Risks of affiliate marketing

Though some make a lot of money affiliate marketing, there are many undocumented risks. If you are a major affiliate of any website, after some time the company you are promoting tries to find the techniques used to drive traffic to their website. Atleast 2 Indian websites  and 1 Australian website have been extremely unscrupulous in their dealings after their websites were promoted on pcworkathome.in . The conversions are not recorded properly and payments are not made on time. Blatant attempts are made to frame you, by making a series of  false allegations .

They will use any method to steal your website. So after extremely unpleasant experiences, it is best not to do any affiliate marketing , it is better to promote your own product, even if you earn very little or work offline .

Why pay?

The greatest advantages of selling directly is that you are in touch with your customers, and get an opportunity to understand their requirement. In real life, people buy and pay only if they have a genuine requirement,  for a product or service. However, on certain websites, many buyers have been making payments without sending their inputs.  They some times do not even reply to repeated requests by email and PM  for more details of the advertising.

This creates a problem for the seller, as they have to wait indefinitely for inputs or leave the item unshipped, while the listing usually specifies a shipping time.  The value of each item is also low , usually between $0.99 to 2.99 . It also seems to be  part of a deliberate campaign launched by anonymous people with vested interests .

Link building and removal

Till a few months ago, building links was a widely used technique to promote a website. Many websites used article directories and submissions to build links to websites. They sometimes used public blog networks  to build backlinks, and the blog owners usually published these articles for free. Today these links are considered “unnatural” by at least one major search engine and link removal requests are being sent to blog/website owners.

If the link is not removed, the website is to be reported . Most websites spent a lot of money on link building initially, are they willing to spend some money on link  removal? Only time will tell.

How are these article distribution methods different from press release services? Companies worldwide pay public relations agencies to promote their brand, product or services, how is article marketing different?