What is affiliate spam?

Valueless content uploaded to social sites with the #1 goal of pushing somebodies affiliate links. (or garbage uploaded anywhere just to make money)

Examples of Affiliate Spam

Uploading junk content to squidoo or hubpages. Keyword stuffing your youtube descriptions full of keywords/typos. Gaming google with garbage content that is crap but good enough to get in their index. For starters.

Does Affiliate Spamming Work?

Yes. It’s very profitable for the people doing the spamming (they get commissions) the companies (they get the sales).

It’s debatable whether the social site benefits because they might get more search traffic from the spam but their community suffers long term.

So what is the problem with affiliate spam then?

No problem at all for the people making the money. However for people trying to use the social sites for the intended purpose you are creating noise and annoyances in the system. I don’t really need to explain why spam is annoying do I?

Well then, Should We Create Affiliate Spam Just Because We Can?

I’ve never seen an affiliate company say in their terms of service not to push affiliate links/content on social sites. I’ve only seen affiliate companies give me the links and datafeeds to do what I want with them.

Maybe they aren’t exactly “promoting” spamming, but they certainly aren’t curbing against it.

It would appear to me that 99.9% of affiliate companies don’t care if you spam social sites, or blog comments, or anywhere really. (as long as it’s not sending spam email of course, that’s illegal)

So what is a little affiliate to do? Spam away and fill our pockets or let others make all the money so we can keep the web clean?