Recently, I read about unscrupulous
companies charging consumers astronomical amounts to build a useless,
cookie-cutter store essentially with a bunch of Amazon.com widgets and banner
ads with no real content of any value. These sites are generally worth no more
than the cost of registering a domain name. Upon doing some research on this I
discovered that these companies are bilking unsuspecting victims out of
hundreds, if not thousands of dollars. Sadly, the victims often are the
vulnerable in society who do not have a lot of money to begin with; people who
are disabled, unemployed, old age pensioners.
Before I go on about this scam and
its victims I want to emphasize that the Amazon Associates program is not a
scam. It is 100% free to join and a legitimate way to make money online. At the
bottom of this page I give you some resources on how to make money online with
the Amazon Associates program.
The
Phone Call
First let me tell you how the scam
works. One day minding your own business you receive a phone call from a
company offering you a business opportunity promising you unlimited earnings
from an Amazon Associates store that they will create for you for your own
website. Some of these companies will even go as far as to say that they are
Amazon.com or at the very least affiliated with Amazon.com. As I just said,
Amazon.com is a reputable, well established company who has no affiliation
whatsoever with these scam companies.
Over
inflated price for a useless website worth no more than the cost of the domain
From the
information I gathered on the Better Business Bureau site and various online
complaints boards, these unscrupulous companies will pressure the scam victim
into purchasing one of these useless copy and paste cookie-cutter websites
typically anywhere from $199-$499 US. These companies make thousands of
these websites that are all virtually the same. Often, they’ll just be a shell
website, requiring the victim to spend hours copying and pasting code Amazon associates phone call scams
for widgets and banner ads linking
to Amazon.com.
Signs
that your website has been build by these scammers
Often with these scammers you’ll be
paying an exorbitant amount for hosting, such as $30 a month, where you should
be paying at most $100 a year for web hosting. My web hosting company has a
promotion right now, for instance, where you pay as low as $3.96 per month for
web hosting. You should not be paying more than $100 a year, at the very most
for web hosting.
Another trait that many of these
scam companies share is that they claim to actually be Amazon.com or in the
very least affiliated with Amazon.com. Nothing could be further than the truth.
Amazon.com does have the Amazon Associates program but it is 100% free to join.
Amazon has no affiliation whatsoever with any of these scam companies.
Many of these scam companies are
interestingly based out of Arizona and Nevada.
Scam
companies often exaggerate commission paid to Amazon Associates
Another theme shared by many of
these scam companies is that they highly exaggerate the commissions that the
Amazon Associates program pays. For instance, on of these scam companies told a
scam victim that they would be paid a whopping 15% commission from Amazon.com
for any sales made through their affiliate links. The truth of the matter is
that the Amazon Associates program pays a 4 – 10% advertising fee to the
affiliate for products shipped or downloaded that were purchased on the
Amazon.com website through their affiliate links. The vast majority of
Amazon referral fees paid to Amazon Associates are performance based
though from 4 – 8.5%, depending on the volume of items purchased through your
affiliate links.
These
websites convert very poorly making very little money, if any at all
These websites, which are basically
just filled with widgets and banner ads for individual items that are sold on
Amazon make very little money, if any at all, for a variety of reasons.
Why
these websites don’t do well for traffic or profit
One of the reasons that these
websites make so little money is because why would you shop from one of these
sites when you can click onto the Amazon website in the first place? I know
that if I had a choice to shop at one these amateur hour websites versus going
to the Amazon.com website I’d certainly choose the later. I am almost certain
that 99.9% of consumers would do the exact same thing.
Another reason why they convert
poorly is because they have very little actual content. Because of this they
rank very poorly or are even de-listed from search engines, such as
Google. Sites that do well with the Amazon Associates program have a
combination of how-to articles, reviews, etc. In other words, actual content
that is helpful and useful to people.
These
companies attempt to sell you advertising, marketing or training often for
thousands of dollars
After, for the reasons discussed
above, the scam victim discovers their website has no traffic and makes
virtually no sales they get high pressure calls trying to convince them to
purchase advertising, marketing or training, often what amounts to thousands of
dollars. It is not uncommon to hear from a different company for advertising,
marketing or training than the one that sold you the website. The companies may
or may not be affiliated with each other. From what I have read typically the
cost of these useless services is anywhere from $500 upwards to $15,000.
In
return for your investment you get useless traffic that doesn’t convert to
sales
Often, all you’ll get in return for
spending all this money is a bunch of useless traffic. I call it useless
because it is likely from black hat SEO techniques, such pop-ups and pop-unders
as well as comment and forum spam. Not only will this traffic not covert in
sales, it could get the site de-listed or outright banned from Google.
Unfulfilled
promises
These companies often promise a full
refund but only after six months. From what I’ve read, more often than
not these companies do not honor that promise. A common theme that I have
read is that once you start demanding your money back, these companies will
cease communication with you, not returning your phone calls and/or emails.
I read of one gentleman though, who
used what i thought was quite an ingenious tactic to at least be able to
talk to people who worked for the company. He would leave messages with these
scammers saying that he wanted to invest more money. When they did this they
apparently would call back after five minutes! He sadly had no luck getting his
money back, even with this tactic.
What is really sneaky about having
you wait for six months to request a refund is that by this point you usually
have no recourse for getting your money refunded from the credit card company.
This is because generally you can only file a dispute of a credit card charge
within 60 to 90 days after the purchase.
Scam
victims not even signed up directly with the Amazon Associates program
Another thing about many of these
companies is that the scam victim is not actually signed up directly with the
Amazon Associates program. The company signs you up for the associates program
on your behalf, if at all. Very often the victim will have no actual access to
their Amazon Associates account, which shows your sales, earnings, conversion
rate among many other things.
If the consumer does happen to luck
out or some family, friends or co-workers take pity on them and purchase some
items through their website they generally are not paid your commission
directly from Amazon.com. They are paid their commission from the company,
though there is no guarantee that they’ll pay you.
The scam victim has access to data
on your affiliate sales and your website through the “back office”, assuming
they’re even able to access it. I’ve read stories of consumers who were unable
to access their “back office” even after repeated phone calls to the scam
company.
On the Arizona Better Business
Bureau website I read one story of a gentleman who had ultimately lost $10,495
from one of these scam companies. How it started is he received an email from
this company offering him a work at home opportunity with an investment of $399
(it was regularly $599 but on “special”). In return he was promised an income
of $1500 a month. Sadly, the man signed up for this “opportunity”. In reality
in return for his $399 all he got was one of these useless websites filled with
advertisements for Amazon.com products.
A couple of weeks later he was
contacted by telephone by a representative of the company urging him to invest
additional money for marketing. In exchange for the investment he was promised
a return of investment of 125%, the more money he spent the greater the return.
He was given three options; to invest $10,000, 12,000 or $15,000. He declined
at first but finally gave in and invested a further $10,000 after repeated
calls with high pressure sells tactics.
Ultimately, over six months down the
road from his initial investment he hadn’t made one single penny. Upon
contacting the company after six months demanding a refund no one would return
his voice mail or email messages and his number was blocked from being able to
call customer service, the only ones who initially actually answered the phone.
He was now left with a$399 charge on his credit card and a $10,000 loan which
he took out from the bank to pay for his “business investment.” He could not
afford to pay either back so was left with paying compounding high interest
rates, getting further and further in debt.
I read a very sad story of a disable
war veteran living on a pension, who was scammed out of over $10,000 by two of
these scam companies. He was talked into paying an undisclosed amount to the
first of these two websites for one of these overpriced websites with no real
content where he was supposed to make money from the Amazon Associates program.
From what I’ve read it sounds like people typically pay this company anywhere
from $100 to $499 for their website.
After getting virtually no traffic
from to his site, let alone any affiliate sales, he was contacted by a second
company promising him a 125% return of investment in exchange for an
advertising package in the amount of $10,000. Sadly,he charged the $10,000, on
top of his initial investment, to his credit card.
After still not making any affiliate
sales, even after spending this large sum of money on advertising, he contacted
the second company and was told that they do not give refunds for advertising
and that they would re-run his advertising campaign, which I imagine was
virtually useless.
I do not know if this man ultimately
ended up being able to get refunds from these companies, but from the
complaints that I have read on the Better Business Bureau website it is
doubtful.
Is
the Amazon.com Associate program a scam?
After reading this or perhaps being
scammed yourself you might now be wondering if the Amazon Associates program is
in fact a scam. As an Amazon Associate myself I can ensure you that the Amazon
Associates program is not a scam. It is completely free and a viable way to
make money online. As I’ve said a few times now, the Amazon Associates program
is no way whatsoever affiliated with these scam companies. It is, in fact, one
of the oldest affiliate programs on the Internet, starting in the early days of
the world wide web, way back in 1996.
I was approved for the Amazon
Associates program back in March of 2015. My earnings with this affiliate
program have been modest but the commission that I have earned from the Amazon
Associates program has increased steadily every month that I have joined. This
month I’ve had my highest earnings with the Amazon Associates program at $29.15
to date. The exciting thing with the Amazon Associates program is that the more
items that are ordered through your affiliate links the higher commission that
you earn, generally anywhere from 4-10%.
This month has been a milestone for
me as it is the first month that I have gone from the 4 to 6% referral rate
(when you refer seven items in a month you reach the 6% referral rate). Sure, I
know that the amount of money that I have earned with the Amazon Associates
program is certainly not anywhere near enough to quit my “brick and mortars”
job but considering that my site is only six months old and averages a mere
40-50 unique visitors a month I think that is not too shabby. I know that as I
build more content and the traffic to my website increases that the
possibilities are endless.
If you are at all interested in
becoming an Amazon Associate and want to know how you can make money this way I
highly recommend that you consider purchasing and downloading the eBook on
Kindle called How to Make Money as an Amazon Associate. The
price is certainly right too at less than $3.00. This eBook will guide you step
by step how to make money with the Amazon Associates program. How to Make
Money as an Amazon Associate is absolutely ideal for someone absolutely new
to blogging/website building. However, readers with website building/blogging
experience and have perhaps even made a few bucks with the Amazon Associates
program will find gems of information in this Kindle eBook.
The author, Chris Guthrie, certainly
knows a thing or two about the Amazon Associates program too as he has made
well over $100,000 with this affiliate program. I have found How to Make Money as an Amazon Associate so
helpful that I have actually read it twice and have implemented many of
the strategies in this eBook. And this is coming from someone who is famous for
starting several books at or about the same time and not finishing any of them.
The author, Chris Guthrie, certainly knows what he is talking about too as he
has made well over $100,000 as an Amazon Associate. Two of the chapters that I
have found particularly helpful are How to Make Money with Amazon.com:
Linking Strategies and How to Write Content for your Blog. Please
CLICK HERE to purchase and download How to Make
Money as an Amazon Associate now.
What
to do if you think you have been scammed
- The first thing that you need to do is call your credit card company ASAP and, if at all possible, have the charges removed or at the very least stop future payments.
- The number two thing that you need to do is call the company that sold you their so-called services and request a refund. If requesting a refund doesn’t get you anywhere demand a refund. Tell them you’re going to take legal action and report them to the Attorney General.
- It is also important that you file a complaint with the Better Business Bureau.
I
want to wish you the best of luck
If you are a victim of these scam
companies I want to tell you that I am so sorry that you were taken advantage
of this way and wish you the best of luck. I truly hope that you have found
this page helpful.
- See more at:
http://internetsecurity101.net/amazon-affiliate-program-website-scam/#sthash.mC4tnLhl.dpuf
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