ambition for success. They make absurd promises about what they can offer, knowing that it would attract the interest of people who are wanting to establish a respectable side business.

People are online more often now, especially in light of the pandemic’s role in the widespread transition to remote working. As a result, e-commerce activity has increased significantly. All age groups in a RAND study say they shop online more now than they did before the outbreak. The likelihood of affiliate marketing scams rises when customers make more purchases from more sources.

It’s time for merchants and advertising to familiarize themselves with the playing field because the trend is expected to last. You must be aware of your obstacles if you want to take advantage of affiliate marketing’s enormous potential.

Is Affiliate Marketing Legit?

Yes, in a nutshell. Although affiliate programs may be as valuable as the marketer operating them creates them to be, there is a common bias against affiliate marketing and the idea that it is largely a scam.

Despite the worries, affiliate marketing is a completely legal means of making money and has long been a very effective client acquisition channel. Not only is it true, but it is also still expanding.

In fact, affiliate marketing programs can be a very powerful tool for businesses to increase sales and for affiliate marketers to profit. Because of this, 84% of publishers and 81% of advertisers say they “do” affiliate marketing.

What are The Affiliate Marketing Scams That Affect Affiliate Marketers?

Cookie Stuffing

Scammers use cookie stuffing or cookie dumping to install tracking tags from different affiliate networks on a visitor’s machine. The scammers will receive a commission if a visitor hits the link and makes a purchase on the advertiser’s website. This ad scam, also known as cookie dropping, causes incorrect attribution, allowing the false affiliate to get a commission on the sale while having done nothing to promote the item or aid the transaction.

As an illustration, if you’re a web publisher working with a brand or CPA network to market the items, you’ll receive a cut of every sale your customers make.

The third-party will profit even if they had no part in the transaction if the visitor’s browser is loaded up with cookies from a third party without their awareness. Essentially, this strategy has an impact on reputable publications. Here is a brief explanation of cookie stuffing in case you’re curious as to how it works.

Cookie stuffing can be implemented in the following ways:

• Pop-ups
• Iframes
• JavaScript
• Stylesheets

Get-Rich-Quick Schemes

There is just no such thing as being rich rapidly, barring a lottery win. Despite how fantastic affiliate marketing scams are; you won’t get rich overnight. Unfortunately, con artists continue to insinuate that you will despite this. They oversell the services they provide by taking advantage of people’s desire to make money.

Scammers employ too optimistic advertisements in this scam scheme to persuade victims that it is feasible to earn a large sum of money fast and with little effort. In reality, you’ll need to put in a lot of work to make affiliate marketing a profitable endeavour. Therefore, be aware of scams that make untrue promises.

This clickbait hoax frequently draws in new affiliate marketers and may result in fraudulent affiliate clicks or private data breaches that fraudsters may use to their advantage.

Fortunately, affiliate scams like this are quite easy to recognize since they often demand that you pay a substantial quantity of money — frequently hundreds of dollars — in exchange for learning about their “proven, 100% successful money-making program.”

Almost all affiliate programs provide absolutely free membership. Therefore, it’s a huge warning sign if you’re required to pay a charge in advance.

Fake Products

Making adverts or a page for a product that doesn’t exist constitutes a fake product affiliate marketing scam. To win the trust of potential buyers, scammers would advertise the goods using the name of a reputable company. In order to earn the trust of potential buyers, the scammer typically advertises fraudulent goods under the pretence of a well-known firm, even going so far as to fabricate the company’s website and logo.

Due to the fact that scammers are frequently quite skilled, this scam may actually be rather challenging to recognize. They create a website that appears legitimate and is loaded with positive affiliate marketing testimonials. They may even make use of actual product catalogues. They might even hire paid phoney spokespeople to exaggerate their qualifications. So, take note!

An abundance of excessively good evaluations about a product is a good indicator that it is false. Be sceptical of any services that don’t have any reviews because even the greatest ones will have some.

Pay-to-Join Scams

Another typical affiliate marketing scam is Pay-to-Join, which demands payment via PayPal or a credit card in order to enrol in an affiliate network. Beware of this sort of scam to prevent your personal information from being taken online.

It is entirely free to sign up for the vast majority of affiliate programs. Why would they want to charge you for the privilege when the majority of businesses actively seek to hire new affiliate marketers? To filter out spam-ridden candidates, a tiny payment may be requested by a select few, although it will almost never be more than a minimal amount.

It’s likely that if you fall for a scam like this, you won’t get your money back or earn any more money. Verify the legitimacy of the firm behind any program before enrolling.

Spoof Traffic

As part of an affiliate marketing scam, scammers provide fake click- and impression-related data, such as bots and garbage, to make it appear legitimate. This con is frequently found in affiliate schemes for Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising.

To create the impression that they are a reliable, useful affiliate partner that can assist a business in generating a ton of new leads through affiliate marketing, scammers employ data centres as link farms to grow false followers on social media.

It will appear to a store that an affiliate is bringing a lot of customers to their website or service. On the other end, there aren’t any actual clients. The scammer manipulates the system by using bot traffic, or they may even recruit low-wage labour to manually click on PPC advertising.

What are the Affiliate Marketing Scams that Affect Companies with Affiliate Marketing Programs?

Google Ad Hijacking

Google ad hijacking is a type of affiliate marketing scam in which scammers make false ads that top Google search results in an effort to take over your company’s sponsored advertisements. Scammers might steal your direct traffic when clients click on a fraudulent affiliate link by focusing on branded keywords.

If they are successful, the fraudster will utilize a duplicate of your advertisement and the same display URL to trick viewers into clicking on their own advertisement. When people click on the adverts, they believe they are going to a trustworthy website, but when they make a purchase, fraudsters argue they should receive the affiliate commission.

This hijacking may harm a brand’s reputation in addition to losing money and lost sales opportunities. The majority of affiliate relationships forbid marketers from focusing on ad keywords related to the company’s goods or services.

Click Spam

Click spam is an affiliate marketing scam in which con artists generate fake clicks via mobile websites or applications. Malware is frequently used by con artists to produce fake traffic that seems like mobile users are clicking on PPC adverts.

This affiliate marketing scam is difficult to detect and stop for affiliate networks and advertisers. Without the users’ knowledge or approval, malicious actors direct traffic, making it appear as though the clicks are coming from someone using a mobile application.

URL Hijacking

When scammers build a website or a product with names that are similar to those of your business, it is known as URL hijacking. Customers that visit the false website will be sent to the legitimate one, where fraudsters may profit from affiliate commissions.

This sort of fraud is another affiliate marketing scam that people could not even detect happening. You could believe everything is OK since the false web page instantly reroutes you if you mistakenly spell a word incorrectly. This fraud may be quite expensive for affiliate programs. Some scammers even go so far as to copy the content on the original domain using SEO tactics, stealing visitors from the search engine results pages.

Since fraudsters may copy the content of your website and reroute visitors, as a business you need to understand how this fraud might impact your SEO strategy.

Fake Leads

In this affiliate marketing scam, fake leads are created and sent to advertisers or merchants. In order to make these bogus leads appear legitimate, con artists frequently utilize stolen data while enrolling on forms, and the business will pay for them.

Most individuals won’t be aware that some of their identity has been stolen because fake leads are frequently made up of synthetic identities. In this type of affiliate marketing scam, a real conversation is spouted using stolen data, which is frequently exchanged on the black market.

Scammers will fill out forms requesting interest in a product or service using a person’s personal information. They can make money by using a certain affiliate link in the process. An unqualified lead that is highly unlikely to have any interest in the goods is purchased by the seller.

Can You Make Money Through Affiliate Marketing?

Absolutely, you can profit from affiliate marketing. Some affiliates get six or seven figures only from affiliate marketing! We have a comprehensive article on how to get started with Affiliate Marketing and earn 1000K a month for a year. Note that this is not a get-rich-quick scheme. You’ll have to go through the motions, work hard and strive to get to that figure. A journey of 1000 steps they say, begins with your first step.

Learning marketing techniques, selecting top-notch items, and putting your product suggestions in front of buyers are the three primary requirements for success in affiliate marketing. Once you figure out how to achieve it, you may scale and repeat the process as often as you like.

How to Spot an Affiliate Marketing Scam?

• Very high traffic & very low conversion
• Poor-quality stock imagery
• Sites packed with dozens of ads
• Thousands and thousands of words of copy
• Constant references to making huge amounts of money
• Low-quality page copy
• Endless redirects

How to Avoid Affiliate Marketing Scams?

Review the terms and conditions of the affiliate program.

Before enrolling in an affiliate marketing program, review the company’s terms and conditions. A reputable company should be open and honest about the affiliate marketing program’s operation, the advantages of becoming an affiliate partner, the compensation structure, and the payment method.

Do Extensive Research

The search engine results produced by Google can reveal whether an affiliate program is legitimate. When looking online for affiliate programs, you will find both positive and negative evaluations.

Request Testimonials

You might ask the business for testimonials regarding its affiliate marketing program or look for online reviews. The majority of the time, affiliate partners will post about the program on social media channels.

Check for Anti-Fraud Policy

The prevention of fraud should be a top focus for reliable affiliate programs. Check to see if the affiliate program you’re joining has fraud prevention or detection policy. Consult the company’s customer care staff if you can’t locate the information on the website.

Affiliate marketing scams can be avoided in a variety of ways. Before signing up for an affiliate network, we’ve covered some helpful advice in this post to help you avoid the most typical frauds.

We hope that this post will assist you in creating a profitable affiliate marketing venture