Affiliate marketing strategies come in many shapes. Choosing your approach to traffic is one of the crucial steps in establishing your methods and the course of your campaigns. Many beginner affiliates choose to join a white hat performance marketing network. But, what does this mean exactly? Affie is here to introduce you to their inner workings in our white hat affiliate marketing 101 course.
White hat affiliate marketing 101: White Hat Offers
Choosing white hat offers means deciding to always follow the rules when it comes to traffic. To put it simply – you are following the laws of your country and the terms of service of your network and all other parties involved in the process. Transparency and legality are some of the most important reasons to join a white hat performance network.
Traffic monetization using exclusively white hat methods may seem slow and tedious, but you can rest assured you won‘t face any legal problems. Additionally, choosing not to cut corners is more efficient in the long run, as you will be able to use all the benefits of working with a traffic source instead of against it. In other words, whitehat methods mean
- higher potential pay
- better search engine ranking
- more conversions
White Hat Vs. Black Hat Performance Marketing
On the other hand, you can choose a black hat strategy and go against laws, policies and terms of service. To put it differently, using black hat methods means scamming people and lying to them to get their money. The most extreme cases of black hat marketing include lying about the product, phishing, or not delivering the product or service after the customers pay for it. Basically, going black hat means knowing what to avoid in order to get a chance to work with advertisers directly and going against it for profit.
It doesn‘t take a genius to realize why so many wannabe affiliates turn to black hat methods. Scamming doesn‘t take a lot of effort or investing a lot of money. If a person‘s morals aren‘t stopping them from being fraudulent, it is the obvious choice. Especially so if you compare it to hardworking affiliates who invest a lot of effort and constantly work on improving their campaigns.
Now we have to wonder – why aren‘t most people using black hat methods? Besides the obvious moral hurdles, the biggest disadvantage of blackhat affiliate marketing strategies is obviously the possibility of legal consequences. These can vary depending on the severity of your methods.
Another thing to look out for is your reputation. The vast majority of black hat offers can only last for a short period of time. Even if they turn out to be profitable, they aren‘t sustainable, and affiliates who chose them have to move on to another venture. This cycle repeats itself constantly, and those affiliates get a terrible reputation. Hence, they either have to quit or have many backup plans, which means investing more money. Finally, even if they do have the means to do so, their bad reputation will follow them. Thus, fewer and fewer people will fall for their scams.
What Affiliate Marketing Campaigns Can You Run Whitehat?
As you can see, even though white hat offers take more time and effort, getting your start in affiliate marketing the right way gives you more chances to start an actually successful and respected business and see it through.
Another great thing about choosing white hat tactics is that you will be able to implement them in almost every vertical. As long as you know the right way to use web analytics and similar tools, that is. Here are some of 2020‘s most lucrative verticals. You can make a significant amount of money while playing by the rules with them.
Gaming is mostly white hat. It also allows highly immersive and entertaining ads that showcase exactly how the game works. This makes both following the rules and creating a successful ad a lot easier.
Dating campaigns can use both white and black hat tactics. Still, as the vertical is always relevant and has something to offer no matter your target audience, it isn‘t hard to profit while being honest and refraining from overly aggressive marketing.
Lead generation is a great opportunity to profit and collaborate with different companies. Branching out and partaking in affiliate programs by drawing more customers to them can bring you a lot of money while following the rules.