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CNET pushed reporters to be more favorable to advertisers, staffers say

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CNET pushed reporters to be more favorable to advertisers, staffers say

Last October, CNET’s parent company, Red Ventures, held a cross-department meeting to discuss the AI writing software it had been building for months. The tool had been in testing internally ahead of public use on CNET, and Red Ventures’ early results revealed several potential issues.

The AI system was always faster than human writers at generating stories, the company found, but editing its work took much longer than editing a real staffer’s copy. The tool also had a tendency to write sentences that sounded plausible but were incorrect, and it was known to plagiarize language from the sources it was trained on. 

Red Ventures executives laid out all of these issues at the meeting and then made a fateful decision: CNET began publishing AI-generated stories anyway. 

“They were well aware of the fact that the AI plagiarized and hallucinated,” a person who attended the meeting recalls. (Artificial intelligence tools have a tendency to insert false information into responses, which are sometimes called “hallucinations.”) “One of the things they were focused on when they developed the program was reducing plagiarism. I suppose that didn’t work out so well.”

Of the 77 articles published on CNET using the AI tool since it launched, more than half have had corrections appended to them, some lengthy and substantial, after use of the tool was revealed by Futurism. CNET editor-in-chief Connie Guglielmo, EVP of content and audience Lindsey Turrentine, and Red Ventures vice president of content Lance Davis defended the tool in an internal meeting with staff in January but said the company would pause the use of the tool “for now.” In a follow-up blog post, Guglielmo said publishing using the AI software was on hold until CNET was confident it could “prevent both human and AI errors,” but she was clear that this wasn’t the end of AI tools in the newsroom.

“Expect CNET to continue exploring and testing how AI can be used to help our teams as they go about their work testing, researching and crafting the unbiased advice and fact-based reporting we’re known for,” Guglielmo wrote.

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“Everyone at CNET is more afraid of Red Ventures than they are of AI.”

But the controversial use of an AI system to generate stories even in the face of known issues with plagiarism and accuracy is merely the most visible outcome of Red Ventures’ ownership of CNET. Under the ownership of Red Ventures, a private equity-backed marketing firm that’s bought up more than a dozen digital publishers since the mid-2010s, staff at the storied tech news outlet say they have been fighting to protect CNET’s editorial independence and rigor amid a push toward sponsored content and affiliate marketing by its new corporate owners. As one staffer told The Verge for a previous piece, “Everyone at CNET is more afraid of Red Ventures than they are of AI.”

Multiple former employees told The Verge of instances where CNET staff felt pressured to change stories and reviews due to Red Ventures’ business dealings with advertisers. The forceful pivot toward Red Ventures’ affiliate marketing-driven business model — which generates revenue when readers click links to sign up for credit cards or buy products — began clearly influencing editorial strategy, with former employees saying that revenue objectives have begun creeping into editorial conversations. 

Reporters, including on-camera video hosts, have been asked to create sponsored content, making staff uncomfortable with the increasingly blurry lines between editorial and sales. One person told The Verge that they were made aware of Red Ventures’ business relationship with a company whose product they were covering and that they felt pressured to change a review to be more favorable.

“I understood a supervisor to imply in conversation that how I proceeded with my review could impact my chances of promotion in the future,” they say. 

Red Ventures ignored an emailed list of questions from The Verge about its AI tool as well as CNET’s editorial independence and ethics, advertising, and staffing. The company instead offered to send a short statement about CNET’s editorial integrity but refused to provide it on the record attributable to anyone.

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This apparent breakdown of the traditional barriers between editorial and advertising content is worlds away from CNET’s history, according to former staffers. Now more than 25 years old, the site has long been known for its thorough news coverage and comprehensive reviews program, which examines everything from laptops and phones to bookshelf speakers and home projectors. 

“[The reason I came to CNET] was the opportunity to be able to tell the truth no matter what,” a former staffer says. To them, working at CNET was different from other journalism jobs, where journalists can be honest but may need to self-edit. “You get to tell the truth [at other jobs], but a lot of times, you’re not allowed to say things that you really feel.” 

But the CNET operated by Red Ventures is a very different place than the CNET it acquired in 2020. CNET, along with other Red Ventures-owned publications, is loading up on cheap SEO-driven articles to game Google’s search algorithm and fill search results with content designed to deliver affiliate links to readers. As a result, CNET’s independent journalism and the people who produce it — the thing that once made CNET valuable and rank highly in search to begin with — feel that they are being pushed out in favor of whatever and whomever else makes Red Ventures the most money, according to multiple former employees. 

“When you’re [covering] products and not people, it’s really easy to be like, ‘This new Apple thing sucks.’ I just thought that was a refreshing change of pace to be able to say things as they are,” the former staffer says. “And that continued all the way until Red Ventures took over.”

After Red Ventures scooped up CNET for $500 million in 2020, CEO Ric Elias promised the outlet would be able to continue to be an independent publication known for its robust offering of reviews and in-the-weeds tech news coverage. CNET staff had nothing to worry about, Elias told The New York Times. There was a “nonnegotiable line” separating the journalism from the money, and CNET’s staff of tech journalists could call him on his personal cellphone if there were ever a problem.

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“I told them, ‘There’s a red line,’ and they’re like, ‘OK, we’ll see,’” Elias said.

That skepticism now appears prescient. Former CNET staff say the guardrails that keep editorial content independent, like a divide between revenue teams and journalists, or a clear chain of command among leadership, were repeatedly breached after the Red Ventures acquisition. “Most of the time, [Guglielmo] seemed to just be relaying orders” from Red Ventures, a former staffer says. In turn, journalists were placed in difficult positions as they tried to fend off the encroaching influence of the business side. 

Former CNET staffers describe being asked to work on ads for companies that the outlet covers, including Volvo and home security company Arlo and having to push back against such requests from executives at the company. Three people told The Verge that they believe resistance to Red Ventures initiatives caused various CNET staffers to lose their jobs, with one saying that the pressure to be a “yes man” was a “collective experience” for some teams.

Multiple former CNET staffers point to the demise of the CNET Smart Home as an example of Red Ventures’ overreach. The Smart Home — a four-bedroom, five-bathroom home in Louisville, Kentucky, that the outlet had purchased in 2015 to test and produce videos on home products like robot vacuums and thermostats — had become something of a brand in and of itself. Since Red Ventures’ takeover, Smart Home staff repeatedly refused to work on sponsored content, saying it went against the integrity of their work. Readers look to tech reviewers for honest, unbiased assessments of companies’ products and services, and working on content that is paid for by these same companies can cast doubt on a reviewer’s ability to be independent.

“It’s a culture that if you disagree with them, they’re going to get rid of you and replace you with a zealot.”

In 2022, a Red Ventures executive named Marc McCollum stopped by the Smart Home for a short walk-through. McCollum, according to his LinkedIn profile, led the acquisition of CNET Media Group. A former staffer says he played a key role in the transition, with a focus on increasing profits.

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Shortly after McCollum’s visit, teams working out of the Smart Home learned that the company was planning on selling the house, and people working at the house believed their jobs would be at risk if the space were sold. But McCollum indicated that the company may be able to keep the house if it secured a lucrative advertising deal with GE, which had expressed interest in using the Smart Home for a commercial, multiple former employees say.

Hoping to avoid layoffs, some CNET staff pitched in on the GE deal in early talks and planning, and Red Ventures inked a deal. But CNET editorial staffers refused to shoot the ad itself, and contractors were ultimately used to work on the commercial, a former staffer says.

The GE shoot was ultimately moved from the Smart Home to an off-site location due to space limitations at the house, a GE Appliances spokesperson who would only identify themselves as “Whitney” told The Verge via email. GE was not aware of Red Ventures’ plans to sell the house, “Whitney” added.

But by the time the GE ad was released in September, many staff on the Smart Home team had already left the company. Seeing the “writing on the wall” — that the house would soon be put up for sale — some people were able to land new roles, a former staffer says; others were laid off that summer. The house was put up for sale shortly after the GE ad anyway, eventually selling in December for $1.275 million, according to Zillow. 

“It’s a culture that if you disagree with them, they’re going to get rid of you and replace you with a zealot,” a former employee, who was laid off, says of Red Ventures. “Somebody that’s absolutely a true believer, [that] drinks the Kool-Aid.”

Former CNET staffers say their colleagues have also been pressured into appearing in ads for companies the outlet covers despite the murky ethics of using reporters in sponsored content. On-camera video hosts were uncomfortable with the idea of being in ads and pushed back against it, according to several former staffers. Using recognizable journalists for video content that’s paid for by advertisers can blur the lines and make it hard for viewers to tell what is and isn’t an ad. 

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In one recent video, titled “Moen Unveils Innovative Smart Sprinkler Product at CES,” a CNET host takes viewers through the company’s booth at January’s Consumer Electronics Show, interviewing company representatives and testing products. The video is an ad, but the host doesn’t say that, and neither the video description nor title included a disclosure until recently. The only disclaimer was a small pop-up that YouTube inserts when an uploader has indicated there’s a paid promotion in a video, though CNET doesn’t actually specify what in the video is promoted. Moen did not respond to multiple requests for comment about the nature of the sponsorship or its labeling. After The Verge asked Red Ventures about the ad, a disclosure was silently added to the video’s description.

One of the key priorities for Red Ventures seems to be the company’s focus on affiliate links, which pepper its portfolio of sites like The Points Guy, Bankrate, and CreditCards.com. Over time, a focus on affiliate revenue has crept into CNET’s editorial decisions, causing frustration among staff.

In one meeting after the Red Ventures acquisition, a former employee says editorial staff were shown how much the company earned through affiliate categories like home furnishings with the suggestion they keep it in mind when producing future content. CNET staffers were also told that a separate commerce team would begin writing video descriptions that included affiliate links, which many people worried would suggest on-camera hosts were endorsing specific products.

“Red Ventures’ big mantra is that they help people make life’s most important decisions,” a former staffer says. “And yet all of their influence has been to get people to make decisions that are going to be the most profitable to Red Ventures.”

CNET staff say that the proximity to revenue made it harder to maintain the editorial standards

“It’s very demoralizing. It’s actually soul-crushing. All you want to do is your job and you’re being told, ‘Don’t cover this,’ because the revenue potential is not there,” another former staff member says.

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Advertising is what keeps most digital media companies afloat, and affiliate marketing is common across the industry. (The Verge earns a commission from affiliate links, as do other Vox Media-owned outlets, like The Strategist.) But in many newsrooms, there is a strict separation between the people dealing with advertisers and the people producing the news. At The Verge, for example, editorial staff never work on ads, and reviews writers don’t know how much parent company Vox Media earns through specific affiliate marketing links.

But under Red Ventures, former CNET staff say that the proximity to revenue made it harder and harder to maintain the editorial standards promised to audiences. 

“I do believe that the journalists who are doing the work at CNET are extremely ethical. I think that they have a lot of integrity, I think they work really hard,” they say. “But I think that they are under a great deal of pressure to make money for Red Ventures. And that’s just never a good situation for journalists.”

Though the AI tool generating stories for CNET, Bankrate, and CreditCards.com was formally announced just weeks ago, Red Ventures’ “experiment” with enlisting artificial intelligence has been underway much longer. Like other publishers who’ve incorporated automated tools into their work, the Red Ventures proprietary AI software was sold to the newsroom as a way to more efficiently produce “the boring stuff” so writers could use their time instead and work on bigger projects. In actuality, enlisting artificial intelligence to write SEO bait accelerates the speed at which Red Ventures-owned websites can churn out search-optimized content loaded with affiliate links, cutting down the need for human writers — and the reporting they produce.

For Sarah Szczypinski, a former journalist on the CNET Money team who left the outlet in early 2022, the association with CNET in light of the AI-writing saga has been frustrating. Though Szczypinski quit many months before the AI-generated articles began appearing, people have started contacting her after the news broke, wondering if she, too, had used AI tools for her stories. Szczypinski maintains she wrote her stories on her own, without automation tools.

“The leadership team gave no thought to what these unilateral decisions would do to the people working there, especially the people who are journalists and need their readers to trust them,” Szczypinski told The Verge. “We still have lives to live and careers to forge. And we can’t do that with something as damaging as this hanging over our heads.”

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In late January, Szczypinski contacted Red Ventures and CNET, asking to have her author page and bylines pulled. Her name has been scrubbed from dozens of articles, now replaced simply by “CNET Staff.”

Throughout the time Red Ventures has owned CNET, the outlet’s leadership has promised readers time and again that its journalism is as strong as ever. Even as Guglielmo, Turrentine, and Red Ventures executives dodged questions from readers, staff, and reporters about the AI system, they pointed to CNET’s track record built over decades as evidence of trustworthiness. Audiences trust CNET for tech news, reviews, and recommendations, they reasoned, so they can trust CNET for how to move forward with artificial intelligence.

But even the more public ways CNET has tried to elicit trust from its audience have been hollowed out by a relentless drive toward optimization and gaming the search algorithm at the expense of the very work that had made CNET valuable.

CNET’s public ethics policy has not been meaningfully updated in years —  it still lists CBS as its parent company — but last year, the publication added nearly a dozen links detailing exactly how it tests and vets products to a hyper-specific degree, with separate posts for how CNET reviews everything from credit cards and TVs to vacuums and more. One way of looking at these posts is to provide readers — and potential customers — with as much detail as possible about CNET’s methodology. 

But for Red Ventures, these articles are just more fodder to boost its bottom line: Google likes when publishers demonstrate “experience, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness,” and the search algorithm factors in articles like these when it ranks search results. Articles packed with words like “unbiased,” “credible,” and “thoroughly vetted” are great for Red Ventures’ SEO-heavy strategy.

After all, Google can’t tell if it’s true.

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AFFILIATE MARKETING

Common Affiliate Marketing Scams and How to Avoid Them

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Common Affiliate Marketing Scams and How to Avoid Them

At WPBeginner, we have been on both sides of affiliate marketing as affiliate marketers and as businesses running affiliate programs.

With over a decade of expertise, we have encountered all types of affiliate marketing scams and frauds.

While most folks in the affiliate business are honest, hardworking people, there are always people trying to make a quick buck at the expense of others.

Here, we’ll discuss some of the top affiliate marketing scams and how to avoid them. We’ll talk about it from both perspectives as a business owner and as an affiliate marketer.

Common affiliate marketing scams explained for beginners

How Do Affiliate Marketing Scams Affect Businesses?

Affiliate marketing scams try to steal from businesses by pretending to be affiliate marketers. Similarly, they may also defraud unsuspecting affiliate marketers by pretending to be a legitimate business.

Thousands of people make money online with affiliate marketing. It is a lucrative industry worth over $17 billion (Source).

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Due to the low barrier of entry, good payouts, and higher returns on invested time and resources, it attracts many businesses and marketers.

Affiliate marketing industryAffiliate marketing industry

However, this success also attracts many bad actors who want to profit by scamming and defrauding affiliate marketers and businesses running affiliate programs.

For these reasons, affiliate marketers and businesses may struggle to distinguish between legitimate opportunities and scams:

  • Financial loss – Affiliate marketing scams may use deceptive practices to hijack ads, change payment terms, or block payments, causing financial loss to marketers.
  • Reputational Damage – Some scammers create fake websites, advertisements, and landing pages pretending to be from a legitimate business. This causes harm to the business’s reputation.
  • Legal Damages – Some affiliate marketing scams may promote illegal products or fraudulent activities. This can lead to legal consequences and damage the affiliate’s personal and professional standing.
  • Increased Skepticism – Due to encountering scams, affiliate marketers may become more skeptical and hesitant to join new programs or promote certain products. This can limit their opportunities for legitimate partnerships and revenue generation. Similarly, businesses may find it difficult to trust affiliate marketers if they have been deceived by fraudulent actors in the industry.

However, this can be mitigated by carefully researching an affiliate program’s terms and conditions. Before signing up, you can also look for the common shady tactics scammers use.

Here are some of the most common affiliate marketing scams you should avoid.

Common Affiliate Marketing Scams Targeting Affiliate Marketers

Scammers often target affiliate marketers to promote illegal or dubious products with little to no payout in return.

Here are some of the most common scams targeted at affiliate marketers.

1. Get Rich Quick Schemes

Get rich quick scamsGet rich quick scams

Get-rich-quick schemes are perhaps the industry’s most common and longest-running affiliate marketing scam.

They promise affiliate marketers a much higher commission for promoting their products with dubious promises and big claims about earning potential.

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These scams can be harder to identify. Many niches in the affiliate industry offer higher incentives, and it is not uncommon to make big claims even by legitimate businesses.

These scams differ because they often sell questionable products with little to no value. These programs have their terms and conditions set up so that they end up paying nothing to the affiliate marketers.

How to Identify This Scam:

These businesses often make big promises of incredibly high earning potential. They are often selling dubious products with little to no value. Their affiliate program is not transparent, and terms and conditions are often vague or have hidden clauses to avoid any payment.

2. Fake Products

Another common scam targeting affiliate marketers is fake products. These scammers would sell a cheap (and often illegally obtained) copy of a legitimate product by a recognized brand.

However, often, they don’t even deliver the cheap copy and just steal money from the customers.

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Another variation of this scam involves digital products. After customers have paid up, there is no product to download or access, and the company’s customer support is non-existent.

On the other end of things, these scammers will also simply refuse to issue any payment to the affiliate marketers, meaning they get money for nothing.

How to Identify This Scam:

Fake products are often shown by copying an existing brand or business. Their pricing would be lower than the actual products to lure customers into believing they are getting a cheaper deal. Do your research about the product, search for real reviews, or dig into background information of the business.

3. Pyramid Schemes and Multi-level Marketing Programs

Pyramid schemes or they’re modern name, multi-level marketing (MLM) are scams dating back to pre-internet days. It is still effectively used to target innocent people.

They target affiliate marketers by asking them to recruit investors into often imaginary, fake, or shoddy products. Marketers are promised a commission on each new sign-up that their recruits or people they bring in make.

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Eventually, it becomes impossible to find new recruits, and the whole scheme fails. These scammers then go ahead and launch the scheme with different names.

Even if there is a real product being sold, a MLM company floods the market with affiliates, meaning no one makes any meaningful money and saturates the market.

How to Identify This Scam:

These scams often ask you to promote a fake business or product like a get-rich-quick scheme, dietary supplements, or cheaply made fake products. You will be promised higher payouts when people you bring in recruit more people. You may also be asked to deposit a joining fee, which they may label as an investment.

4. Pay to Join Affiliate Programs

Another common scam is to ask for you to pay a fee to join an affiliate program. These pay-to-join programs will claim that they run an exclusive affiliate partnership program, and in order to ensure that only serious marketers join their program, they need you to make a small payment.

Such programs will pretend to sell high-value items and promise to offer unrealistically high commissions.

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All genuine affiliate programs are free to join. It is possible that some affiliate programs may require you to demonstrate product knowledge or industry expertise, but they would never ask you to pay them in order to promote their products.

How to Identify This Scam:

The most obvious sign of this scam is that they will ask you to make a payment. Some may even want you to pay with Bitcoin so the transaction can’t be reversed or traced back. If you are asked to make any payment just to join an affiliate program, then it is most likely a scam.

5. Fake Gurus and Influencers

Social media influencerSocial media influencer

Another popular scam is when you are asked to promote a fake guru or social media influencer. These fake influencers or self-claimed gurus often pretend to be experts in something and typically sell courses and 1-on-1 training sessions.

You may be asked to bring in unsuspecting customers and will be promised a lucrative commission when they sign up for the course, follow the influencer on social media, or join an email list.

These scammers would then sell customers useless courses with little to no value. They would refuse to pay affiliate marketers by not recognizing any leads or conversions they bring.

On the other hand, there are legitimate experts in various industries selling online courses and mentorship programs. This makes it harder for affiliate marketers to distinguish between legitimate businesses and scammers.

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How to Identify This Scam:

These scammers usually have no track record of their supposed expertise. Their testimonials would sound phony and unverifiable. They would use pushy tactics to make sales, and most of their followers on social media profiles would be bot accounts.

6. Phishing Scams

Phishing scamsPhishing scams

Another way scammers target affiliate marketers is by using phishing tactics to steal sensitive information.

They create fake websites or emails that appear to be from legitimate affiliate programs, tricking affiliates into providing login credentials or personal information.

Besides fake websites and emails, scammers may also target affiliate marketers on social media websites and messaging apps. They may use brand images of popular affiliate platforms to deceive victims into believing that they are talking to an official account.

How to Identify This Scam:

Ensure that you are visiting a legitimate website. If you are unsure, then close your browser window and try to reach the actual website manually. Any email account asking you to visit a website should be sifted through. Don’t provide any login information to any fake website.

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Common Affiliate Marketing Scams Targeting Businesses

If you are a business running an affiliate program to generate more sales, then you may be targeted by scammers in a number of ways.

Here are some of those common scams to look out for:

1. Fraudulent Transactions

Transaction fraudTransaction fraud

Scammers may target a business by generating fake sales using stolen credit cards, dummy payment accounts, and other fraudulent techniques.

Once a sale is generated, they are qualified for commission. However, your business may pay a refund or chargeback on the fake transaction.

More sophisticated scammers may even attempt to manipulate your conversion tracking data to credit them for more sales.

How to Identify This Scam:

The easiest way to detect this scam is by monitoring your refund and chargeback requests. However, this could be due to customers being genuinely unsatisfied with their purchase.

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You can look for patterns to detect fraudulent activities causing higher refunds. Compare the refund rates of suspected affiliates with other affiliates to detect suspicious activity.

2. Cookie Stuffing

This is a sophisticated affiliate marketing scam targeting businesses that run an affiliate program.

Here is how it works, the scammers use phishing tactics, malware, and popups to install cookies with their affiliate tracking IDs on unsuspecting users. After that, when users visit the website and make a purchase, these marketers earn a commission.

These cookies are often set never to expire unless a user deletes all cookies in their browser. The user would have never interacted with the affiliates’ content and wouldn’t even be referred by their URL.

How to Identify This Scam:

This sort of scam is harder to identify. However, depending on your affiliate management program, it may automatically detect fraudulent activities. You also need to monitor your conversions in Google Analytics to find suspicious URLs and activities.

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Many affiliate programs only allow marketers to send traffic from a pre-approved list of websites, and any conversions not originating from their approved websites are discredited.

3. Google Ad Keyword Hijacking

Google Ad HijackingGoogle Ad Hijacking

Another problematic affiliate scam that affects businesses is Google Ad Keyword Hijacking.

Basically, the scammers sign up for an affiliate program and run Google ads on brand keywords or keywords where your business may already be advertising.

This increases your cost to bid on those keywords, and you end up paying additional commission to a source of traffic that you could have acquired yourself by running the ads.

An even more problematic situation arises when these scammers first redirect the users to their websites before sending them to yours. This makes it harder for you to detect fraudulent activity for a longer period of time.

How to Identify This Scam:

Monitor your top keywords for PPC ads on Google. The easiest way to do this is by using a search marketing tool like Semrush.

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Another way to identify this scam is to monitor your website traffic and look for unusually high-traffic sources. You can also carefully monitor affiliate activity to look out for unusually high conversions, sudden jumps in referral traffic, and other signs of suspicious activity.

4. Fake Leads

Fake leads can be a problematic affiliate scam for businesses paying affiliate marketers to bring in leads.

Scammers can generate fake leads using sophisticated techniques like stolen user data, unverified leads bought from third-party sources, or simply paying someone to create fake user accounts.

More sophisticated scammers may even send bot traffic from their legitimate-looking websites. These bots then fill in forms with fake user data to submit a lead.

How to Identify This Scam:

One way to thwart fake leads is by requiring customers to double opt-in. Another way to detect quality leads is by reaching out to customers.

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If more leads appear to be non-existent, you can dig deeper and find the affiliate accounts sending those leads.

Look for your affiliate reports to find patterns like a website sending a specific number of leads per day could be a sign of fake leads.

5. Click Frauds

Businesses running pay-per-click affiliate programs are vulnerable to click fraud. Scammers can use a wide variety of techniques to generate fake clicks and traffic.

Some of these techniques use automated bots to click on links. These bots may use IP spoofing and appear as legitimate traffic in your analytics or affiliate marketing reports.

Other scammers may use click farms, where scammers pay pennies to click farms where actual humans click on links as part of their job. These click farms may use hacked computers worldwide to generate those clicks.

How to Identify This Scam:

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Monitoring your Google Analytics reports can help you look for signs of click fraud. You can look for suspicious traffic sources, traffic coming from random places, low conversion rates than the industry average.

Keep track of IP addresses to look for signs of click fraud. Your affiliate management software may also provide tools to detect and prevent click fraud.

6. URL Hijacking

Another common scam targeting businesses is when an affiliate partner registers similar domain names or misspelled URLs.

For instance, if a business’s website is a stargardeningtools.com, the scammers may register stargardiningtools.com or similar domains.

This scam is also called domain squatting. It can be easily tracked by looking at referral domains in Google Analytics. However, some of these affiliates may set up dubious redirects to ensure that the squatted domain doesn’t appear as a referral domain.

How to Identify This Scam:

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You can track most such tactics by regularly monitoring the referral domains in Google Analytics. Also looking for traffic sources that look suspicious can be helpful. Sometimes, these traffic sources may not have any content promoting your products and services.

Avoiding Affiliate Marketing Scams Tips and Tricks

Following are some handy tips that will help you avoid common affiliate marketing scams both as a marketer and as a business.

1. Join Reputable Affiliate Platforms

Join the top affiliate networks and platforms to work with top businesses, best products, and legitimate affiliate marketers.

Platforms like ShareASale, Impact, and Amazon offer a large number of products and businesses to promote. They also help businesses partner up with the best marketers, handle payouts, and prevent fraud.

However, these programs cost money and may reduce the profitability of your business.

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Luckily, there are platforms like AffiliateWP. It is the best affiliate tracking and management software that runs on top of WordPress.

AffiliateWP comes with easy affiliate management, advanced fraud detection, easy payouts, and no middleman fees.

Another excellent alternative is EasyAffiliate. Similar to AffiliateWP, it runs on top of WordPress and allows you to manage and run your own affiliate program.

2. Monitor Your Website Traffic

Whether you are an affiliate marketer or an affiliate manager, monitoring your website traffic regularly helps you detect and prevent fraud and scams.

The easiest way to do this is by installing MonsterInsights. It is the best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress and helps you easily track your website traffic.

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MonsterInsightsMonsterInsights

MonsterInsights has features like eCommerce tracking, conversion tracking, outbound link tracking, and more. Plus, it helps you easily see where your traffic is coming from and what those users do while visiting your site.

3. Use Better Link Management Tools

As an affiliate marketer, you will need tools to manage all your affiliate links easily. This helps you insert links easily and increase your earnings, but it will also help you track link performance and detect your clicks.

This is where ThirstyAffiliates comes in. It is the best affiliate link management tool for WordPress and allows you to easily manage and track all your affiliate links.

ThirstyAffiliatesThirstyAffiliates

ThristyAffiliates helps you detect broken affiliate links, track link clicks, set up redirects, and cloak affiliate links.

Another excellent alternative is PrettyLinks. It is a link management tool for WordPress. It allows you to shorten affiliate links, cloak links, manage all your links, and easily insert them in your website.

Pretty Links Pro WebsitePretty Links Pro Website

For more on this topic, see our complete affiliate marketing guide for beginners.

Frequently Asked Questions Regarding Affiliate Marketing Scams

The following are some of the most commonly asked questions about affiliate marketing scams by our users.

1. Is affiliate marketing risky?

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Affiliate marketing is just as risky as other type of marketing strategies. Due to the increasing number of fraudulent activities and scams, it may give an impression of being risky. However, most of these affiliate marketing scams can be easily avoided. Affiliate marketing still provides excellent opportunities for publishers to make money online and businesses to promote their products and services.

2. Is affiliate marketing similar to pyramid schemes?

No, affiliate marketing is not similar to pyramid schemes. Unlike pyramid schemes, affiliate programs are free to join, and affiliate marketers are paid to bring in customers. However, some pyramid schemes may present themselves as an affiliate program in order to appear legitimate.

3. Is it possible to avoid affiliate marketing scams altogether?

Yes, it is possible to avoid affiliate marketing scams by joining reputable affiliate platforms and carefully selecting affiliate marketers, products, and businesses that you work with.

We hope this article helps you avoid common affiliate marketing scams. You may also want to explore these low online business ideas or take a look at these additional ways to make money online.

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How Creators Make Money Is Changing

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In 2021, we reported on a survey that measured creators’ top sources of revenue. At that time, sponsorships with advertisers took the top spot by …

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The Ultimate Guide to Succeeding Alone in Business in 2024

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The Ultimate Guide to Succeeding Alone in Business in 2024

What is a solopreneur? And how do you become one?

Well, in this post, we’re diving into the world of solopreneurship to help you get started.

You’ll learn:

  • The difference between a solopreneur and an entrepreneur
  • Pros and cons of solopreneurship
  • A step-by-step guide to becoming a solopreneur
  • Plus, solopreneur business ideas you can start today.

Let’s get started.

What is a Solopreneur?

A solopreneur is a person who starts a business by themself, without a partner, and the need for hiring employees.

What is a Solopreneur?

Merriam-Webster defines it as:

One who organizes, manages, and assumes the risks of a business or enterprise without the help of a partner : a solo entrepreneur.

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They typically bootstrap their business using their own money and manage all aspects of the business needs to make a profit.

This might involve sales, marketing, product development, managing finances, and customer satisfaction.

Solopreneur vs Entrepreneur

Now, you might be asking, “What’s the difference between a solopreneur and an entrepreneur?”

Solopreneur vs EntrepreneurSolopreneur vs Entrepreneur

Here are the key distinctions between the two. Knowing these can also help you choose which one to pursue.

Purpose

A solopreneur and an entrepreneur have slightly different intentions when launching a business. The solopreneur starts a business so they can work for themselves, make extra money, and work on something they’re passionate about.

Solopreneurs often start a side hustle while working a regular job, hoping their business will take over their salary.

The entrepreneur generally starts a business for growth, scalability, and profit. They may also be driven by having an impact on a market.

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Entrepreneurs might start as solopreneurs in the beginning but with an aim to expand. They may also have an exit strategy in mind from the very beginning, whereas solopreneurs rarely start to sell the business.

Management

Solopreneurs don’t hire employees as they aim to manage all aspects of the business themselves. But, they might hire a freelancer, independent contractor, or virtual assistant for specific daily tasks.

The solopreneur doesn’t usually seek investments either, as their startups are self-funded.

Entrepreneurs will build a team of employees and seek investments so they can expand the business quickly.

Most entrepreneurs don’t want to be working in the business but rather focus on their vision and creative direction.

Focus

The focus of a solopreneur is primarily to create a lifestyle business. They might also want to achieve financial independence and work on things they love.

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Many solopreneurs are simply driven by their interests. For example, an artist might want to spend more time painting, so they research ways to monetize their work.

When their art business makes more money than their job, they can leave and focus on painting full-time. They’ve turned their hobby into a business.

Whereas the entrepreneur might have a passion for growth, innovation, impact, or for business itself. The businesses they start can be varied, and they don’t necessarily have to be passionate about their niche.

Pros and Cons of Solopreneurship

Like any venture, business model, or career choice, there are advantages and disadvantages.

Here’s what you need to know when becoming a solopreneur.

Solopreneurship Pros

  1. The introverts dream. Solopreneurship can be very appealing to introverts or those who like working alone.
  2. Total autonomy. You have complete control over business decisions, projects you work on, and the people you serve.
  3. Flexibility. It provides total freedom regarding the hours you work and your location.
  4. Low startup costs. Many solopreneurs can start with a social media account and free marketing tools like Substack.
  5. Passive income. There’s a lot of potential to earn passive income as a solopreneur. Here are some passive income ideas to look into.

Solopreneurship Cons

  1. Workload. Many roles are required to be a successful solopreneur. These include marketing, sales, accounting, and client satisfaction.
  2. Inconsistent income. Revenue can be slow and inconsistent in the beginning.
  3. Isolation. Running a business alone can get pretty lonely sometimes, even for introverts.
  4. Work-life imbalance. It can be hard to switch between work and play, especially when working from home.
  5. Financial responsibility. Financial management can be quite daunting for some people and may lead to failed startups when not managed well.

How to Become a Solopreneur

Here are 9 steps you can take to make the solopreneur journey a breeze.

1. Evaluate Your Skills

Solopreneurship is all about monetizing a skill or what you know. So, the first step is to know what you’re good at.

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This is harder than it seems because what we’re good at often comes naturally to us. Therefore, we don’t recognize our own talents.

It could be fixing your diet, graphic design, writing a novel, or dealing with stress.

Start by documenting your life and answering these questions:

  • What are you passionate about that you’ll never get bored with?
  • Have you achieved anything significant that came easy to you?
  • What do you spend the most money on?
  • What do your friends come to you for advice about?

Spend some time journalling or brainstorming things that come to you. Just try to keep it simple.

You don’t have to be an expert to be your own boss. Only a desire to help others who are a few steps behind you.

If you’re really stuck, you can choose one of the easiest online businesses to start to get you going.

2. Set Financial Goals

Next up is knowing how much income you want to make.

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Solopreneur financial goalsSolopreneur financial goals

Do you want to make a little extra on the side? Or do you want to replace your salary?

There’s no limit to how much you can make when starting an online business as a solopreneur.

But it’s still important to set business goals. Doing so will help you make better decisions and even choose a business model or product to sell.

You’ll want to establish short-term and long-term financial goals. That way, you’ll stay motivated and maintain focus.

3. Choose a Business Model

Your business model is how you deliver your products or services. Establishing one will give you clarity on the direction you can take.

It will also reveal how you’ll generate income, establish risk, and how you might scale if you want to.

We’ll take a deeper dive at specific business ideas later, but these are the main business models to choose from.

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  1. Service-based. Things like freelance writing or web design services.
  2. Content creator. Teaching through YouTube, blogs, or online courses.
  3. Coaching. Helping people achieve personal or professional goals.
  4. eCommerce. Selling physical or digital products.
  5. Developer. Launching web or mobile apps.

4. Identify Your Ideal Market

So you have an idea of what you’ll be offering and the business model to deliver it.

But now you need to find an audience who needs it. Skip this step, and you could sell something no one needs.

Market research validates what you have to sell and will help you clarify your offer.

It involves understanding the pain points of your target audience and crafting a compelling solution.

Here are some popular ways to perform market research today:

  1. Forums and communities: Join and engage in niche forums or communities like Facebook groups. Use Google to find these forums or the search feature on Facebook.
  2. Social media: Monitor conversations on social media sites like Twitter and Reddit. Search for niche-related tags to find the right people.
  3. Competitor analysis: Research your competitors to see what pain points they focus on. Analyze the copy on their website and social media channels to gather insights into your audience.
  4. Keyword research: Use tools like Google Keyword Planner or SEMRush to find out what your niche is searching for. This will help you understand what their needs and goals are.
  5. Start a community: Launch a free Facebook Group or community platform like Skool to get to know your audience on a deeper level.

Niching down will always help you find a more passionate audience, so try not to go too broad. You can also read our posts on the best niche markets to get some ideas.

5. Create a Business Plan

According to a study published in Small Business Economics, people who create a business plan are 152% more likely to launch their business .

Develop a business planDevelop a business plan

Another study revealed that companies that plan grow 30% faster than those that don’t plan.

The downfall when planning is that many solopreneurs can get caught up in all the details. However, it doesn’t have to take weeks or months or need to be perfect.

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What’s important is getting the fundamentals down on paper.

This notion template is a great place to start, or this Udemy course for a more comprehensive and guided approach.

6. Launch Your Brand

Now, you’ll want to define the identity of your brand. This includes the name, logo, and messaging to attract the right people to your business.

The easiest route is to use your name and start your business as a personal brand.

But if you intend on scaling your business or selling it as an entrepreneur, you might want to start a professional brand instead.

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Either way, start by brainstorming ideas and checking for domain availability and social media handles.

You might want to register your business legally at this point, too.

If you have design skills, a simple logo might be sufficient enough. You can also hire a designer on Upwork to design your logo and brand identity professionally.

Lastly, you’ll need to tailor your brand messaging to resonate with your audience. A great book on this subject is Building a StoryBrand by Donald Miller.

7. Establish an Online Presence

The next step to solopreneur success is forming a coherent online presence. These will be the places where you market yourself, publish content, and deliver your offerings.

Here are a few things you’ll need to set up:

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  1. A website: You can build a simple site using WordPress or Shopify if you sell products.
  2. Social media channels: Sign up and claim your social media handles on the main sites. These include Facebook, X, Instagram, Pinterest, Medium, and YouTube.
  3. Email list: Use ConvertKit or a newsletter service like Substack to start building an email list. The earlier you start this, the better.
  4. Blog: If you like writing, you can also start to publish articles that attract organic visitors through search engines.

You don’t have to be active on all these channels at once. Just set them up so no one else takes your username, then choose a channel your audience uses most.

As a solopreneur, it’s possible to grow your business by sticking to one channel.

8. Develop a Digital Marketing Strategy

Marketing is how you’ll raise awareness of the problems your niche experiences and how you can help solve them.

Solopreneur marketing strategySolopreneur marketing strategy

To do this effectively, you need a strategy.

You’ll want to decide which platform to spend most of your time on. As a solopreneur, there’s only you, so trying to juggle multiple channels will spread you thin.

The strategy is to publish content at each level of the funnel.

Using the AIDA formula is a good place to start:

A: Grab the audience’s Attention with well-crafted headlines
I: Create Interest by communicating pain points. This will help grow followers or subscribers.
D: Create Desire by emphasizing the desired state for potential customers.
A: Provide a call to Action to drive conversions and sales.

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You can check out the 1-Page Marketing Plan for this. It will help you define a comprehensive marketing strategy on a single page.

9. Never Stop Learning

Lastly, you’ll make your journey so much easier when you become a continuous learner and adopt a success mindset.

You can read the best audiobooks for business, take Udemy courses, or even join an online community.

Some great books for solopreneurs include The Lean Startup, Company of One, and Alex Hormozi’s books.

Solopreneur Business Ideas

There are tons of different types of businesses you can start as a solopreneur.

Choosing one will depend on your skills, passions, available resources, and market needs.

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Here’s a quick look at some one-person business ideas to give you some inspiration:

  • App developer: Creating mobile or web apps like habit trackers or even games.
  • Blogger: Publishing content on Medium, Quora, Twitter, or a WordPress blog.
  • Paid newsletter subscription: Sharing your insights and knowledge through a platform like Substack or Beehiiv.
  • Copywriter: Offering copywriting as a freelancer on Upwork on your website.
  • Digital products: Sell your knowledge in the form of digital products on Gumroad or Systeme.
  • eCommerce: Sell physical products through Amazon FBA, Etsy, or a Shopify store.
  • YouTuber: Share your knowledge and monetize with YouTube affiliate marketing and ads.
  • Start a community: Create a Skool community and charge a monthly subscription.

Solopreneur in Conclusion

Becoming a solopreneur has many advantages when starting a business. Unlike entrepreneurship, you get to work alone, choose your hours, and only work on things you love.

Don’t expect things to go perfectly, though. Achieving success in any business venture takes time and dedication.

If you want to connect with others on their solopreneur journey, consider joining the Niche Pursuits Community. You’ll get access to weekly calls from successful bloggers, YouTubers, and 7- and 8-figure digital business owners.



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