An Open Letter to the US Affiliate Marketing Community

Is money more important for you than morals? Does the end always justify the means?

What if I ripped off your mother so I could buy a bigger house? Scammed your wife because I don't care if she needs the money for something urgent? Stole your kids' lunch because I was hungry?

If you shrugged at the above statements, then you're a lost soul. Go enjoy your money, and hopefully karma will bite you in the ass some day.

I do not believe, however, that many people would like either of the above one-liner scenarios. Even those that make money by referring unsuspecting US Consumers to grant scam sites, the oh-so-clever affiliate marketers out there that propagate the grant scam schemes for their own personal benefit.

Why do you do it?

af⋅fil⋅i⋅ate

to associate oneself; be intimately united in action or interest.

Do you associate yourself with ripping people off? Do you associate yourself with sneaky sign-ups buried in the fine print, sign-ups to monthly 'services' that are completely useless? Are you intimately united with the idea of selling snake oil to people at the end of their financial wits?

Or do you just don't care at all, as long as you make money?

I started this blog after seeing all these grant scam sites pop up left right up and under. The least bit of search showed (on sites like ripoffreport) that people are really being taken to the cleaners with these things. Many of the victims had no clue, no idea what they signed up for.

Many of the victims had hopes of some form of financial relief, fooled by false advertising and promises.

"Those people are stupid, I would never fall for these things!", you may say. Well then why willingly take part in the scam if you know it is one? Because you can? Because you like the easy money? Because it makes you feel superior?

And if you know it is a scam, why not use some of your type-A energy to inform people, to make life online and in the real world a little bit better for everyone?

Look at the state of our country. It is an economic mess the size of which we have not seen in a long time. People are struggling. People are losing their jobs, their homes. People are trying to get by on little money.

And you know very well that it is exactly these people that are the target of the scammers you affiliate yourself with for the sake of earning commission dollars.

Some of you jump through hoops of deceit to make people buy into your Spiel, setting up pages upon pages of fake 'research', 'recommendations' and 'ratings'. Some of you take it even further and 'warn' people about scams out there only to send them in the very same direction, using words such as 'consumer', 'trusted' and 'verified' in the domain names for your affiliate landing pages.

It saddens me to see so much effort being put into something that hurts others.

You don't know me, and I don't know you. But I am asking you to stop. Stop propagating this lie. Stop causing people financial distress. Stop messing with the financially weak.

It may be a brick in the road to economic recovery, it may be a small contribution to making our country a better place to live in, and who knows, it may also be something that makes you feel better than you felt in a long time.