Yigber’s Online Adventures

It’s actually like smoke and fire - you can’t have one without the other.

I’ve been reading lately quite a lot about affiliate marketing, and now and then I would stumble on a blog post wondering why Affiliate Marketing has a bad name to it. Some attribute this to only a small tiny of AMs making a lot of noise. Some suggest that this is matter of the past and some even proclaim that the bad rep is unjustified.

Well, A couple of things are clear to me as an unbiased newcomer to the trade:

Black hat marketing is not going anywhere. There will always be an easy-but-cheezy method to earn a quick buck, no matter how hard the big boys will try to hit. There will always be a new eager network that is willing to look aside. See also the “dirty-work” thesis.

Most of the aff sites and services I saw recently were bad: bad meaning they were being biased towards products they want to push, or posing as an authority on a matter they know nothing about or using dirty techniques to tumble and manipulate the user into places he never thought he wanted to go to.

Bottom line, Affiliate Marketing is actually (almost) all about pretending.
It’s about pretending to know something you don’t (e.g., biased shopping comparisons engines) or pretending to be someone you’re not (MFA catalog sites, false customer testimonials, false prizes, etc.).