Is affiliate marketing legit?

Passive income can feel like a dream when you’re running a business. You’re constantly crunching numbers, training staff, and most importantly? 

Finding potential customers to pump up your sales.

But Google Ads is expensive, SEO takes time, and you’re running out of cost-effective ways to find leads. 

You’ve heard of affiliate marketing and its high ROI potential — but you also worry about fake referrals, invalid clicks, and other types of scams that give the industry a bad rap. 

What gives? Is affiliate marketing legit, or is it all just a scam? 

Here at Tapfiliate, we help brands manage and track all the juicy clicks, conversions, and cash coming in from their affiliate programs. 

So our answer is YES! Affiliate marketing is legit. We’ll show you why with this guide on affiliate marketing examples, signs of fraud, and how to start your own affiliate program. 

What is affiliate marketing, and how does it work?

Affiliate marketing is a marketing tactic where brands partner with individuals (affiliates) that promote their products on their own channels for a commission. 

The relationship isn’t anything new. The retail world has paid commissions on sales for ages. But the union between the concept of affiliate marketing and the technological revolution has transformed that relationship. 

For starters, anyone can start an affiliate business. And affiliates don’t have to go out and sell products in person. All they have to do is promote a brand’s products on their online blog, website, or social media channel. 

Brands have continued to spend more and more on affiliate marketing, going from just over $1 billion in 2010 to over $8 billion in 2022. 

Yet affiliates aren’t employees or contractors — indeed, all they make is a commission. This is one of the most prominent benefits of affiliate marketing for brands — no hourly or base pay is required. Affiliates are completely independent, though brands may have specific guidelines in place for how affiliates can market their products. 

Conversion rates, here we come! But how does it work? It goes something like this: 

• You have a business. 
• You recruit affiliates to promote your business on their digital marketing channels. 
• You train them and provide them with branded materials to help their process. 
• You track how much traffic or transactions each affiliate brings your business with a unique affiliate link. 
• You pay a commission to each affiliate that brings you customer action. 
• You pay performance bonuses to engage your affiliates. 

Sounds great, right? Then why all the fuss about wasted affiliate marketing spend, fake leads, and fraudulent sales?

Why does affiliate marketing have a bad reputation?

Yes, we’ve heard the overgeneralized pyramid schemes attributed to affiliate marketing. But its bad rep is a bit more complicated than that. 

Here’s the thing: affiliate marketing is about relationships. So when businesses get burned with the wrong relationships, it leaves a sour taste. But how often does that happen? If we’re talking about straight-up fraudulent activity? Nearly 10% of all affiliate transactions. Yeesh. 

Here are some common affiliate scams and general cons that give the affiliate marketing industry a bad reputation: 

• Click spam: Notice a sudden surge of clicks that feel too good to be true? Well, it might be. Click spam is a type of fraud where an affiliate uses malware to give the impression of website hits. If you pay per web view, you could be shelling out a ton of affiliate income for what’s really a collection of fraudulent leads. And they won’t ever amount to conversions or genuine engagement. 

• Cookie stuffing and spoof traffic: Cookies help you track where affiliate traffic and conversions are coming from. Then, you can attribute a commission to the affiliates bringing you the action. But some affiliates conduct “cookie stuffing” schemes that make it look like you’re getting traffic when you really aren’t. In reality, these cookies could simply be on public computers. 

• Pay-to-join programs: If a potential affiliate looks like they have solid web presence and revenue, you might feel tempted to snag them at any cost. But if you have to pay for the relationship (before they even make a sale), that kind of goes against the very basics of affiliate marketing. In most cases? These pay-to-join programs end up being affiliate frauds. 

• High competition: Fraud isn’t the only risk with affiliate marketing. Since this marketing tactic is so accessible, you’re faced with endless competition. Your competitors might have access to affiliates with a greater web presence. In turn, your affiliates could abandon your partnership with minimal recourse if they find a better affiliate commission elsewhere. Finally, the sheer number of players in the affiliate marketing space gives rise to some over-promisers. Any get-rich-quick-schemes don’t work in this field. 

• Less control over affiliates: At the end of the day, you’re working with a partner — not an employee or contractor. This means that you have little control over how affiliates actually represent your brand, especially if you have hundreds or thousands of auto-approved affiliates. Even if they go against your policies or guidelines, it’s time-consuming and overall difficult to bring them to justice. One red flag to look for? Questionable contact information — this might mean a potential affiliate is trying to hide their identity. 

Our take? Every industry has bad apples — and the affiliate marketing industry is no different. As a brand, you should be diligent in vetting any business partner, including affiliates. This might look like checking for a regularly updated website, social media history, and minimum number of sales or impressions from their audience. 

Still, affiliate marketing is a legitimate business model that brings tons of brands insane revenue. But the best defense against affiliate marketing fraud? Keeping your eyes on performance and using fraud detection tools. 

Tapfiliate features top-of-the-line tracking tech to attribute every dollar earned to each affiliate. Our dashboard also gives you quick overviews or detailed filtration options to dive deep into performance insights. The cherry on top? Tapfiliate’s fraud measures — a combination of checks and balances like:

• Blacklisting attributes
• Comparing clicks and conversion attributes
• Sliding window checks
• Deduplication efforts
• Flagged purchases with affiliate IP address

Still, 100% prevention just isn’t possible. But even with one or two slips, affiliate marketing campaigns generate serious ROI for the brands with a solid strategy. 

Is affiliate marketing a legit business?

Absolutely. Affiliate marketing is a cost-effective way for brands to generate leads, maximize revenue, and meet business goals. 

Let’s put it this way: if affiliate marketing wasn’t a legit business, Tapfiliate wouldn’t be in business! But we have 2,000+ brands that rely on our software to help manage their successful affiliate marketing programs. 

If you still haven’t dipped your toes in the affiliate marketing market, let us help you ease in. We’ll show you a few stellar examples of both legitimate brands and affiliates making money from affiliate marketing. 

Examples of brands that use affiliate marketing

So you might be expecting a long list of marketing agencies and retail shops — that’s the only industry that could use affiliate marketing, right?

Wrong! Affiliate marketing spans every industry, and is becoming increasingly popular every year. We’ll show you a just a few brands with programs across different fields. 

DEGIRO (Finance)

DEGIRO is an accessible online retail broker platform that anyone in Europe can use to make stock trades and investments. Founded in 2013, the company has offices in Frankfurt, Amsterdam, and Bulgaria, and uses its affiliate program to get closer to its goal of 8 million clients by 2026. 

DEGIRO is one of Tapfiliate’s happy clients and success stories, citing significant business value reaped after using our software. 

HostGator (Web Hosting)

Do you have a business website? You probably use a web host like WordPress, Squarespace, or HostGator. 

Founded over 20 years ago, HostGator has been in the web hosting and domain building bizz for enough time to know their target audience. And they came to the conclusion that they needed to leverage affiliates to find them — even if it costs $65 per signup, it’s worth it. 

Grayton (retail/ecommerce)

Are you in the luxury retail business? Or ecommerce? You might take a note or two from Grayton’s playbook. The luxury watch giant garners over 100k in monthly traffic hits. We’ll bet a good chunk comes from their affiliate program, which awards affiliates a generous 20% per sale. 

Looking for more brands that have legitimate affiliate programs? Just check their business website and scroll to the footer. Chances are, they’ll have a web page linked there, like Adidas (under Company Info):

Now, what do affiliate links look like in action? We’ll explore a few examples of legit affiliate marketers next!

Examples of legit affiliate marketers

There isn’t just one type of affiliate marketing or marketer. You might approve an influencer to your affiliate program because you know your target audience spends a lot of time on Instagram. Similarly, you might pick a coupon website because your audience is always looking for a deal. 

We’ll look at a few different types of affiliate marketers, starting with one of the most popular: the blogger. 

World Travel Family (Travel Blog)

Alyson Long has over 20 years of experience in the travel world and specializes in helping other families with their travel adventures. She posts about her experiences traveling across the globe with her family on her World Travel Family blog. She also shares helpful articles about places to see, things to eat, and items to assist your travels. 

Take this example:

A blog article about travel essentials offers endless opportunities for affiliate links. One of Alyson’s choice affiliate products is from the Amazon Associate’s Program: the Kindle.

See those links? Anyone who clicks them and buys the mentioned product within Amazon’s cookie window will result in a commission for Alyson. 

RetailMeNot (Coupon Affiliate Website)

Ever scored a fashion coupon on RetailMeNot? The coupon website is also a cornucopia of affiliate links for many different partners. Just this strip of deals alone reveals five partnerships, though we estimate this affiliate website has hundreds: 

Small note — coupon sites tend to get a ton of traffic. This is a serious bargaining chip that usually garners them higher commission rates. Still, you have other options for affiliate partners. Next up? The modern social media guru. 

Ryan Carter (Fitness Influencer)

Yes, he’s a nutritionist and coach — but he’s also an affiliate marketer. Ryan Carter posts helpful Reels, photo slides, and general health content for his audience of 434,000:

But if you look at his “Store” highlights in his stories, you’re met with a ton of product promotions and unique discount codes, like these blue light glasses:

Discount codes, or coupon codes, are a popular way to engage your affiliate audiences. Sure, it might feel like an extra hit on top of the affiliate commission you have to pay. But if you track your coupon codes with Tapfiliate, you’ll be able to visualize how much money each unique coupon code (and affiliate) brings in. From what we’ve seen, it’s often worth it. 

Why is affiliate marketing so popular with brands?

Will every affiliate help you surpass your revenue goals? Not always. 

Are there dishonest affiliates out there? Yes. Like every industry, this one has a few bad apples. 

But ask yourself: 

• Why do 81% of advertisers (brands) leverage affiliate marketing?
• How does affiliate marketing generate an average 12:1 return on ad spend? 
• Why did brands spend over $8 billion on affiliate marketing in the US alone?

Affiliate marketing brings in serious revenue, consistent growth, and improved brand relationships with customers. The best part? It doesn’t require an upfront investment — at least not until you actually make a sale. 

How you can start your own affiliate program

Bottom line? Yes, affiliate marketing is a legit business model! You can make tons of money through it with a fraction of the investment required from other marketing tactics. 

If you’re ready to find success in affiliate marketing, it’s time to launch your brand’s very own affiliate program. 

How? The easiest way is through Tapfiliate. 

We’ve helped brands not only manage operations and performance for their programs, but we’ve also helped our clients launch brand new affiliate programs! It’s as easy as installing our software, choosing a subdomain, and setting up payout method, currency, commission structures, and all the other juicy details we’ll help you with along the way. 

Start your 14-day trial with Tapfiliate today!