

Ask HN: How do you get someone away from affiliate marketing? - bobdylan1

My dad's a long time hacker, but recently fell into this trap of get rich quick affiliate marketing.<p>My philosophy has always been to help people and do what you love. I emphasize offering real value to people, and I know everyone on HN tries to do the same. Basically scamming people and using immoral techniques to sell some useless product is something I want absolutely nothing to do with. It feels almost impossible to get through to someone once they're hooked.<p>Any advice?
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iamdave
Your suggestion that affiliate marketing is a "trap of get rich quick" that
"scams" people and uses "immoral techniques" smatters of generalizations and
inaccuracies. Like any industry, there are bad players. Affiliate marketing is
no exception, however there are people who build individual brands helping
local companies spread their marketing endeavors with affiliate style
marketing and are quite successful doing so with honest methods. I recommend
against throwing the baby out with the bath water and maybe sitting down with
your father and figuring out-with a bit more clarity-what he's _actually_
doing.

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bobdylan1
I just received this email. I'm pretty sure there's nothing honest in play
here.

>Yo! We just did a webinar about marketing with purchased email lists. Think
buying emails is legit? Wonder how many dead ones are in the list? They showed
buying 70,000 emails at $.005/each. Not much $, but the result was to send
them to an affiliate site, and hopefully get paid…..

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steventruong
You're missing his point. That's like saying if someone steals, everyone
steals. Affiliate marketing itself isn't bad. It's the type and what an
individual does.

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lvh
You're implying that anything sold through affiliate marketing is a "useless
product", marketed using "immortal techniques", and, in short, a "scam".

If he really likes it so much, and it's making him money, perhaps you could
convince him to sell honest products using honest techniques?

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bobdylan1
To clarify, no he's not making money. Few people ever do. The products are
more often than not worthless ebooks, but the real scam is the conmen that
lead you to believe it's easy, anyone can do it, and pay me $99 and I'll have
you earning thousands in the next few minutes.

>perhaps you could convince him to sell honest products using honest
techniques

Precisely what I'm after. It's hard to be convincing when my side of the
argument isn't offering "40000/month on autopilot!"

