So last night I was up all night with my allergies, didn’t get to sleep until 7:30am. In that time period I got up and took a shower, and started to really think about my life, and affiliate marketing. I started thinking about something I had completely avoided thinking about, because I knew it would change my perspective on the industry, and knew it would also severely negatively affect my income.

Whether we like to admit the fact or not, A LOT of business in affiliate marketing completely scams and screws people over; and we’re the guys in the background making a profit from it. I started thinking about the most popular niches out there and the effect it had on the hundreds of thousands of people signing up for these offers. I myself have promoted these offers, and even was currently promoting them, until now. We completely take for granted all the money we make online, and the lengths we’ll go to to make that money sometimes. Let’s just look at a few of the popular niches out there today…

Payday Loans

Payday loans are one of the biggest verticals in the financial sector. I personally know affiliates making over $30k/day on payday loans, and I myself have gotten into them quite a bit. What is a payday loan? Simply put, a person in desperate need (here comes the first moral issue, targeting people who are desperate for money) signs up for a loan. When he doesn’t pay the loan back, he’s charged 400% in interest and ends up being in debt for years. Rather then rambling on about it, I’ll just quote some real testimonials I searched and found last night.

Small Loans, a predatory lender owned by Money Tree, Inc, gave a $200 “payday loan” to a disabled, elderly, illiterate man and thereafter took in his benefits check for him and paid him a small “allowance” out of it, less the money they deducted as “repayment” on the loan. All told, they took thousands from the man over a period of years, bleeding him so badly that he ended up homeless, begging for power to run the machine that treated his chronic lung infection.

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Mr. Milford is chronically broke because each month, in what he calls “my ritual,” he travels 30 miles to Gallup [New Mexico] and visits 16 storefront money-lending shops. Mr. Milford, who is 59 and receives a civil service pension and veteran’s disability benefits, doles out some $1,500 monthly to the lenders just to cover the interest on what he had intended several years ago to be short-term “payday loans.”

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Sure most of these people are stupid, but can we use that as a legitimate excuse to ruin their lives? Hell no. Payday loans completely screw people over, and for this argument’s sake we’re going to disregard idiots using it for gambling debt or something like that, because either way we’re still harming thousands of good people.

Green Tea/Acai Berry Diet Pills

The green tea/acai phenomenon is huge right now in affiliate marketing. There’s ads all over Facebook urging overweight people that they can really lose weight for free with the help of green tea. The fact alone that we’re leading these people to believe that drinking green tea is going to make them lose fat is bullshit. The sites are filled with fake testimonials and people even pose as fat chicks to get conversions. It gets worse though, they think they’re paying $3.95 to get a free trial bottle, but in the fine print they opt-in to be sent a bottle a month if they don’t cancel within 7 days. These assholes charge $90 for a 1 month supply bottle and just rebill the persons credit card every month. Most people don’t realize it until they’ve been hit a couple times and paid $200 bucks and gotten crappy pills that didn’t help anyways. What makes it worse is that these places don’t pick up their customer support number, don’t respond to emails, and don’t try to every provide ANY help to the poor suckers that were charged. I’ve bought this stuff to examine it myself, and it’s a crappy little bottle in a small plastic wrap that gets mailed to you. Do you know how much it costs the advertiser to produce a bottle of this shit? UNDER $1.00. Trust me, in the past I looked into doing it myself. They charge people $90 for something that cost them a buck, and then upsell them on 10 other crappy products that don’t work.

I took the week’s supply…felt no different…and said “oh well…I’ve done worse things with $3.99.”

I know you’re waiting for the other show to hit the ground and duck…here it comes!

I get a package in the mail with a bottle of 60 pills. I go on line and look at my credit card and they have charged my card an additional $74.99!!!!!!

First I called the c/c company and am disputing the charge but I know I will lose. I contacted Performance Products USA at acai.performanceproductsusa.com and was refered to their webpage buried among millions with a click on accept terms which has a negative marketing plan and they will continue to hit my card for $74.99 until I opt out of the program.

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I used the sample GreenTeaLLC sent for 4.99 they claim I signed a contract to take 84.90 a month for their Product I did not! It does not work it is a scam.

I called the told them to cancel any further orders.

They have charged me for three orders 2 i didnot

receive.I was told they will only refund 60 dollars.

THey were supposed to stop taking the money from

my Acct. But Haven’t. I received my bank statement

and they taken another 84.90 out I am very angry

what can I Do ?

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Ringtones/Crush/Mobile

I don’t even really have to go into ringtones and mobile stuff because everybody knows they’re deceptive. Again these people are idiots for reading the text that says $9.99/month or $2.99/day, but either way we’re taking advantage of them because they just read the PIN and confirm it. I did ringtones for a long time, who hasn’t tried them? Sure they’re the least harmful of any of the other offers I’ve mentioned, but it’s still the principle of ripping people off. Crush offers advertise “You have (2) new crushes!”, so you sign up to find out and just get a retarded horoscope subscription service.

Flycell, a NY company, billed me $20 a month on my cell phone bill for four months (total $80). By the time I tracked down who was billing me, I contacted them and told them I never asked for or received any service from them (I don’t even know what they do) and asked for a refund. They refused.

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