Is it possible to buy a product through your own affiliate links and gain a commission off your own sale? Is this usually against the affiliate programs TOS? Is it really easy for them to track this? Just wondering. thanks in advance.
Yes I have. It is looked down upon, but for the moment think of yourself as someone you know who's purchasing it. Makes perfect sense then, doesn't it?
Lol not really ethical. The advertiser wants a sale from a new customer that has never seen the product before. I have to admit I did it but don't do it anymore . Say you owned a clothing line and had a referral program, you know your affiliate knows of your store and is interested, and he made a sale through his own link so you are paying an existing customer commission on the sale, I don't think that's fair.
i dont allow this on my network as advertisers dont like repeats expecially when they gotta keep paying for them.
Some programs allow it and some of them not. You always need to check the TOS of the particular program. @Himmels when someone wants to buy a product he might want to check if there is an affiliate program for it, so the commission is something like a discount for him
Sounds like a quick way to get banned. I'd definitely be very careful. A lot of the programs will probably kick you out without any kind of warning. Not a huge deal with programs like Clickbank I guess, but for some of the bigger sites, like CJ and ML, that would suck.
It is allowed in lebuane.com to buy a product through your own affiliate links and gain a commission off your own sale.
I've bought some clickbank products... I think that's the reason why clickbank requires you to have 5 different credit cards before getting a first payout
if you wouldnt buy the product your promoting its probably pretty hard to sell the thing is the way i see it..even though im sort of doing that at the moment its just to get me by til i find my real niche.
I did this when the affiliate manager allowed it. Usually when you have several sales they don't mind. But not always, so always double check...
Depends what the product is, though i imagine it would be less dicey to have a mate buy it for you if its that desirable a product!
Of course you should always follow the TOS. However there is nothing unethical if you buy a product from selling of which you get the comission. There is much more to gain than to loose, when they allow you to buy products you promote. With PPC or PPV it is a different story - it is a fraud.
IMO it's perfectly ethical and ok if you buy a PRODUCT through your own aff link. It's only not ok for things that don't require a purchase and you have no interest in.
i don't know much about affiliates, but from an outsider's perspective, I find it ok to buy from your own links. I mean if I really like something, enough to buy it, then i will buy it. And since i'm an affiliate of that product/service, i sort of see buying from my own link as employee discount. Well not quite but you get my idea. IF you are doing this like 10 times for the same product then we have a problem....it all depends i guess.