It’s hard out there in the retail world and business in general is low in some markets. For this reason alone you would think companies who run affiliate programs would make sure their program works it’s hardest to create income, both for merchants & affiliates.  But across the board we are seeing a number of issues which threaten the very nature of affiliate schemes and weaken the ability of web site owners to make money from them.

Perhaps it’s expected that companies decide to trim the percentage they offer as commission. Very much like workers across their world are having to accept low, if any, pay increases. With the threat of unemployment a shadow over their heads perhaps.

Site owners have to keep a close eye on the commissions being offered and shouldn’t be fooled by companies who offer incentives like a competition to win an Ipad while making these cuts to commissions they offer.

Another trick gaining momentum is offering a larger commission for one small range of products while the rest of the product range an almost trivial amount is offered. If you use deep links to the high ranked items it’s fine but if you just rely on site entry links you may think you are getting 10% then a sale commission comes in it could be 1% or even lower.

Products Feeds Fraud

Recently we have noticed a very worrying fraud. At first sight it might be seen as a simple mistake by companies but as more crop up you see it’s gaining in popularity so be warned.  Only affiliates that have a keen eye on the ball and the knowledge to understand how they could be being cheated stop this when using feeds such as csv files exported from affiliate programs. You have to check the product link urls conform to the standard given by the affiliate company. If they don’t and you send buyers to those links you may not get the commission you earned.

Affiliate companies need to be proactive.

We are very surprised that most affiliate companies don’t monitor the links being given out by the companies that use their service. It is after-all to their benefit that all sales are recorded properly. Some even take a slice of the commission too so they are also being cheated. Link fraud is bad enough to deal with and many site owners are resorting to techniques like cookie stuffing to monitor these events but does that get back the commission ? in most case we think not.

All affiliate schemes should check the links being entered in these feeds but if you are a site owner using these files you too should check and in some cases the links are generated by the affiliate system. These should be fine but don’t take it for granted and monitor those too.

Working on it – maybe