Why pharma affiliate programs are thriving: Up to 45% cuts of sales

The "Internet Dark Arts" panel on Thursday at the WebbyConnect conference featured a former affiliate marketing player named Mike Geiger, who used to have what sounded like a thriving side business setting up sites that sent affiliate traffic to illicit pharmaceutical sites.

These are the sites that offer Viagra and other drugs to customers without a doctor's prescription. The affiliate programs are responsible for an avalanche of spam, but what's really scary is the potential for injury to people who shouldn't be consuming the drugs in the first place, or only under the dosages prescribed by a physician or pharmacist.

Geiger was unrepentant about his role in the trade. Affiliate marketing is a "completely legit business," he said, and went on to describe himself as a mere middleman uninvolved with the actual distribution of the drugs. Cash was the obvious reason for getting into affiliate marketing, and Geiger revealed the rewards for pharmaceutical sites were particularly good.

"Why did I choose pharmaceuticals? It was very simple," he said. "[It was] because I would get up to 45% of whatever I sold." This compares to retail affiliate programs offered by Amazon.com and others, where the cut is usually in the low single digits.

The San Francisco-based Geiger is a German native, and concentrated on the German market. There, the competition wasn't as fierce as it was in the United States, and it was relatively easy to place his links high in organic and paid search. Geiger said a lot of people abused affiliate market programs by sending spam, but he indicated that he did not spam people.

Geiger did not say how long his affiliate business lasted, but he ended his participation after his father received a visit from German police. The police mistakenly assumed they had the wrong man when they heard that Geiger lived in the United States -- they were apparently unaware that a German-oriented operation could be conducted from anywhere in the world. They never followed up, but Geiger said he was scared straight. He immediately closed down the domains and removed the files, and now has a legitimate, totally legal job related to online sales -- he's the chief digital officer of a large San Francisco ad agency.