| Not dissing on all affiliate marketing folks out there - whether it's the review website or similar professionals trying to make an honest living from the service they provide. But affiliate marketing as a whole is one of the shadiest internet industry. The coupon thing is one of the many tricks in the book to get your cookie everywhere and earn $$ without providing any value. There's an awful lot of fraud like that but somehow the benefits seems to outweigh it because the industry is still alive and kicking. Having seen numbers for some affiliate channels, my guess is that it's probably grossly overvalued but people still buy into that because the numbers look good, from afar, especially if you compare them to Search or Social. But the pricing model (CPA > Cost per Acquisition / Conversion) is different so I guess both sides are fine with that. It's a mouse and cat game that is the usual playbook between the "good guys" and "bad guys", as you'd see in security, pirating, etc ... --- Also, this is hardly a secret but it's actually really hard to properly estimate the ROAS / ROI of advertising in general and most of it is like a black box. You pour some money in, get more money out if you play your cards well.
Maybe you nailed your strategy and execution, maybe you'd still have made the same money without advertising. |