Affiliate Spam

Full disclosure: Affiliates get a percentage of the price to advertise a product to their email lists. Your Frosty Friend does belong to several affiliate programs (including Andy’s own very good one). She has tried and tested the products, classes or programs all herself and feels confident enough to recommend them to her friends and associates. For which she gladly accepts the sales commission known as an “affiliate payment” that comes when others click her affiliate link. 

One or two of these kind of emails is fine….but don’t you just hate it when you get a whole boxful of this kind of stuff day after day? Usually from email marketers who, because you once opted into their list, now feel obliged to spam you thrice weekly (or oftener) with multiple affiliate links?  Most of the time this is done tastefully and with sensitivity to the fact that no one likes a lot of email in their box, particularly the quasi-apologetic “buy stuff so my kid can go to college” kind. But a lot of the time it is not so tasteful.

Being a coach herself, Frost knows many in the coaching world who are, to be honest, “cheap coaches”. They may or may not have valuable content of their own, but will send you affiliate link after affiliate link for products they loudly proclaim are the best thing since sliced bread. Products which they may have tried but probably didn’t…and are on their roster just because the affiliate payments are large.

Puh-lease!

I just got the LAST email from one of these people I will entertain. This was advertising “MPG Fuel Freedom” caplets that you drop in your gastank and get more miles to the gallon. This person lives in the back room of a business and boasts of her cleverness in scamming both phone and internet feed from them. This person doesn’t even *own* a car. But clearly, she’s figured out you can make money on the internet by scamming punters with her many and varied affiliate links. And she’s far from the only one.

Can you say “MLM fraud”? I knew you could. Check out firsthand reports from a number of the “Fuel Freedom” disillusioned affiliates here – note this site tracks Fuel Freedom and a number of other lookalikes, but comes up with the same results for all – they don’t work.

I canned this email but it was followed very shortly by three others that first day, then another the following day. The same email, without even a word change. Do affiliate marketers think this is attractive? It isn’t. That it’s going to get them sales? Here’s what it really gets them:

“Unsubscribe here”….*click*.

Here’s a plea from ol’ Frostpaw: don’t offer affiliate links on a product or class you have not personally attended, or don’t at least know the integrity and reputation of the source. This is YOUR reputation out there folks. And once people click on that affiliate spammers link and buy, who do you think they’re going to feel poorly towards when they realize they got ripped off? IMO, if you’re affiliate marketing, you owe it to those who buy from you to vet the products or the creators of those products, first.

And if you suspect you are a victim of Affiliate Spam, check out the product you’re being offered on Ripoff Report.

One ice-rimmed mitt raised high –
This is Captain Frostpaw, signing off.

 


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Comments

One response to “Affiliate Spam”

  1. Fuel Freedom International MPG-CAP Distributor Avatar

    Why rip on FFI by using sources talking about other companies. What does Bio Performance have to do with FFI. THe products may come in the same packaging but are totally different recipes. THink about that next time you buy your vegan burger and compare it to the beef burger.

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