I'm tired of dishonest affiliates

I'm really tired of seeing affiliates making anything for a $
Some are worst than others, but all of them ruin affiliate's image.

And if people stop trusting affiliates, your business won't last long!

I've seen people spreading little lies, which for them aren't important, but they fail to realize that it will create a distrust among regular people.
People are tired of being scammed, so when they see one or other lie, they run away from that company. Even if it's the affiliate, and not the company, that is doing this.
So mislead people at will about the exclusivity of your promotion, or the value of the bonus, and sleep well with your conscience. Not that you tricked another person, but that you hurt the company's image.

I've seen good affiliate programs put on blacklists because of some reckless affiliates.

Worse than those are spammers. Send automatic posts to blog comments, forums and emails, and that affiliate program image is ruined, because of an handful of people.
Nice...

As my username here suggests I'm an affiliate. I live from that for almost 7 years, and I love it.

Instead of charging for my consulting services as before, people get my recommendations for free, and the promoting company pays me. It's great.
I work hard and many hours a day, but it's worth it.

But I'm an honest affiliate. And I want to be proud of that word.
Unfortunately some other persons don't have any integrity and do anything for a dollar.

 

Um, do you have an example of a dishonest affiliate. Listing facts about bad affiliates will educate the affilinoobs, such as myself.

 

They are very easy to find. Check many blogs / forums and you will see comments like:

or they disguise the links in small letters. I've seen it all. They ruined those blogs and forums, and the image of the program they were promoting.

Another thing you can find is misleading promotions. Stating that if you use their affiliate link people will get x and y, which they never do. People will then think that they were scammed by the official site.
I've seen many people afraid of using an affiliate link or coupon.

Bloggers and forum admins know how hard spammers attack blogs and forums. And most of the times they are affiliates.

 

Ahh, did not realize you were just referring to spammers. I thought you were talking about fraudulent affiliate programs. I need to wait for my first cup of coffee in the morning before posting.

 

I find it best to test a new affliate, just give them enough space to make the minimum payout, and see if the first payout comes. If they pay good, then turn them on to some volume. Only got caught once, when an overseas company went under, but it was an activex company and got sued out of existence-but they even paid great for over a year.

 

When we first launched MaxBounty.com, we were surprised at the level of fraud and deception seen from a significant portion of affiliates. Most affiliates are honest hardworking people, but that other segment... very frustrating. It was quite an eye opener.

The anonymity of the internet allows people to think they can try anything. Most fraudsters would never consider shoplifting, but wouldn't think twice about ripping off a network/sponsor for hundreds or even thousands of dollars. Here's a recent real example, there's a Wicked Fire thread popular right now about using porn video passwords as a means of generating incentive traffic. I go on and tell everyone it's not allowed by our network and certainly not by any others, and some board members are like "Ok, not Maxbounty, let's try it at INSERT NETWORK NAME instead...." That's not a reflection on the board or affiliates as a whole, but that there's a subset of affiliates that don't care about terms or rules and are blinded a dollar sign.

What makes it worse is that we know of networks which turn a blind eye to it (again blinded by the profit they see) and just pass the fraud onto the sponsor with the idea that if you put enough good leads in with the fraud, the merchant will never know. So bad affiliates get away with it at one network and are surprised when we boot them for doing the same thing with us.

Luckily for our merchants, we're pretty anti-fraud and are extremely proactive in finding and removing it from the network. It's terribly time consuming though, and it's very easy to become jaded.

 

Agree! And affiliates are now becoming more and more deceptive in covering up their tracks and hiding their fraud. Just when you think you have recognized all the "tricks" and signs an affiliate is committing fraud...they have found other ways to disguise their fraud. It's a never-ending battle, and the fact that some programs/networks turn a blind-eye to it, will only encourage it to stay around. It's unfortunate, but a fact. Dollar signs can make some people blind.

 

Great post Affiliate 7!

I love it when affiliates stand up for honesty and integrity in our industry.

As others in this thread have said, most affiliates are honest but the
bad apples sure make it harder for the honest affiliates and definately
give affiliate marketing a black eye.

 

Spammers wouldn't continue to spam if it wasn't making them money.

With the good comes the bad. This is the current market conditions that we have so we have to deal with them.

Over time though, I think the legit and honest affiliates and sponsors should prosper as they'll stick around for longer and quite simply make money; not chase the next big wave of how to spam and rip off consumers.

 

It seems to me that "anything goes" is standard operating procedure on the Internet. As you say, most people are honest, but unfortunately there are enough who are not that you have to assume that anything you put up will be abused to the absolute max.

And in a system like the Internet it only takes 1 person to cause a huge problem. One virus author can bring down the whole system (at least temporarily) for instance.

You can lay down a 1000 pounds of cement but if there is even one crack grass will grow up through it before you notice.

 

Last year one affiliate scammed a very known webhost, gaming the system and putting is affiliate code everytime someone signup without a referral code. Some companies would think twice about their affiliate program, but this one knows the importance of it.

I just hope that someday we aren't put on the same bag. We do an important task: cost-effective promotion.
No marketing / advertising unknowns... just an excellent return of investment.

And yes, it just take a handful of people to tarnish our image.

 

How do you go about getting affiliates? Maybe starting an affiliate program at a site like cj would bring in higher quality users?

 

I never used CJ as an affiliate manager, but as an user I didn't liked some things, like the minimum activity. I lost some commissions that way. Each period they would subtract from my earnings, until it was zero'ed out.

How to get affiliates for your in house program? If your program is really good, word of mouth will take care of the rest. You can start it by writing good content about it, or even just with your signature. When it get picked, if it's great, it will spread for itself. Also contact possible partners, and see if they want to make a joint venture.

Of course other forms of paid promotion also help.

 

How I see things is that where there's money there is most likely to be fraud.

I personally don't do it and never will. It really gets to me sometimes that people spam sites and when they actually get spammed they moan about it.

It also goes with ppc search engines. When they fraud them to earn money and then advertise on them they wonder why their ROI is really low and they moan about the fruad then, which they are doing theirselves.

 

check this out, most reliable affiliate program.
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=197655

 

metrixbeliver, this thread isn't about affiliate programs, but the affiliates themselves... those affiliate persons that sometimes misbehave...

 

How do people handle situations where you find other affiliates crossing the line and doing things that are potentially hurting you and costing you money?

Do you report them to their affiliate programs or networks?

I know some people hold this macho image of you don't tattle on people, but this is not prison, and these other people are potentially costing you real and significant money in many different ways.

Just curious how others deal with it.

 

In my case it's affiliate managers that ask me if I've seen anything less clear.
Sometimes I've asked if doing or writing this or that is ok, and if they ask me where did I see it, I show it. If they don't ask, I don't splash it.
The problem isn't just costing me money, but hurting the affiliate program image, so it hurts the company and all affiliates.

 

In my 8 years in this industry... I've only stumbled across a handful (less than FIVE) of affiliates that I think payout fairly... and I've tried HUNDREDS over the years.

For instance, I sent Azoogle hundreds of highly targeted clicks over a few day span... those same clicks generated 15% conversion with another program... Azoogle paid me ZERO. Nothing. Statistically that never happened with my other program.

Needless to say my test only lasted a week with them... (giving them a fair chance and a few hundred more clicks only to be screwed and never paid a single dime).

I switched back to my old program(s) and instantly the conversions started showing up again... same ad copy... same product!

Good affiliates are very hard to find... but once you find them... build a good relationship with them... and grow your business together.

 

Basically it is how you promote the affiliate programs products that determine your conversion rates plus the affiliate programs customer service and speed of service.

Also, it helps to join affiliate programs that have a well designed site and look professional at what they do. This helps because most of your visitors will most likely also think this and more likely to trust them and purchase of their site.