5 Things I Hate About Affiliate Marketing

01/29/20 • 10 min

Internet Marketing and Entrepreneurship with Miles

Affiliate marketing is not as easy as the FAKE GURUS try to sell you... Does affiliate marketing work? Yes! Does it have challenges? Yes!

Learn about the top 5 challenges facing affiliate marketers in this brand new video, here.

If you are new to this world and want to learn more about affiliate marketing for beginners, go here: www.youtube.com/redirect?event=video_description&v=ZcMDGRcDv7Y&q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.milesbeckler.com%2Faffiliate-marketing-for-beginners%2F&redir_token=BGswSVrjchnzPrsldPwyseDYHxp8MTU4MDM4ODg1M0AxNTgwMzAyNDUz

here are my other videos on affiliate marketing for you: www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tD97-K5TeE&list=PL0sOKzn__yK1N9QS91pLZA-OCIc8d56xZ

In this video you're going to learn the five things that I hate about affiliate marketing. Now I've been affiliate marketing since 2003 and I currently earn hundreds of thousands of dollars per year as an affiliate. So I've got some love for affiliate marketing, but it sure isn't without its challenges. And you're going to learn the five biggest challenges here in this video. And in the end you're going to learn the right way to do affiliate marketing so you can kind of overcome and bypass and side skirt a lot of these challenges you won't have to experience. Let me just deal with them because I've already been through it. So number one is getting stiffed on payouts. Now you as an affiliate marketer, by definition don't have all that much control. When you're working with an affiliate vendor through an affiliate network, you do have a third party in between, right?

So if you're on ClickBank or you're using something on share a sale, you have that kind of third party company in between you and the vendor. But what's been going on recently is a lot of companies are running in house programs, whether they are on Infusionsoft or SamCart or Thrivecart or whatever it might be. Even some word press based ones on MemberMouse and these individuals are within full control and they can choose not to pay you. If they so deem they can disappear, they can fall off the face of the earth. I have one vendor who has withheld $8,000 in payments from me and I'll be honest with you, that sucks. I sent $16,000 worth of sales and I didn't get my $8,000 in commission jokes on me. Lesson learned, and this is one of the challenges, big challenges of kind of relinquishing control of being an affiliate marketer and again, stay to the end and give me a thumbs up if you like this content because I'm going to teach you how to bypass these kinds of challenges at the end.

Number two is vendors changing your links on you. This is such a big problem. It's crazy. It even happens all the way up to the Amazon affiliate program.

This has happened on a bunch of different networks. It's happened on some individual programs and yet again, you're not in control and oftentimes they won't let you know that they made a change to their URL structure.

Number three is they stopped supporting products. Now this one really irks me because I look at especially any sort of affiliate product or any sort of product that has a monthly or annual recurring bill. I kind of look at that recurring bill as a contract, right? So when I buy something and the company says, Hey, it costs $100 or $200 a year to keep updated, I think that's them saying that they're going to actually update the product.

And what happens is sometimes they abandon their products, they make their millions, they go on to do other things. They want to be cool kid digital nomads. I don't know what that is. There's some that I'm extremely frustrated right now that I may be going public with soon. But they've literally abandoned their projects. And here's what happened. So when they launched years ago, it was a great product. It was one of the best on the markets. So I not only used it, I taught how to use it, I integrated it into my business. And I recommended others did as well. Now they really aren't updating it. They're not holding, they being the vendor aren't upholding their end of the bargain, which means it kind of looks poorly on me because I now have all this evergreen content that I built and now that it's going to this tool that's getting a little bit sluggish and it's not really upholding its original promise like it wants did, looks bad on me and it's outside of my control.

So that was number three. Number four is scammy affiliate course creators selling dead methods. This is the cesspool of affiliate marketing.

Number five is the culture of individuals who give it a half attempt, who dabbles in the world of affiliate marketing and they go on to say, this stuff doesn't work, or affiliate marketing is a scam, and that's completely untrue, right? I've built a very successful career leveraging affiliate marketing as one of the monetization channels that I use. It's just harder than most people realize. It just takes a lot more wor...

Affiliate marketing is not as easy as the FAKE GURUS try to sell you... Does affiliate marketing work? Yes! Does it have challenges? Yes!

Learn about the top 5 challenges facing affiliate marketers in this brand new video, here.

here are my other videos on affiliate marketing for you: www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tD97-K5TeE&list=PL0sOKzn__yK1N9QS91pLZA-OCIc8d56xZ

Number two is vendors changing your links on you. This is such a big problem. It's crazy. It even happens all the way up to the Amazon affiliate program.

So that was number three. Number four is scammy affiliate course creators selling dead methods. This is the cesspool of affiliate marketing.

Previous Episode

Passive Income Scam Shut Down By The Government

The SEC has stepped in and seized control of yet another "Passive Income Scam". Learn What happened & how to PROTECT yourself from these internet scams.

I've talked at length about the problem or plague in our industry that is lead by the fake gurus... From the affiliate marketing scams - www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHY3teLOShY

To the passive income lie - www.youtube.com/redirect?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.milesbeckler.com%2Fpassive-income-lie%2F&event=video_description&v=tBYxM6irKxU&redir_token=4WBzjYnbmROF5K-UMPO9VrFsfWp8MTU3ODY1NTE4NkAxNTc4NTY4Nzg2

And here's another one...

For an in-depth analysis of this exact situation, be sure to check out Emelia Gardner's channel here - www.youtube.com/watch?v=uK3oCIxRqJk&list=PLIQHg5Gp8_mCVGMwqm4Jf8VWY2yOpOCJc

Hat tip to Jon Gillham who brought this story to my attention! His post here: www.youtube.com/redirect?q=https%3A%2F%2Fauthoritywebsiteincome.com%2Fincome-store-ripoff%2F&event=video_description&v=tBYxM6irKxU&redir_token=4WBzjYnbmROF5K-UMPO9VrFsfWp8MTU3ODY1NTE4NkAxNTc4NTY4Nzg2

Has a TON of links to more info on this situation. I also want to give a shout out to Coffeezilla who is calling out the fake gurus in our industry : www.youtube.com/channel/UCFQMnBA3CS502aghlcr0_aw

And to Mike Winnet - www.youtube.com/channel/UComkllJTMHNZr4UNxCThdcw

Who is also calling out the gurus and the scams, one after another.

In this video you're going to learn about the newest passive income scam that has been seized and shutdown by the U S government. Yes, it's happened again, not the first time since I started this channel that I've covered these kinds of topics and we're going to look at it from three specific angles. Number one, the specific scenario, the company, I've got a little inside information about it because of an event I went to last year, so I'll share that. Number two, we're going to go big picture so you can make sure you're avoiding these kinds of potential issues because they're really common. It happens all the time, so I don't want to talk about just this one case. I want you to understand how this works so you can prepare yourself in the future because there will be more. And then number three, I'm going to give a shout out and I'm going to mention some some channels and some individuals who brought this to my attention who have done great deep dive digging on this and they're calling out other scams and fake gurus by names.

I'll share where you can find those individuals to get more so you can protect yourself because I'll be perfectly honest, there are absolutely scam artists out there trying to prey on you. This has been going on since the turn of the century in the 18 hundreds to the 19 hundreds this is not new snake oil salesmen are real and you need to understand what's going on. So in this specific scenario, the company's name is, today's growth consultant is doing business as the income store and their whole bit was that you essentially buy websites through them. So they're already running, already operating, already profiting websites. They often purchase them from F E international or from empire flippers, and then their internal team manages the website and runs the website and you get 50% of the upside potential. So all in all, it started out as a very honest and good working business model, I think.

But as you apply scale and as our rhythms begin to change as the world and the game begins to change, that's when things get a little bit shaky. So they had a specific claim on their website that said you get a guaranteed 15% return. And now I'm obviously no lawyer, I don't play one on YouTube or TV. But when, when you start talking about guaranteed returns and the returns start slipping and the money from the new investors comes in to pay for those guaranteed returns for the old investors, it starts to look and smell a lot like a Ponzi scheme.

We can see the filing itself, but we don't know what's actually in it yet.

Now, let me tell about my backstory here. So I went to a really high end mastermind with a bunch of seven figure business owner million dollars a year to 10 15 plus million dollars a year. I think some of them were in the $20 million per year range. Now, that was in April of last year and these were some of the highest sponsors. This actual company bought their way in as a sponsor. They spent an incredible amount of money as a sponsor and it makes me wonder they were pitching generally it was $100,000 buy him for a website and they were pitching that. Now they're really kind of only doing $250,000 and more buy-ins. And I'm now wondering if that moment in time, if they were just literally getting access to a group of successful individuals, trying to get a little more money coming in to pay all of their last investors.

I have no idea if that's true or not. I don't know what they knew about their companies scen...

Next Episode

The Secret To Success With Podcaster & Real Estate LEGEND

The #1 Real Estate Podcast host in the world, Robert Helms shares his secrets to success in this interview with Miles Beckler.

Robert Helms is the host of the Real Estate Guys Radio Podcast - www.youtube.com/redirect?redir_token=UlJoVCjTjzUyuyRzj8UyrKHfYnZ8MTU4MTY5NDEyNUAxNTgxNjA3NzI1&q=https%3A%2F%2Frealestateguysradio.com%2F&event=video_description&v=SxSM2m8s0J0

You can find his podcast on all of the major podcast apps by just searching for 'Real Estate Guys Radio' and be sure to listen & subscribe to his podcast.

Link to Robert Helms' podcast on itunes - www.youtube.com/redirect?redir_token=UlJoVCjTjzUyuyRzj8UyrKHfYnZ8MTU4MTY5NDEyNUAxNTgxNjA3NzI1&q=https%3A%2F%2Fgeo.itunes.apple.com%2Fus%2Fpodcast%2Freal-estate-guys-radio-show%2Fid194167775%3Fmt%3D2&event=video_description&v=SxSM2m8s0J0

here's a link to the real estate guys radio podcast for Android - www.youtube.com/redirect?redir_token=UlJoVCjTjzUyuyRzj8UyrKHfYnZ8MTU4MTY5NDEyNUAxNTgxNjA3NzI1&q=http%3A%2F%2Fsubscribeonandroid.com%2Frealestateguysradio.libsyn.com%2Frss&event=video_description&v=SxSM2m8s0J0

With over 20 years experience broadcasting on syndicated radio and an early pioneer in the world of Podcasting, you will get insights about what it takes to grow a brand, a business and an audience through content.

It doesn't matter if you are a blogger, podcaster or YouTuber, the secrets to successful digital marketing are here in this video.

If you are ready to start your own podcast, here's my helpful free guide on how to start a podcast on a budget - www.youtube.com/redirect?redir_token=UlJoVCjTjzUyuyRzj8UyrKHfYnZ8MTU4MTY5NDEyNUAxNTgxNjA3NzI1&q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.milesbeckler.com%2Fbest-podcast-setup-for-less%2F&event=video_description&v=SxSM2m8s0J0

in this video I have a very special guest. Robert Helms is with me. How are you man? Doing well! If you don't know who Robert Helms is, he's a niche celebrity, he's a podcaster and he is pretty well known in the real estate space. And in this video you are going to learn about the path to success online through creating a podcast. So Robert, for my viewers who don't know who you are, would you mind giving us the little snippet on who is Robert Helms and what does Robert Helms do?

So most folks know me as the host of the real estate guys radio program and we're on traditional radio. We have been for 23 years now. We started podcasting when it was pretty new. Our producers said, Hey, we're on a podcast, the show. And I said, what does that mean? Well, we're going to take out a lot of the commercials and we're going to put it out there and we're going to see if people like it. And today we're one of the top downloaded shows. Our show airs once a week in 190 plus countries. And people come from all over the world to our events and it's absolutely crazy. Just a couple of guys with microphones in a suitcase and we talked real estate investment, real estate primarily.

Okay, so investment real estate. Let's go back to the beginning. So you were broadcasting before podcasting was a thing, right? So there's obviously some sort of, a little bit of a radio story there and then real estate happened. So... So can you take us to the early days when you overlapped your passion for real estate or whether it even was a passion in the world of broadcasting? How did that happen?

It was that exact venn diagram that you talk about. So my dad was a real estate agent, but primarily he was a real estate investor and he loved to buy real estate owned real estate. And I got the bug pretty early. He needed some help. And so to help in real estate, you got to have a license. So I studied to get a license and that gave me the ability to earn $10 an hour, which was twice as much as I had been earning in my overnight radio job.

And that was one of my all time favorite parts of my life was learning radio, getting around other people who were learning radio

Meanwhile, my dad's and my ear about real estate, I start to get the idea of passive income. You can own a property, somebody else lives in, it takes care of it and they send you a big chunk of the money. I liked that and we figured out how to sell real estate.

And then a friend of mine said, Hey, I'm a public speaker and he's still a public speaker. And he said you know, you've kind of a radio background.

I was thinking about doing a radio show on real estate. I said, well, you know, when I was at college, I did kind a pilot program for a talk radio program on real estate.

So we kicked around this idea for a little bit and we started this fledgling little show where we would just kind of pontificate about real estate. And then before you know it, people would call in and we'd take callers and it grew.

And then podcasting is what really made the difference because that's where people raise their hand and say ...