Is affiliate marketing legit? Is affiliate marketing worth it? People interested in affiliate marketing often ask questions like this. The reality is, there are many myths and misconceptions about affiliate marketing.
There is no shortage of affiliate marketing programs these days. In this guide, we are going to teach you how to evaluate their legacy and find affiliate marketing opportunities.
So, let’s get started.
Table of contents
- 1 Table of contents
- 2 What is affiliate marketing, and how does it work?
- 3 Different types of affiliate programs
- 4 Is affiliate marketing worth it?
- 5 Is affiliate marketing legit? It’s time to find the truth!
- 6 How do you know that an affiliate program or CPA offer is legit?
- 7 How Do You Know That a Program or CPA Offer is Not Legit?
- 8 Conclusion
What is affiliate marketing, and how does it work?
Affiliate marketing, also known as performance-based marketing, is a way to advertise products or services for businesses and earn money for affiliates.
The task of affiliates is to promote another company’s product or service. Affiliates establish partnership with businesses and make efforts to drive customers as well as sales to product sellers and service providers.
An affiliate gets a commission each time a referred client makes a purchase. Affiliate programs come with tools that make it possible to analyze the performance of affiliates and track sales.
Different types of affiliate programs
Affiliate programs fall into two main categories. There are direct affiliate programs as well as so-called CPA offers.
#1. What are affiliate programs? Businesses, product owners, and brands offer direct affiliate programs and provide affiliates with special links, banners, and promo codes to promote their products and services.
Example: Amazon affiliate program. In this program, you can share Amazon products on your website, landing page, or social networks by providing a special affiliate link. People will follow this link and purchase products, and you will earn a 10% commission from their purchases.
#2. CPA offers. Special CPA networks bring together advertisers (businesses that offer products or services) and affiliate marketers (who know how to get relevant traffic and where to run campaigns to promote products or services successfully).
Example: If you don’t want to stick to a particular single program, you can promote various CPA offers. CPA means cost-per-action: an advertiser will pay you for a particular desired action a user will do. Here is an example of a CPA offer in Zeydoo:
The owner of a social app called SweetMeet decided to promote it through affiliate marketing. He created a CPA offer for it so that affiliate marketers could find this offer in the Zeydoo catalog.
Is affiliate marketing worth it?
Yes, if done right, affiliate marketing is worth it for both businesses and marketers. Using affiliate marketing helps businesses get new clients, sell their products or services, and promote brands successfully. Use programs to bring traffic to businesses and earn money.
Advantages of affiliate marketing for businesses
- Affiliate marketing makes it possible for businesses to accomplish their online advertising goals quicker and cheaper.
- If you use affiliate marketing for your business, you don’t have to pay for advertising ahead of time – you pay only you have to pay for real results.
Advantages of affiliate marketing for affiliates
Affiliate marketing delivers multiple important benefits to affiliates as well. These include:
- Affiliate marketing can become a powerful source of passive income for people who own popular websites and blogs and who know how to work with paid traffic.
- You usually work on a flexible schedule if you earn from affiliate marketing. It’s up to you to decide when to work and how much time to spend on work.
- Today, many affiliate programs and CPA offers are available, making it possible to find programs for every niche and monetize any website.
You may think that affiliate marketing is an easy way to earn money online. However, to make money with affiliate marketing legally, you need certain knowledge, skills, and experience.
Is affiliate marketing legit? It’s time to find the truth!
The general truth is that affiliate marketing is a legit way to earn money online. However, it’s necessary to do affiliate marketing legally. How?
- When promoting products or services, you have to respect the laws and regulations (such as the GDPR and FTC guidelines) and be transparent with your target audiences.
- It’s incredibly important for you to deal with legitimate companies.
- Finally, you need to know some pitfalls that might prevent you from coming across any scam. There are many affiliate programs that are not really fair – or come from some unfair brands.
That’s why you always have to be very selective when it comes to picking companies to deal with.
How do you know that an affiliate program or CPA offer is legit?
A checklist to understand a CPA offer is legit:
- Legit CPA offers provide the requirements and clear information on the fees and payments that affiliates have to meet.
- Pay close attention to the traffic sources. If only legitimate traffic sources are accepted, a CPA offer is likely legit.
- If the offer is suggested by a big and trusted brand, it’s also a good sign.
- The offer comes from a legit and trusted CPA network with good reviews – like Zeydoo.
Lifehack: Before enrolling in any program or CPA network, you can check reviews at big affiliate marketing forums such as Afflift.
A checklist to understand an affiliate program is legit:
- Analyze the affiliate program’s payment terms carefully. Affiliate programs should provide clear information on such important aspects as commission rates and minimum amounts. So, you need to know how much you will earn and when you’ll be able to withdraw funds.
- Check business contact details on the company’s website. Before joining an affiliate program, you also need to ensure that a company of your choice has a physical address and provides the contact information on the website. Otherwise, it can be a scam.
- A program from a trusted brand. Many reputable companies pay millions to their affiliates for promoting their products and services. Well-known companies like Amazon, Nike, Elementor, Hubspot, and Walmart actively use affiliate programs in their marketing strategies.
How Do You Know That a Program or CPA Offer is Not Legit?
It makes unrealistic promises
Avoid companies that make unrealistic promises and tell you that you’ll make a lot of money with their affiliate programs. It’s a scam warning sign that should stop you from establishing a partnership with a company.
It asks affiliates to follow high-pressure sales tactics
Some companies ask their affiliates to follow the so-called high-pressure sales tactics. Without a doubt, it’s not the right thing to do! You shouldn’t force anybody to purchase any products or services.
It requires affiliates to pay fees to join a program or buy some features
Another important thing that you should be aware of is that you shouldn’t pay anything to join an affiliate program.
Also, you don’t need to buy any additional features to start earning income from affiliate programs. Such an affiliate program is not worth it. Avoid dealing with companies that offer something like this. Plenty of programs don’t ask their affiliates to do this.
How to do affiliate marketing legally
First, it’s a good idea to tell the target audience that you participate in affiliate programs and earn commissions from selling products or services of other companies.
Second, you must ensure you meet the traffic sources’ requirements. Some platforms don’t allow advertisers to promote affiliate links. For example, you can’t promote affiliate links on Facebook profiles or use paid ads to promote posts with affiliate links on Facebook.
So, affiliates should learn about promoting affiliate content on the platforms they will use in advance.
Third, choose the countries where you are planning to promote a product or service. Ensure that the local laws allow you to promote such a product or a service in these regions. For example, some iGaming products are not allowed in particular countries, so make sure you do not target them!
Finally, you should always respect intellectual property rights when doing online promotion. Avoid using the following tactics in affiliate marketing.
- Let’s assume that you have a blog and you want to monetize its content with affiliate programs. Never use the texts copied from other sites. You should always provide original content on your blog.
- Some affiliates use paid ads to promote products or services. Ads of this type require original texts. So, you should always write unique titles and descriptions for your ads.
- If you add images to your blog posts, ensure that your selected photos are not copyright-protected. Taking pictures from Google and other sites may result in intellectual property rights breaches. Determining if you can take a picture before adding it to a blog post is necessary.
Using tools like CC0, you can check the image and see if it’s free or has a Creative Commons license. You can also get FREE images from sources such as Pixabay, Unsplash, Flickr, and others.
Conclusion
Now, let’s return to the main questions of the article. Is affiliate marketing legit? The answer is – yes.
It’s a legit way to make money online in affiliate marketing – if you promote legal brands and follow your local law as well as the brand’s terms and conditions.
So, you can safely enter the world of affiliate marketing with the right partners and positive intent.
Best of luck!
