Fighting Affiliate Fraud
Posted on March 26, 2008 by
Rosanne Lim
Affiliate Marketing
3 Comments
Affiliate fraud is getting worse. The only way to successfully combat this kind of fraud is to meet it head-on. Knowing more about its different manifestations is important to effectively fight affiliate fraud:
Fake transactions – some fraudsters actually created scripts that generate fake leads, clicks, and transactions. There are others who first sign up as an affiliate and then make large purchases using stolen credit cards. Of course, the merchant will eventually find out about the fraudulent transaction but it is highly likely that he will pay for the affiliate commission because of the said purchase.
Typosquatting – this may not seem as damaging as the first but it can be annoying nonetheless. Typosquatters are the affiliates who register variations of well-know domain names and then they sign up for the merchant’s affiliate program to get the traffic which should have been the merchant’s in the first place.
Parasites – these are the bane of legitimate affiliate marketers. Parasites are adware programs that installs on the affiliate’s computer to steal traffic from them. It steals their links by replacing it with new ones. The legitimate affiliate marketers will not get paid because of this.
Spammers – there are affiliates who send out unsolicited e-mails or spam to their prospects. These kinds of affiliates tarnish a merchant’s reputation and make can make marketing promotions harder for legitimate e-mailers because readers can no longer separate spam from legitimate offers. Spammers can also get a merchant’s name on the blacklist.
There are other signs you need to watch out for to determine if an “affiliate” is actually legitimate or not. Most of the time, affiliates who asks for immediate payment through PayPal are turn out to be fraudulent.
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I agree with your content.
Great post. Another one is when friend 1 buys from friend 2 who is an affiliate. Then when friend 2 gets the affiliate commission, friend 1 refunds the product leaving the merchant scammed.
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