The truth behind affiliate programs.
The Internet is full of contradictions; everyone wants to make money from it, yet the belief that no one buys anything over the Internet is just as strong. For many, starting a new web site is accompanied by dreams of getting rich through these very means. The number of sites that carry huge amounts of advertising and very little content bear witness to this fact.
Put yourself in a manufacturers shoes and think about it. Would you really need to use the Internet to sell your product? And if you did, wouldn't you consider advertising with the big boys like Google and Yahoo first? Afterall, they are the real professionals!
Then why would anyone go to an affiliate program? A quick glance through the list of merchants in any affiliate 'agency' will soon enlighten you. Most of these merchants don't have anything that you couldn't buy from your local store or at least from a reputable mail-order catalogue. Indeed, many have 'products' which comprise of information packs that you could get for free if you only did an Internet search. They are obviously using an affiliate program because their products are too expensive and nobody wants them anyway.
Another indication is the fact that these merchants don't want to advertise from non-English speaking countries. If they were genuine traders, they would be pleased to obtain customers from anywhere! It isn't that they object to a particular country, the reason is more subtle. A person who understands English, in addition to his/her own language, obviously belongs to one of the better educated classes. These merchants are targeting the less educated sector of society.
To put it in a nutshell, to all appearances, we have stupid merchants on the lookout for stupid customers, with a few gullable webmasters helping them out. But the merchants aren't stupid - it's all a scam! By appearing to be stupid, they entice a lot of people to try using invalid credit cards to purchase their goods. That is what it is all about - credit cards!
Sometimes it all goes wrong and a customer really orders the goods with a valid credit card. Then the merchant has to rush to the nearest mall to purchase the item so he can ship it. But all is not lost, he can bombard this idiot with other fantastic offers until the credit is used up.
The lack of credit in America is big business. When someone is identified as having bad credit status, the wolves move in. Remember, the 'customer' has given a real name and address, where the goods were supposed to be delivered. The sucker who tried to pass off an invalid credit card will never have a moment's peace from now on.
The merchants are paid huge amounts of commission by the companies associated with credit cards, loans and so forth. The tiny amount they promise to affiliate partners is nothing in comparison. Didn't you give your personal details when you signed up as an affiliate? Yes, they've got you too!
That's the affiliate scam. Of course there are a few genuine merchants but they are a tiny minority floating amidst the scum.
Pay-per-click schemes.
Pay-per-click schemes really belong in another category - call it the "dead as a dodo" crowd. These schemes were primarily used to generate extra traffic to a site for various reasons. They are still around, you don't have to search far, but few of them are actually functional. Many automatic sign-up programs are there, but that's all you get. The adult sites still use them occasionally.
Pay-per-click never worked, either for the site owner or for the webmaster hosting the banners. There were simply too many ways to cheat so the number of clicks could never be reliable counted. The basic idea then became based on one click per day from each unique IP address. Even that doesn't work because we use name-based systems today. One IP address could be used by hundreds of users at a time, and thousands over a period of a day. Thus, there could be hundreds of genuine click-throughs but you would only be credited with one.
The only schemes that really work are those used by the major email providers. They work because each user is already signed-in and is easily identified. Since you are not likely to be another Google or Yahoo, there really isn't much hope for earning any money from such schemes.
The Freebies.
Finally, I should mention the Freebies. No one gives anything away for free, there is always a catch! Just enter your email address and wait for the spam to arrive. In American English, the word 'free' has an entirely different meaning to that usually understood by users of British English. But that is America - the land of the free, just add $9.95 for shipping!