Well, it’s finally come down to this. In all my years of affiliate marketing, I never thought that I would see the day when affiliates really had to watch their backs. And I’m not talking about from competitors. I’m talking about from the actual products their promoting, both from merchants and from merchant marketplaces. It is getting ugly as sin out there. And while I can’t go over all the problems, I will cover a few of the ones that I am aware of. Please tuck these in the back of your mind for safe keeping.

Let’s start off with some shady merchants. These are the guys who really make my skin crawl. What some of them are doing now is redirecting prospects to a page that does NOT track your affiliate link. Or, what they’ll do is get them onto their autoresponder and then in the follow-up series, send them links to their product that are on other domains. This way, you also don’t get credit for the sale, even if you were tracked originally. I won’t mention any names, but some big gurus are doing this. It’s just sickening.

Another problem is with the marketplaces that some merchants use to host their products. Unfortunately, not all of them are up to par as far as tracking systems go. As a matter of fact, one giant affiliate marketplace is using a tracking system that is so antiquated that it is started to show signs of falling apart. The problem is that there is no incentive to fix the system because there is no real competition. As a result, affiliates are making sales but losing them because of tracking issues.

So, what do we do about this? Well, there are a number of things we can do as affiliates. One, is to make sure that when you promote an affiliate product, you give the customer incentive to write to you after the sale to confirm the purchase. This can be easily done by offering a bonus for buying from you. I do this with all my affiliate promotions and it works very well for me. The key is to make sure that you offer a bonus that compliments the product itself and makes the purchase a no brainer.

Affiliate marketing is going through a rough patch right now, but eventually things will work out.

They always do as long as you stay on your toes.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Tired of being an affiliate failure? Want to turn yourself into an affiliate assassin like I am? Want to land in the top 20 of every affiliate promotion you tackle just like I do? Check out my site at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/affiliateassassin/index.html and start earning a solid income as an affiliate marketer.