[wharvle]

I'm currently watching a friend's wife get scammed for large amounts (well into the five figures at this point, maybe pushing six) of money in the self-employed "coaching" (life coach, business coach, that kind of thing) field, and now she's finally—evidently desperate for her "business" (sigh, if only she'd accept business advice from people she actually knows who aren't randos promising her easy money) to finally start making any money—joined them, as part of what appears to be an obfuscated affiliate program for some minor player in that world—you pretend you're selling "how to start making money coaching" content that's part yours and in part belongs to your "partner" and that you're involved, but really it's 99% their content (which they may well themselves have bought...) and you're just selling it and serving as customer support so they don't have to work, for a little cut of the action. At a subdomain on "your site" but it clearly redirects to their CMS with a custom landing page.

It's been a wild ride watching this happen. A whole world I didn't know existed, and lots and lots of people getting scammed out of tons of money (there's a whole Reddit ecosystem discussing this stuff, it's both fascinating and horrifying)