Why would an affiliate marketer do this?
I caution those who read Super Affiliate Handbook AGAINST affiliating with merchants that place affiliate links on their sites. Links out for which you WON’T get paid.
Fortunately, most merchants ‘get it’. They don’t cheat their affiliates in that way.
However, yesterday I ran across a relatively new form of deviant… an affiliate site posing as a merchant site.
OK, they do have a product (a cheap little ebook) to sell, so I guess that’s qualifies them as a ‘merchant’.
HOWEVER, the site makes money strictly as affiliate site.
There are affiliate links and Adsense throughout the site, yet there is virtually no mention of the ebook, EXCEPT when you click on their ‘Affiliate Program’ link.
When you join the program, your affiliate link drives traffic to the homepage. Of nearly 20 links on the homepage there is only a brief mention of – and a nearly invisible link to – the ebook.
Why would an affiliate marketer do this?
Why, it’s yet another trick in an attempt to scam Google.
Having an “Affiliate Program” link on your site supposedly gives it more legitimacy and therefore likelihood of higher rankings.
Now you know that in some cases the “Affiliate Program” link is a scam.
Beware the scammers!
Don’t join their programs and warn other affiliates through forums (like the NPT) and in your own blog.
Cheers ~ Ros
P.S. I teach ONLY ‘white hat’ sustainable affiliate business practices in the Super Affiliate Handbook. My techniques worked in 1998, still work brilliantly NOW and will continue to work into the future. 
About Rosalind Gardner
wow, didn’t know that, something to look out for….thanks, as usual Ros….
Hmmm…is THAT what’s really behind all these vendors who have “affiliate program” links on their site, and then when you click on the link it says something like “affiliate program coming soon” and they somehow never end up instituting that promised affiliate program. You email them about it, and they never have any information, never give any information, seem totally disinterested in recruiting a potential affiliate marketer…hmmm.
I tried to join one vendor’s affiliate program and was let in, then they never asked for taxpayer ID info, that was the first clue, and then they didn’t have any affiliate links, affiliate linking tools, no tracking mechanism, and when I asked them about it, they told me just do the regular links to us, we track everything and will keep track of who sends us traffic and pay accordingly. Yeah, right. I deleted everything on the spot.
But I have to say I did find one book vendor, sells new and used books, that does a similar thing, and the way they did it was very clever. I’ve actually bought hundreds of used books from them, they are a legitimate vendor, they do a good job when you purchase from them, and if you didn’t know anything about affiliate marketing, you’d never realize what was going on. For each page of product, this vendor uses their Amazon affiliate link to provide a “price comparison” with Amazon, if you click on the link to check the book price against Amazon, you’re taken to the product page on Amazon, and voila, the cookie gets placed. They also use their Amazon affiliate account to embed Amazon’s book reviews on their site, thereby placing Amazon customer reviews on their own site which might help sell their own inventory.
Its really quite ingenious, actually, they use the Amazon customer reviews to enhance the content of their own site, probably increasing their own sales, but for those who actually click on the links to compare the price, as long as they buy within 24 hours, the vendor may not get the sale, but they may well get the affiliate commission. But anyone joining their affiliate program may well be driving some traffic to their site only for that traffic to be diverted in turn to Amazon. They may well be losing a percentage of potential commissions.