Author: Rosalind Gardner

What could be better than an opportunity to make money using the power of affiliate marketing, while avoiding the hassle of having to build a site or pay to host your domain? Wouldn't it also be wonderful to have someone else do the work of sending traffic to your site?

Basically, you just sit back and wait for those huge commission checks to roll in.

Sound too good to be true? Good, because you guessed it. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

I'm referring to affiliate 'links' opportunity sites that are becoming increasingly popular. 'All' you have to do is promote the site....

In these schemes, you are given a free site into which you insert your affiliate link. That link becomes the 'featured link' on your site. Featured link? Picture a site like Yahoo!, then try to pick out one link as being featured. Can't do it, can you?

As the owner of a fr*ee site, you also earn a paltry commission when you sell one of these sites to someone else. Earning a commission on the sale of a product or service from which no one benefits sounds like ML*M to me.

Now here's the good part. For a 'small fee' the company promises to do 'all the work' of building masses of traffic to your affiliate site.

Oh wait. Before you can earn commissions from those links, you'll have to JOIN all those programs first. Until then, the links belong to the person who gave you the fr*ee site, and any sales made from those links will be credited to him, not you.

Considering those sites typically consist of hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of links to various affiliate programs, it's starting to look like you're going to have to do some work, doesn't it?

Do you really want to pay the 'small fee' of fifty or sixty dollars a month for the privilege of generating commissions for someone else? Instead, you could buy a web site template for twenty bucks that looks a hundred times nicer than the affiliate links site design. Then you pay ten bucks a month to host your own site and join all the same affiliate programs.

Actually, you probably wouldn't want to join all the same programs. Many of these affiliate links lead to sites and products that you wouldn't want to buy yourself. Do you want to risk your business reputation by offering them to your site's visitors?

Don't forget that the same offer is made to thousands of people every day, each of them looking for the same magic bullet - the quick and easy business opportunity. That means that there are copies of 'your' site all over the web, and more coming online everyday. So much for being unique.

Not having a niche has another disadvantage. How many surfers will find your flea market affiliate link site when they are searching for 'handheld computer' or 'treadmills'? Approximately none. Niche sites get ranked by the search engines while flea markets don't get found.

All in all, these 'opportunities' are a waste of time and money, and benefit only the scheme's originator.

Real affiliate marketing opportunities abound, and many have
excellent potential for earning serious income. Thousands of
affiliate marketers enjoy very large incomes by promoting
merchant programs and products.

While they avoid the hassles of carrying inventory, order
processing and customer service - super affiliates do not avoid
effort.

They know that success comes from investing time, effort and the
forging of one's own path.

In other words, do the work, reap the rewards.