All products in affiliate marketing marketplaces are legit – right?

When we go to a marketplace to find a product supporting our niche it all seems okay doesn’t it? We look for those related to our niche and then pick the one or ones which have a good gravity score and good commission. Next we go to the web site of the product and check it out. If all looks good we are set to go. We get the affiliate link, update our web site and wait for the money to come in – maybe a blog post as well is required. However there is a possibility that something other than money may come your way which you might not appreciate.

I was doing this product picking yesterday afternoon, and I have an additional step which I just wanted to ensure that it is not just me that does it, because all of us should do it even if we still go on with the product.

The step is very simple - go to the web and type in:

is (your product name ) a scam, or is (your product name) legit.

Then pick out the reviews that you see for the product and go for the negative or scam ones. Spend time reading theses.

Two reasons, there are genuine reviews and scam reviews (meaning reviews put up by people wishing to sell the product even though it is a scam).

Why should you bother with this (if you aren’t already)?

I think you should do this for the sake of your own reputation and site reputation. If it gets round that your site is peddling scam materials then you (your site), may get a negative review as well and you don’t want that do you?

Yesterday I searched three products this way which looked good to me at first review, but the actual web reviews came back and told me the claims were false and the product did not work and even in one case that the product was dangerous! These reviews were including material from official sources as well so on the basis of probabilities I have to err on the side of caution. So guess what - these three products are not being promoted by me!

What I have done is to re-organise my product picking process in the following way.

1. Choose a product set (a number of those products supporting the niche I am promoting) .

2. Get the web address of the products.

3. Do the “scam” search first because this tells you if the particular product is worth pursuing and gives you details of the product from a buyers perspective.

4. Only if it passes this test do I then go to the actual web site of the product and review the materials that the buyer will see.

5. There is another reason for doing the review this way – often the actual product site has a video with a claim that it is only 7 minutes long and one I watched yesterday was actually 16 minutes long – why watch this if it is a scam or not legit?

Hope this helps because none of us wants to be targeted for selling items which are not legitimate do we?

This blog post may simply show how naïve I was in initially expecting all products in marketplaces to be legit.
Or it may just show that my new approach is one worth thinking about – I will leave you to decide.

Happy product picking,

Hudson