Ok young Padawan. Here’s a larger post about morals in affiliate marketing.
Before we start, I’m no upholder of moral standards. You need to be your own. As you see in the header. Spam. I bend morals at will. Who am I to judge you? I can only judge myself.
Nonetheless I want to tell you a little story about morals today.
Lets start…
You might just have been started or are already longer in the affiliate marketing game. There are commissions to be earned everywhere. One of the most lucrative niches is in the iGaming niche, which is just a more nice name for nothing else than casino or gambling offers.
They advertise with a shiny world full of thrill, entertainment and money. For both, users and affiliates.
Today I stumbled upon a Tweet/Post where someone was talking about why he is into the iGaming industry as an affiliate. He named good reasons. Sadly the Tweet got deleted meanwhile, and replaced with a new one, which didn’t contain the same text.
In his Tweet the first reason was:
“1. Product is addictive.”
And this is exactly the reason why I went OUT of casino.
I decided to make this a bigger post. This one will be also quite personal.
Lets start with a little talk about niches in affiliate marketing.
Shady niches
Like in the offline world, everything gets sold online. Legit things like a new TV from Amazon but also fake products, stolen credit card data, access to bot nets. For everything there are affiliates ready to earn a commission.
There are plenty of ‘shady’ industries in affiliate marketing. For example, I once promoted Payday Loans. Those are small short term loans with interest rates almost being illegal.
Health, especially diet products aren’t any different. You are promoting snake oil that is without effect in the best case and harmful to the body in the worst case.
Health/Diet is different than selling bad china crap, fake products or just scamming people. You are taking more than just money.
Everything has a price tag
Back to the Payday Loans example. Here the ‘price tag’ is shown on the site when you apply for the loan. You know your interest rate. You know how much to pay back. You know it’s ridiculously high. If you blank out this fact, it’s your fault.
With gambling you don’t see the price tag initially. It’s not you loosing the money you deposited. You see the real price when it’s too late. The real price tag is addiction. The price is not having the control anymore, not having the power over your decisions anymore.
Sounds abstract. Lets dive deeper…
The dark side of gambling
I promoted casino offers too in the past. When you can drive traffic for whatever you want, you make no halt.
I saw people in my dashboard, depositing their salary at the beginning of each month and playing until everything was gone. Sometimes they added $2k, won up to $10k, but couldn’t stop. Played for days. All lost at the end. Next month the same. They always lost at the end.
That’s the business. Their loss is your win. You earn from that.
I repeat: You earn from the losses of others.
Still abstract? Lets dive even deeper.
The real price of gambling
I have a closed one who lost everything due to (gambling) addiction. I didn’t say more in the initial Tweet/post i made.
You want to know who that person is? It’s the mother of my two kids.
She was more busy loosing cash at gambling, first offline, later also online, than taking care of her own kids. It took her not only her money. It took her everything. She never came back.
Do you hear me?
It destroys families, persons and lives. There’s no turning back. Once that door is open, you are addicted for life. You can only try to learn to live and deal with your addiction. It’s no fun and your life will never be as careless as before. Every time you see a gambling store or an ad it rings a bell in your head.
Lets repeat: You earn from the misery of others.
You are earning from a persons downfall.
Morals
I’m no person of regrets. I don’t blame anyone. Everyone is responsible for her or his own actions. I am responsible for my actions. You are responsible for yours. I don’t want to be the one who judges.
You have to decide on your own. Take what I wrote into consideration. Make your own decision.
As being said earlier, everyone is responsible for his own actions. If someone signs up for a casino, it’s his initial choice. If someone takes cocaine, it was his choice. Nobody forces her or him to do that. If you won’t promote it, someone else will.
If you decide for yourself that you just promote the offer and it’s not your responsibility if someone signs up who shouldn’t, that’s perfectly fine.
The question you need to ask yourself is: Do you want to be part of something like this?
Do you believe this is a appropriate use of your energy and your god given abilities?
Like I said in a tweet longer ago, not everything is worth the money. You have to wake up and be able to still look in the mirror.
It’s a personal decision. I made mine, you make yours. No judging here. Everyone is responsible for his own actions.
Take care.
Until the next one.