Ask HN: How do you get someone away from affiliate marketing?

2 points by bobdylan1 13 years ago | 5 comments

My dad's a long time hacker, but recently fell into this trap of get rich quick affiliate marketing.

My philosophy has always been to help people and do what you love. I emphasize offering real value to people, and I know everyone on HN tries to do the same. Basically scamming people and using immoral techniques to sell some useless product is something I want absolutely nothing to do with. It feels almost impossible to get through to someone once they're hooked.

Any advice?

iamdave 13 years ago |

Your suggestion that affiliate marketing is a "trap of get rich quick" that "scams" people and uses "immoral techniques" smatters of generalizations and inaccuracies. Like any industry, there are bad players. Affiliate marketing is no exception, however there are people who build individual brands helping local companies spread their marketing endeavors with affiliate style marketing and are quite successful doing so with honest methods. I recommend against throwing the baby out with the bath water and maybe sitting down with your father and figuring out-with a bit more clarity-what he's actually doing.

bobdylan1 13 years ago | |

I just received this email. I'm pretty sure there's nothing honest in play here.

>Yo! We just did a webinar about marketing with purchased email lists. Think buying emails is legit? Wonder how many dead ones are in the list? They showed buying 70,000 emails at $.005/each. Not much $, but the result was to send them to an affiliate site, and hopefully get paid…..

steventruong 13 years ago | | |

You're missing his point. That's like saying if someone steals, everyone steals. Affiliate marketing itself isn't bad. It's the type and what an individual does.

lvh 13 years ago |

You're implying that anything sold through affiliate marketing is a "useless product", marketed using "immortal techniques", and, in short, a "scam".

If he really likes it so much, and it's making him money, perhaps you could convince him to sell honest products using honest techniques?

bobdylan1 13 years ago | |

To clarify, no he's not making money. Few people ever do. The products are more often than not worthless ebooks, but the real scam is the conmen that lead you to believe it's easy, anyone can do it, and pay me $99 and I'll have you earning thousands in the next few minutes.

>perhaps you could convince him to sell honest products using honest techniques

Precisely what I'm after. It's hard to be convincing when my side of the argument isn't offering "40000/month on autopilot!"