I’m just going to come out and preface this article by saying that I make more than half of my income from affiliate marketing. So, I don’t hate affiliate marketing—I actually love affiliate marketing.

In fact, if you scroll back and look on my other sites, I’ve put out probably over a hundred articles on affiliate marketing and how to do it over the last seven years.

But in this article, I want to focus on the current state of affiliate marketing. Particularly, I want to focus on the way it’s being marketed to new affiliate marketers and people that are just getting started.

I want you to come into this with your eyes wide open, understanding what’s real about it and why someone is talking to you about it in the way they are.

I can almost guarantee, if you’re new to affiliate marketing, that about 95% of you are being approached exactly the way I’m going to show you in this article.

So, let’s back up real quick. Even if you’re a veteran affiliate marketer, there’s probably some stuff you don’t know about the affiliate marketing industry.

Let’s go back to the beginning, when someone named William Tobin opened an online flower shop in 1989—which, incidentally, is the year I was born. That feels like a long time ago! If I’m being fully honest, I don’t think I even realized the internet really existed back then. But William Tobin did, and he created an online flower shop.

Soon after that, he was actually the first person to figure out the idea of online affiliate marketing. Most people don’t know about him because, in 1996, Amazon launched their affiliate program—and that’s when things really exploded for the affiliate marketing industry.

At this point, anyone could go to the Amazon page, sign up as an affiliate, and start posting their links online. It was the Wild West of the internet. People could start making money and getting paid. If you look at it, this is what affiliate marketing was and how it was initially done.

We’ve got businesses that need leads and customers to come to their site, interested in their products. They get affiliates to go out and promote their products. It was a beautiful system for everybody. The company wouldn’t actually pay the affiliates unless someone clicked their link and purchased.

This meant there was little financial risk for affiliates—mostly just time—and customers could find products that helped them. It was a win-win situation across the board.

Now, I want to fast forward to 2014. Nearly 20 years later, a lot had changed. Social media had launched. The internet was widely used, no longer making weird sounds when you connected to it. Then, someone started a company called “My Online Business Education,” also known as MOBE.

Leave a comment if you’ve heard of that! If you’re a veteran affiliate marketer, let me know in the comments below. This was supposed to be an information company teaching you how to start an online business and make money.

They offered low-cost entry products, but once you were in, they’d start hitting you with high-ticket offers, sometimes tens of thousands of dollars for coaching and educational packages.

Here’s where things got sticky. You’d purchase these MOBE products, and they’d primarily teach you to be an affiliate marketer to promote that same course. It became a vicious cycle. You’d promote the product, which just taught others how to promote the product.

This lack of a real core product created issues. The system only benefited the people at the top of the chain. MOBE was eventually shut down by the FTC in 2020, with heavy fines issued to the founders and top affiliates.

But here’s the thing—about 90% of what’s happening in affiliate marketing today mirrors this model. Companies teach you how to promote their product with exaggerated claims of easy wealth, creating a cycle of recruitment.

However, there’s a genuine 10% of affiliate marketing where people find a niche, create quality content, and build a community. They help their audience solve problems and recommend products they genuinely believe in. This approach is sustainable, ethical, and profitable.

So, whether you’re new or experienced in affiliate marketing, take this information to heart. Let me know in the comments if any of this resonates with how you got started!