A typical format for an affiliate page would be a review site comparing 3-10 products, with one product getting the best rating (e.g. 5 star) and another product getting a mediocre or bad rating (e.g. 2-3 stars).  Making all the products 5 stars doesn’t work because people will pick up on that.  Two-sided reviews tend to be more effective.

The product that makes the affiliate marketer the most money gets the top spot, followed by the next most profitable, etc. etc.

So do these products really work?  I don’t know because I’m not a woman or a dermatologist.  But I can tell you that you need to be very careful when it comes to these products because a lot of deceptive practices are used to market them.  Here are a few of them:

Fake comments

Some sites will add fake comments from “visitors” to add an element of social proof.  We tend to be more likely to do something if everybody else is doing it too.  If this trick didn’t work, affiliate marketers wouldn’t be using it.

The following example is from wrinkleserased.com/lifecell-skin-cream/.  In this particular case, all the commenters’ websites point to http://none/.  Clearly these aren’t real comments because real people won’t post the same broken link.  This is a case where the affiliate marketer didn’t do a good job at making the comments look realistic.

Geo-targeting

Some websites will also personalize the landing page to its visitors so that the author of the page appears to be from the same city.  For example, Suppose I go to the site riyawrinklefree.com and I am browsing the Net from Toronto, Ontario (ON).

I see the following comment on the site:

This is performed by a Javascript on that site.  (Disabling Javascript will cause that script to not work and show blanks instead.)

What a coincidence!! I'm from <b>
                          <script src="http://j.maxmind.com/app/geoip.js"></script><script type="text/javascript"><!--
document.write(geoip_city());
// --></script>, <script type="text/javascript"><!--
document.write(geoip_region());
// --></script> </b>too! How long did it take to ship?

Sneaky bastards.

Appeal to authority

A lot of these sites will post logos of major media outlets on their site (e.g. ABC, CBS, New York Times, CBS, National Post, etc.) to give their product some credibility.  But chances are, none of these media outlets talk about the specific product being sold.

Similar appeals are made to celebrities and to TV personalities such as Oprah and Dr. Oz.  Affiliate marketers will find weak excuses to claim a connection to make the product sound more credible.

Some other products in this space

• Lifecell
• Dermajuv
• Belisi RX
• Revitol
• Athene 7 minute facelift
• Alphaderma CE
• Strivectin SD
• Freeze 24/7
• Murad Resurgence
• Hydroderm
• And many more

Be careful out there!

Let’s look at one affiliate site I found by searching for “weight loss”.  The URL is http://www.laurasdietsuccess.com/gca1/index.php
This site tries to sell the ThermothinPlus with Acai and Colon Cleanse products.

1- Geotargeting

The website is targeted specifically to the visitor’s location, in this case Toronto.  The affiliate marketer is hoping that visitors will relate more to somebody from their own city.

If you visit the website from a different IP address, you will actually get a totally different site.  In the alternate version of the site, the “Laura Johnson” character (probably the affiliate marketer pretending to be a fat chick) is apparently somebody who has created a weight loss system, not some fake blogger recommending a product that “worked” for her.

2- Images likely made up

Affiliate marketers usually pull images from Google Images or sxc.hu because it’s a way to quickly put something together (they are always tinkering with their webpages to figure out what will convert better).  In this case I couldn’t figure out where the images came from.  But it’s highly likely that the images are of different people.

Firstly, in the before/after comparison, anybody who loses such significant weight will likely have excess, flabby skin. When people lose a lot of weight, they don’t lose the skin.  Trying Google images on “weight loss loose skin”.

Also, the page shows another set of before/after pictures.  But the “after” picture in that set does not match the earlier set- there’s no way that the cute brunette sitting on that bed is the same person as the one pictured below.  The flab does not fit the other.

Bottom line: it’s very likely that these are all different people.

3- The site claims that 46 pounds was lost… but the first sett of pictures shows a much more dramatic weight loss.

4- To gain credibility, the site points out that the product was endorsed by Dr. Oz on the Rachel Ray show.  Affiliate marketers will try to associate the product with authoritative or trustworthy sources in order to induce visitors into buying.  Dr. Oz probably never endorsed the weight loss products in question.

5- The site is a “blog”.

The marketer is trying to gain the visitor’s trust.  The site is masquerading as a blog where the blogger relates her own experience about a particular product in a way that appears less biased than a hard-sell (which don’t work).

It should be obvious that the site is a blog only in appearance.  There is no other content on the site.  When you try to navigate away from the page, a pop-up is thrown up that makes a last-ditch attempt at converting the visitor.

6- The site was updated this month.

If you look in the HTML code of the website, there is a Javascript that changes the text to the current month.

—

Other tricks in the text of the website:

- The author talks about her experiences in a way that the target audience would/might relate to.

I tried all the “brand-name” diets like Atkins, South Beach, cabbage (my least favorite) soup, lemon juice. I even tried weight management plans like Weight Watches – the food was horrible! I eventually gave up. I stopped going out with friends. I felt ugly. I started eating more and more because I just didn’t care. I was in a downward spiral.

There’s a lot of people out there (fat and thin, male and female) who are very insecure about their weight.  They would probably relate well to other insecure people.  They would also have the shared experience of trying diets that don’t work.

Act soon!!!

The first part of the page is designed to get the visitor interested (”this worked for me” / “this can make you thin”) and to make the visitor trust the blogger.

Halfway into the page, there is copy that makes it appear as if the visitor’s chance of getting a deal on the weight loss products is disappearing.

Please do also make sure to order those free packages right now. Because the ThermothinPlus Free Trial Offer is expiring on July 31, 2009 and the Colon Cleanse Free Trial is expiring on July 31, 2009! So make sure to get yours before they run out of stock!

The marketer is trying to get the visitor to act quickly and not carefully research the purchase.  Of course, there is a Javascript on the page that keeps updating the date to whatever the current date is.

Social Proof

At the end of the blog, there are a bunch of comments left by the blog’s “readers”.  This may be an attempt to use social proof.  People are more inclined to do something if everybody else is doing it.

Choice of weight loss products

Affiliate marketers will promote the products with the best payouts, which tends to be the products with the highest margins.  It costs less than a dollar to make a bottle full of pills.

Do the products actually work? It’s extremely unlikely.

Are people really dumb enough to fall for this stuff?

You might be asking yourself that.  Keep in mind that while most people are smart enough to be skeptical, there are people out there who are extremely insecure about their weight.  So insecure that they will try a lot of things to be skinny.  And many anorexics don’t even realize that they aren’t fat.

It’s sad that affiliate marketers prey on these people… but that is what they do.  And it works. There is also a lot of money to be made.  Some marketers make six to seven figures a year doing affiliate marketing.

No honour among thieves

Another practice among affiliate marketers is to simply copy somebody else’s campaign.  Hence, Sandra’s diet blog.  However, the copycat didn’t do a very good job as their geotargeting failed and left blanks on the blog page.  Oops.

The sinister thing about affiliate marketing on the Internet is that some marketers will say ANYTHING to make a sale.  Some of them will engage in deceptive practices like “independent” review sites.  Don’t get suckered by these sites as their goal is to make as much money as possible rather than providing useful information.  And in some cases, the marketers putting up these sites haven’t even used the products or services they are marketing.

How to spot affiliate links

To check for an affiliate link, move your mouse cursor over the link and look at the URL that is displayed by your web browser in the lower part of your screen. You should see the following URL for the previous link:

http://www.somemanufacturer.com/BI/1234/KBID/5678

The codes /BI/1234/KBID/5678 at the end of the link identify the affiliate marketer’s account (1234 and 5678 are made up numbers).

Other affiliate links look like the following:

http://affiliatename.cybersam.hop.clickbank.net (Anything with clickbank in it is probably an affiliate link.)

http://affiliates.opienetwork.com/ez/abcdefgh/

http://www.hostmonster.com/track/opie/affiliateAccountName

http://www.tkqlhce.com/click-1234567-12345678 (commission junction link; will redirect to the retailer’s website.)

http://www.fatcow.com/join/index.bml?AffID=1234567

Unfortuantely, there are ways for affiliates to cloak their links to make them hard to spot. To spot those links, you can download a Firefox add-on called Live HTTP headers.  The add-on will let you spot the sequence of re-directs and show you all the URLs, which may contain the affiliate link.  Fortunately, most affiliate marketers aren’t bothering to cloak their links.

Another way of spotting fake review sites is if you found the site through paid advertising. Those who pay for advertising (e.g. sponsored links in Google) is looking to make money.

But be careful!  Not all shill marketers have affiliate links on their website!  Many companies have employees write positive reviews while posing under fake identities.  Some marketers are crafty and will hide their tracks, e.g. by not using affiliate links.  Sometimes, sloppy fake reviews can be detected if the marketer does not write natural-sounding reviews or does not cover their tracks completely (e.g. uses same IP, IP does not match their stated location, etc.).  However, there is little that can be done to prevent a good shill from posting positive fake reviews.