The Scummiest Scam Affiliates

Today I would like to present to you the absolute worst type of scam-participating affiliate marketers: the ones that pretend to be your friend. These are people that tell you they are looking out for you to make sure you do not get ripped off or scammed, yet the programs they recommend are just the same as all the others.

These bottom-feeding affiliate marketers craft a 'sales pitch' around the idea that all of the grant programs out there are scams, except of course for the ones they 'reviewed' and deemed worthy of your minimal, no-risk investment. To the uninformed, the sites, blogs and PPC campaign landing pages they create may seem the genuine thing. Well they are not.

If it's your first time here, one of my first posts here is called Selling the Grant Scam, and it talks about how affiliate marketers willingly and knowingly participate in the grant money scam practices of scampanies in the US and abroad. Also, in the article A Closer Look at the Affiliate Connection I discussed the affiliate thing in more detail.

As a rule of thumb, any site that tries to sell you a grant kit is part of the scam. When they say they 'researched' all of the programs and picked the best three, don't believe a word of it. The people behind such affiliate sites really don't care what happens to you and your credit card after the sale; they are only in it for the commission money - YOUR MONEY.

It is affiliate marketing at its ugliest. The grant money scams by themselves are willfully deceptive and the affiliate marketers that play the trust card just kick it up a notch. They lie to your face about who they are, what they do, who they represent and most importantly about the fact that whatever it is that they are promoting is really a scam.

And I bet they sleep just fine at night, dreaming about raking in thousands upon thousands of dollars which they, through their carefully crafted sites and PPC campaigns, masterfully pried from the hands of the US Consumer.

Here is an example of the hoops that a low-life affiliate marketer will jump through:

Scam alert my a@#, unless he's talking about his own site

The above image is the home page of affiliate to scam site freegrantscams.com. The domain name implies that this site details grant scams to warn US consumers about them. The introductory paragraphs explain there's many scams out there and that one should be careful, but not to worry since they did research. Then they go on to recommend grant sites that are know scam sites.

As seen before, these affiliate marketers typically generate traffic to their sites by using PPC marketing campaigns using platforms such as Google Adwords. Look what happens when you type in 'grant scams' in Google:

PPC Ads triggered by 'grant scams' keyword search

The top two results are ads by affiliate marketers banking on people searching for the 'grant scams' keyword combo, and as use this as one of the target phrases in their PPC campaign.

(Oh and by the way, guess who clicks on those ads every time he sees them, in the name of 'grant scam research' ?)

Another method I discussed before is affiliate scam site promotion via EzineArticles. Here is one I just found when searching for 'grant scams':

Here is what the author, who apparently only has written about grants on EzineArticles, states in part of his 'article':

"Before you apply for a government grant, keep in mind that applications are free, especially government grants. In addition, remember the old saying "If it seems to be too good to be true - it most probably is!" Do not fall victim to government grants scams. Nothing of worth falls from the sky and governments, federal or state, do not award grants this way.

Keep away from Government Grant Scams! See what the specialists and others have to say regarding Government Grants, and apply with no fear of being scammed at[..]"

And then he links to his affiliate site 1stgrant.com, the usual type:

This site then points to several 'top programs' which are all the usual grant scam sites.

These are just some examples of how the lowliest of affiliate marketers earn their money, but there is plenty more; I'll keep posting about it whenever I see something that catches my eye.