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Affiliate Internet Marketing

Affiliate Internet Marketing

 

Potential Disadvantages and Dangers of Affiliate Internet Marketing

 

Weighing the Advantages and Disadvantages of Affiliate Internet Marketing

 

There are multiple advantages to internet affiliate marketing such as increased levels of revenue, a continuing and satisfied reader base, and the ability to increase the popularity of your website within search engines.  However, there are many potential dangers with internet affiliate marketing in the legal field, including the following and more:

 

·         vulnerability of brand

·         stacking and overload of advertisements

·         lack of contracts and permanency

·         fraud

·         harmful software

·         lack of control over ads

 

Potential Disadvantages of Internet Affiliate Marketing

 

1. Vulnerability of Brand in Internet Affiliate Marketing

 

The biggest potential disadvantage associated with internet affiliate marketing and a firm is the public recognizing your brand as unprofessional.  This is the reason you don’t see a large amount of advertisements on legal blogs and websites for attorneys.  If a firm is not careful with the types of advertisements they’re posting, the public may assume that the firm is mainly concerned with filtering in clients and readers for profit instead of educational purposes. 

 

There are steps to protect your brand while engaging in affiliate internet marketing though.  For example, if you’re an affiliate for Amazon, you should only advertise products that can supplement your services such as legal books and pamphlets for the areas of law you cover. 

 

2. Stacking of Advertisements in Internet Affiliate Marketing

 

The trick to internet affiliate marketing is using the least amount of advertisements as possible in order to generate the most revenue possible.  The key to such success includes choosing respectable merchants that offer reasonable amounts of commission for the legal publisher.  This can be hard though, especially for newer websites or blogs. 

 

An inexperienced legal publisher may try to overload their sidebars with a large amount of affiliate internet marketing advertisements in order to try and get their readers to click on at least one of the advertisements.  Not only can this technique in internet affiliate marketing damage the reputation of your brand, it can cause readers to visit your website once, notice the large amount of advertisements, and leave the website and never come back. 

 

3. Lack of Contracts and Permanency in Internet Affiliate Marketing

 

Just as a legal publisher can choose what affiliate internet marketing to post on their website, a merchant can decide what advertising to offer to whom.  In some cases, a merchant can choose to offer a website certain types of affiliate internet marketing, but some networks are allowed  to post such advertisements whenever they want and even take the advertisements off the website whenever they choose.  This is a major concern to many legal website and blog publishers. 

 

For example, let’s say a legal website just landed a great advertisement and they’ve been writing reviews about certain products and received success.  Then, the merchant and the network decide that they want to shift their internet affiliate marketing strategy somewhere else.  The website is left without future revenue and they have material that is now irrelevant. 

 

4. Fraud in Affiliate Internet Marketing in Internet Affiliate Marketing

 

There are two main types of fraud associated with internet affiliate marketing: CPC fraud and CPA fraud.  Cost per Click fraud can occur when competitors intentionally click on advertisements in abundance so the legal publisher is left to cover the cost without little return in revenue.  There is a large amount of protective software out there now to protect against CPC fraud, but some scammers can still slip through the system. 

 

CPA fraud, or cost per action fraud, is more of a concern for merchants than publishers, but the fraud has brought serious concerns within affiliate internet marketing.  This type of fraud may allow a publisher to earn large amounts of unearned commissions by a process called “cookie stuffing.”  This allows the publisher to gain revenue even though there was no real referral to a merchant’s website.  Such practices in internet affiliate marketing can land a firm in a huge amount of trouble. 

 

5. Harmful and Disadvantageous Software in Internet Affiliate Marketing

 

Although harmful software like spyware has been targeted and seriously reduced in the last couple of years, there is still a large amount of harmful software in affiliate internet marketing than can take away business from a firm.  For example, there is some software that will monitor other websites, see what techniques they’re using to bring in readers, and then target those very same readers in order to take away business. 

 

There is also software that can allow a person to receive promotional offers from a publisher without actually clicking on an advertisement.  The software places cookies within a client’s browser and then tracks the person’s navigation to a site offering good deals.  This type of software is still a serious problem in internet affiliate marketing. 

 

6. Lack of Control over Ads in Internet Affiliate Marketing

 

This potential disadvantage within affiliate internet marketing can be avoided by using a respected and highly rated network.  Networks that are less known and less respected can actually place ads within your sidebars and other areas of your website that may have nothing to do with your content.  This action within internet affiliate marketing goes back to the first and second points, which may cause damage to the image of your brand.

 

In order to find ratings and reviews for the best networks for affiliate internet marketing, refer to the recommended articles on this website. 

 

Conclusion: Internet Affiliate Marketing

 

You shouldn’t be scared off from internet affiliate marketing because of the potential hazards associated with the type of advertising.  Instead, let the potential disadvantages serves as a guide to let you set up the best affiliate internet marketing.  The disadvantages are avoidable if your take the right initiatives.  If you’ve taken the wrong initiatives, it’s never too late to revise your affiliate internet marketing campaign. 

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