Dear Moneymaking Insider,

Look out for these 'money-bleeding' scams when entering an affiliate venture...

The Internet provides people like you and me with some of the best money making opportunities around, but around each corner, lurking crooks and criminals are set to scam us...

And that’s why I’ll not only show you the business opportunities that really work – but I’ll also show which opportunities to steer clear of!

Today you hear about some real nasty tactics that'll steal the money from your pocket. So, if you’ve had any of these experiences mentioned negatively here, I advise you tread very carefully and take action as soon as possible.

Before you opt-in to an affiliate scam – read this….

Affiliate marketing is often promoted as a good way to make money online and in the vast majority of cases it is (like ClickBank)...

Marketing other people’s products with the aim of receiving commission makes it simple for many people to start making a side income without having to create their own product, source products to sell or handle any customer support issues.

Promoting affiliate products has to involve some level of trust between the marketer and the publisher (the actual owner of the product). Anyone promoting a product will have to use an affiliate link – a special tracking link – that marks them out as the person who referred a customer to the site.

Good tracking software must be put in place to make sure that any referral sales are credited to the affiliate’s account.

Affiliate Commission Theft: What you need to know

A business associate discovered that a product she had been promoting for the last year or so had suddenly been removed from the affiliate network.

Typically this wouldn’t be too bad except in this case noone told her. Her affiliate link still leads to the sales page as it always did, but the method of payment has been changed. And she found out that a sale she referred didn't result in any commission for her because the publisher had removed the correct tracking software.

Understandably she was very mad as this was a reasonably high-priced product that would’ve resulted in a fairly large commission. Ordinarily, the process of affiliate marketing works on the last referrer concept, which means that the last affiliate to refer a customer to a website will be credited with commission.

Any existing tracking files on the customer’s machine are overwritten. This is considered the fairest method of tracking as it gives the commission to the person who eventually made the sale, the marketer who finally converted the prospect.

How affiliate marketing should work...

The process of tracking sales and awarding commissions is fairly standard, whichever affiliate network you use e.g. ClickBank, Commission Junction, PayDotCom. The affiliate signs up for the network and then chooses a product to promote.

Some products require that potential affiliates are 'approved' before they can promote but sites like ClickBank allow anyone to be an affiliate.

Next, the potential promoter creates an affiliate link – a special tracking link that identifies them as the referrer. When this link is used by a website visitor, a file called a 'cookie' is placed on their computer and then if the customer buys, the cookie tells the affiliate system to record a sale in that particular affiliate’s account.

As long as the affiliate system is in place, any referrals by an affiliate marketer should be recorded and result in commission for that person. Most networks are very reliable and stay reliable because they basically can't afford not to be.

Word travels fast and if it got out that one particular network wasn’t tracking and crediting sales properly they would likely find themselves without any affiliates.

Let’s face it: Nobody would want to put work in to promote a link that won’t earn any money!

Some people just can’t help bending the rules

Unfortunately, it’s possible for dodgy affiliates (the people who sell their products through affiliate networks) to abuse the system and cheat affiliates out of their rightful commissions. If you’re not diligent you could end up sending a load of quality traffic and sales to a site that'll never reward you.

So you need to be aware of the main deceptive practices.

Here’s a quick run down:

• Money-bleeding scam #1: Some publishers have been known to add a separate payment method to the same page as the method that tracks sales. In one particular example, the sales page contained a PayDotCom link (which tracks sales) and a standard PayPal payment button (which doesn’t use any tracking). As you can imagine, more customers are familiar with PayPal than PayDotCom and so the vast majority paid through the PayPal method. This means the sale isn’t tracked and you don’t get a cent.
• Money-bleeding scam #2: A long term method of cheating affiliates is to create a product that sells through ClickBank and build up an army of people who promote your product through their special links. Then, when there's a great deal of traffic coming through to the site, the product owner removes the ClickBank payment option and replaces it with another payment processor. The net result is that the affiliates still drive traffic to the page as their links still work, but they’ll never receive any commission because payment is taken through a different processor.
• Money-bleeding scam #3: Another long term tactic is to, again, allow the affiliates to send a constant stream of traffic but then change the sales page to a squeeze page. Many affiliates won’t promote products that use a squeeze page as the initial entry into the sales process as they consider it the same as 'giving away' their list. Some publishers purposely allow traffic to build up before making the switch.
• Money-bleeding scam #4: Basic rules of copywriting state that a sales letter should have only one purpose i.e. a single call to action. This could be asking for the sale – selling a product – or another action such as subscribing to a newsletter. Flying in the face of this logic are certain publishers who will place Google AdSense adverts on the same page as their sales letter. If you’re promoting a product, the last thing you need to see on the sales page is a link or distraction that'll take your prospect away from the page and won't make you any money!
• Money-bleeding scam #5: Perhaps the most disappointing of all is when the publisher drops the commission rate with no warning. What really hurts here is that you're told you’ve made a sale but then the amount of commission you actually receive is a small fraction of what you were expecting. Referring a sale and discovering the commission rate has been reduced to just 2% from 50% is no fun, take it from someone who knows!

Sadly there’s little you can do when a publisher makes changes that are detrimental to your income – you can’t force them to continue to have an affiliate scheme and usually they’ll cover themselves well within the T&Cs.

Three simple steps that you can take to protect yourself

There are three safeguards you can put in place to protect yourself if the publisher decides to use some of these slimy methods:

1. Always cloak your affiliate links so you control them
(How to cloak an affiliate link instructions). This is very important as it'll allow you to change the destination of your links if the status of the affiliate scheme changes. If you distribute a standard link on blog posts, in articles, on forums and in other places where you don't control the content then your links will forever point to the same sales page. Cloak your links and, if the publisher pulls any funny business, you can simple change the underlying link to stop supplying him with traffic.

2. Make it a habit to check your links once a month or more often to make sure they're still valid.

3. Finally, if you do feel as if you’ve been cheated, challenge the publisher.

Perhaps being caught in the act will shame them into playing by the rules. If not, find another product to promote and change your links accordingly.

Whatever happens, don’t be put off the idea of making money from affiliate marketing as it's a cracking opportunity to make money without the headaches associated with creating products, customer service and fulfillment. Sadly, as with most things in life, you have to be diligent as some people just don’t want to play by the rules.

In the name of financial freedom,

Chris Densley
Managing Editor of MoneyMaking Insider