Why everything seems so sketchy? (8)
I've been doing AM for years now but only promoting genuine products, like appliances from recognized brands.
But here at STM what I find is people making bank by promoting offers related to nutra, gambling, sweepstakes and the likes. Which, I'm guessing, the affiliates promoting them wouldn't even touch those services with a 3 meters iron rod for their personal use.
Yes, these are the offers where you can touch the consumer pain points like greed and vanity, which are somewhat easy to exploit. But my question is...
Is nobody here making money by promoting genuine products/services?
I'm talking the likes of NordVPN, Nike shoes, Ray-Ban...
Hey there,
Many posts here are focused on CPA offers because this is what many (or most) users are promoting.
The range goes from sweepstakes (leadgens as well as CC submits), mobile content, adult dating to nutra and gambling and so on.
Discussions about physical products like Nike shoes, Ray-Ban and such you will probably find in the eComm section
When you have the feeling that discussions about genuine products are missing here feel free to open a thread about it or just start a discussion yourself.
Although you don´t read about it that much compared to other verticals I am confident there are other members here who also have a bit to say about it 
From what I read here it seems that more and more users want to go whitehat (in sense of stopping to promote offers without any real value for the users) anyway so I could imagine that there is interest talking about it.
STM was started when POP traffic was the "hot shit" and due to the nature of that traffic, most of the offers had to be aggressive in order to make profit... if you wanted to compete with guys running those offers, you simply had to do the same.
But, that doesn't mean it's all we are promoting. For many of us here, these offers were just the starting point... you have to learn the basics somehow and these "sketchy" offers are the easiest to get going. But naturally, many STMers feel the urge to promote something of value and the recent rise of ecom made this possible. Large part of the forum members are promoting clean leadgen, many are starting ecom stores etc ... but a lot of the discussions here still deal with POPs/PUSH and the less valuable products, since thats how people are starting and learning the basics.
We're trying to put more focus on the more legit business opportunities too, Amy is working on a whitehat FB tutorial, there have been several good threads about ecom too... we're slowly getting there
Ok, now I understand having in mind the beginnings of this forum.
Originally Posted by matuloo
Originally Posted by twinaxe
Originally Posted by twinaxe
Thanks for your answer!
Affiliate marketing can be a slippery slope, at least it was for me. With pretty much all your net worth on the line starting out, you’re desperate to get something working. Sketchy offers get a lot more attractive than moral ones when you have to choose between rent payments and hosting bills at the end of the month.
In a tracker, you’re looking at EPC and revenue - offers are just a name and number without much meaning. Easy to switch in a new uncompliant flow without thinking about the real value of its product. Affiliate networks want you to succeed, they will push whatever works hard.
As an affiliate, you don’t have any real connection to the end user so it’s very easy to forget there are real people being harmed - even if it’s just their email getting spammed off a sweepstakes.
Behind all the fancy booths and open nightclub bars, there are some offers promoting some seriously harmful stuff. Stay faaaar away from binary/crypto offers etc... but they sponsor the headline events, so everyone turns a blind eye and keeps the machine pumping.
There are plenty of good people about in the industry though. Don’t for a second think that because a female works for an adult dating network, or an AM isn’t responding it’s because they are sketchy scammers. People are working on some seriously bleeding edge stuff. And frankly, without the grey stuff online most sites wouldn’t be able to operate - revcontent, taboola etc pay the bills.
Mainly though. Good honest, complaint offers are hard work and a lot of people who run them successfully make many multiples of what the blackhat guys generate. They keep their mouths shut though, which is why it all seems sketch...
Nickpeplow... you just spoke directly from my heart! Thanks for that.
I remember when I was a kid and all the cereal companies lured kids and parents into cutting out the cereal box top (like it fucking mattered), putting it into an envelop, and shipping to some random address... for a free prize!
Some even delivered on the free prize (some plastic piece of shit worth 2 cents).
But what they were really doing was buying your name and physical address.
And monetizing the fuck out of it by putting you on all sorts of mailing lists.
This is the same exact thing that most SOI offers are doing.
Just replace cereal box tops and mailing address with email address, name, and any other info you fill out. Some even deliver on the sweeps prize (some shitty giftcard).
Most of the SOI offers even have the fine print TOS right there to read.
Most people don't care.
They just want a free iPhone.
...
The CEO of Best Buy, Tesco, Media Markt, etc. doesn't give a shit if he is selling some crappy gimmick gadget that "fixes your posture in 30 seconds!*" that doesn't work at all or the CEO of Walgreens give a shit about the latest "Keto Pills!*" or other bullshit like "Homeopathic Cure!*" nor should they. They're just making the products available to consumers.
Most of this is basic sales. We're just connecting people to offers.
How legit are the offers?
Is that the on the salesman, the producer, or the consumer?
That's you're decision
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