How many of you have joined an affiliate program online, and did all they said, but nothing happened? No check sent, they claim you never made a sale, or that your even an affiliate! Suddenly you can't access your affiliate membership account. Well thats happened to me in my past, how about you? Post your reply, what works, what doesn't? And what affiliate programs you've gone through?
I always test the water as far as affiliate programs go. If it has a good margin, then I sign up and test it with a conservative PPC budget first. This alows me to determine the possible success of the program and if the program pays. Once they pay, I step it up. Once they pay again, I begin relations by email or phone. I have one affiliate program in which I speak to them almost on a daily basis. I avoid saturated programs (ink jet, etc.), unless there's a high demand for that product then I'm not afraid to compete.
I havent been in the affiliate game for a few years, but I'd say its a wise move only dealing with the larger networks, at least initially anyway, so you can be sure you'll get the cheque in the mail.
The online pharmacy biz has a great model behind it. Too bad they're getting shut down left and right.
I always check the net if the company in question is really legit. Testing the water is very important when it comes to affiliate marketing IMHO...
This has never happened to me since I reallly go into depth and reasearch about the particular website I wanna affiliate with.
If you join an affiliate program via a network, they will always show you your monthly sales chart etc or at least provide you with information to contact their staff if anything crops up
isaiasd2003, So sorry that happened to you. Too bad there have to be programs like that, that hurt the reputation of all the good honest programs. A couple of tips that are not foolproof but definately worth looking at. 1) Before you join a program do a search on some of the pure affiliate forums to see if anyone has any good or bad experiences to report. 2) Email a couple questions before you join. Chances are good that if you get helpful, timely replies before you join, you will get good support after you join. Fly-by-nights and scammers are not very good at answering emails or being supportive. FYI we manage about 32 - 5 Star affiliate programs that are guaranteed to pay, are SUPER high integrity, proactively managed with the primary focus being to help affiliates succeed. If you don't see a niche you like right now we currently have about 10 more programs in development that will be launched soon. We Work For YOU! Let me know how I can help!
I'm having a unique experience with my affiliate program. I have an electronics theme site with content and 8 different affiliate program links. The site has made 6 sales with only one of the 8 affiliate programs(they sell the exact same thing), its like all sales are made with just 1 parent company. I can't figure it out. Either the one company is dominating the market coming from my website, or the company really likes me and they are claiming that my site made 6 sales and are hooking me up. The webmaster at this company sends me email saying that they are all phone orders, no online orders. Is this spooky for me or what? If my one company goes out, I will have an income problem. Very saturated market also.
I'm still in it because I feel that with a good SEO plan you can make alot of money with affiliates even if Initially you don't have alot of money to start with. That is why I am still in it. I have a good plan and I just need to follow thru. It is time consuming but right now I have time. Unless I get to the top of the search engines in all the keywords I am optimizing for an only end up with 100 hits a day I will continue with Affiliate programs because I feel like their is a big upside to SEO and Affiliates. The big mistake I made was not having any content or services for people. At the very least I should have listed alot more web tools like two months ago just to get more traffic and possible links. Even some useful links to other sites is better than nothing. The big thing is just me building more content sites, having a good linking structure between all of the sites.
Its always very disappointing when Scams like this happen. If anyone is interested in sharing their experience with an affiliate program that was a scam please private message me or email me at I work for a website that is all about teaching people how to save money and avoid scams. We have a success stories area for all sections of our site and since we are new and just launched this weekend it would be great to get some more stories from people about how they avoided scams or about scams for other people to avoid. I apologize if anyone feels this post is out of place but reading this thread brought that idea to my head and i thought it wouldn't hurt to ask. Thank You! Sarie