Hi, I'm getting concerned with the possibility of affiliate fraud by a new affiliate from Indonesia (http://www.totallysoftware.org/). What seems suspicious to me is that even though he has a PR0 site, he does have decent, and quickly incresing sales. Besides, many orders seem a bit fishy, such as having customer names and email addresses that don't match at all, and all emails from free providers as hotmail and yahoo. Besides, eventhough he claims to be from Indonesia, the whois information for his domain name is completely different (Georgia, US). The IP addresses are mostly from the US (my main market), but I have this gut feeling that something is wrong. Has anyone been the victim of some sort of affiliate fraud? What's the best way to deal with this? Best regards, Fernando
How is he marketing your product? If he is doing search engine promotion then things like pagerank and the like are irrelevant. As for the order stuff, that does seem suspicious, so I guess you will have to go with your instinct. Although I think it would be reasonable for you to contact him and congratulate him on his increasing sales and see if there is anything you can do to help him. Perhaps find out how he is promoting your product now so you can suggest alternative ways that may even make him more money. What do you mean by customer names and e-mail addresses that don't match at all? Like the customers name is Bill Johnson and his e-mail is ?
Yeah, that sort of thing. Besides, many of those addresses don't exist (I emailed all his customers, confirming the order). I did get some replies, and even though the customers are suposed to be Americans, their English is surprisingly broken and very similar to the affilaite's own English. :-P
Your concern all depends on what you are selling, are you shipping items ? , or are you delivering digital content ? If you are not shipping anything, and have no cost delivering, just keep him going. If you start getting chargebacks stop him. If you are selling software ( i assume ) , you could try to setup a 3rd party payment service to use just for him , services like regnow.com , regsoft.com etc.. all have GREAT fraud protection services, and you would not have to deal with chargebacks and the like.. best regards Preben Eriksen,
if those orders are all diferent from others, I think you should cancel his account, you may be getting chargebacks soon