Online fraud is a reality. The only way to fully avoid it is to not be doing any business online. To be effective in dealing with affiliate fraud, you must learn how to effectively detect and prevent it at the early stages. Thankfully, there are plenty of tools and methods that can help affiliate program managers with this task.

However, before we dive into the tools and techniques to employ, let’s define terms. “Fraud” is generally defined as “criminal deception intended to result in financial or personal gain”. Obviously, most of the things we’ll be looking out for while monitoring unwanted affiliate activity won’t be “criminal”.

In fact, some argue that a better word for such activity is “abuse”, or unethical behavior. Whatever you call it, we all know we’re talking about the same thing – unethical affiliate activity intended to result in financial gain.

Now, to be “unethical”, it has to violate something, or go against some rules. So, to begin with, you want make sure you have an affiliate program agreement in place. Not to be confused with the affiliate network agreement, it is basically the contract between you and your affiliates.

You can review a sample affiliate program agreement at amnavigator.com/TOS.html.

Just having that affiliate program agreement in place doesn’t safeguard you. It gives you grounds to enforce the rules. I’d like to offer you seven ways that can help you detect and prevent affiliate fraud. These are:

1. Whatever anyone may tell you, don’t buy into auto-approval of affiliate applications. Review every application manually.

2. Always conduct research on a new affiliate (or a marketing method they use) before approving them into the program. (Do they have an active website? What marketing methods are they employing? Are these methods a good match to what you are doing?)

3. Watch out for sudden traffic surges, as well as quick increases in affiliate-referred transactions (sales, leads, or whatever else you may be paying them for)

4. Keep an eye on fraudulent transactions (stolen credit card numbers, fake leads, cancellations of self-referred transactions when commission has already locked, etc) — two such transactions from the same affiliate should raise a red flag, any three should result in a ban from the program.

5. Employ tools. To catch any cyber- or typo-squatters check out CitizenHawk. And for violations of your paid search policies, consider using PoachMark, TheSearchMonitor, or AdGooroo.

6. Monitor your brand reputation online to see what customers are saying about it and to catch any spamming affiliates.

7. Educate yourself on parasitic and cookie-stuffing affiliates (to keep them out of your program). When in doubt, ask in affiliate forums or consult with AffiliateFairPlay.com.

There will never be a way to make policing and enforcement look sexy. However, it is an integral component of affiliate program management. If you’re not doing it, you’re losing money.

Geno Prussakov is the Founder of AM Navigator.

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Publishers that regularly produce quality content, whether it be blogging, article publishing, podcasting, video-producing, microblogging, or any other form of content production, have some of the most loyal followers.

However, I believe that there are several different routes that you can take, as far as producing quality content. Being an active blogger and blog reader myself, upon two years of observations, analysis and conclusions, I’ve come up with my own classification of publishers.

I believe that the vast majority of successful content producers (affiliate marketers included) fall into one of three types. These are:

(i) Reporters
(ii) Theoreticians
(iii) Coaches

Each of these three types is in high demand, and the popularity of their sites makes it essential for us to understand what exactly drives people to them.

Reporters are generally about breakthrough ideas and technologies, new studies, and fresh statistical data. They love to announce, analyze, and draw conclusion or provide commentary of their own.

Theoreticians are about connecting the dots between scientific researches/studies and our day-to-day reality.

Finally, coaches are essentially teachers that share their generally experience-based “how-to” knowledge with readers who want to master in this or that subject.

Of course, there are plenty of borderline synergies, and any of the above-quoted three types can now and again act as another type. However, most frequently a content publisher leans to one of the above styles.

So, whether you are just starting with content publishing, or have already been doing it for some time, it is good to understand what type of publisher you really are. Such comprehension will help you to stay more focused and play in unison with the style and approach that you are inherently predisposed for.

Now, to succeed in online content publishing, I believe one is to remember 3 Cs and a P. I know, CCCP may not bring up good memories in most minds, but today I’d like to give the old abbreviation a new meaning — one that comes from my personal experience of writing over 700 blog posts within under 2 years, and understanding of what makes a good blog post, and a good blogger.

There are 4 adjectives to remember:

C for Consistent – A-post-a-day keeps your readers (and search engines!) awake
C for Concise – Most consumers of online content truly appreciate eloquence
C for Clear – The vast majority of content consumers do not want rocket science
P for Practical – Of course, remember to be as pragmatic as possible

Most of my personal blog posts that have become popular reflected either all, or at least three of the above four points. If you add a verb “Be” before each, and turn each adjective into an objective, it’ll undoubtedly help you create more engaging and popular content.

Geno Prussakov is the Founder of AM Navigator.

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It’s been said that the majority of problems in the affiliate marketing industry stem from the lack of merchant training and education. During a recent interview I conducted with an outsourced program manager, a super affiliate and an affiliate network’s director regarding issues in the affiliate marketing industry, the first interviewee pointed to the “merchant’s lack of knowledge”; the third one stated that merchants are predominantly “uneducated”; while the second interviewee mentioned that there is “only one main problem; a lack of ethics on the part of a few players.”

The topic of ethics is an underpinning theme of the larger industry’s problem, and every one of my interviewees has pointed to it. However, prior to addressing the ethical problems it is imperative to underscore the importance of merchant education.

One way to define education is to call it a “process that provides knowledge, skills, moral values, and understanding required in the normal course of life.” (Amos, Ristow, et al, 2009, Human Resource Management, p. 324). I especially appreciate the incorporation of “moral values” in this definition.

Without the “knowledge” and “understanding” of the proper ways for the affiliate marketing channel to function, merchants cannot discern the improper ways. Therefore, dealing with all other industry’s problems should start with tackling the problem of the lack of knowledge.

Effective affiliate marketing education entails: (i) establishing and maintaining a solid theoretical basis, (ii) modifying theory to fit the context that the affiliate marketer works in, (iii) staying on top of the most current industry’s developments, and (iv) teaching others.

i) Theory. This is an area most frequently overlooked by affiliate marketers. The fact that our industry is young does not mean that it has a right to exist in a de-theorized mode. Reading at least two books a month is a must for every affiliate marketer. Among the directly applicable subjects, I personally enjoy works on leadership, motivation, consumer psychology, website usability and analytics, to mention but a few.

ii) Contextual Adjustments. Allow your context to shape the theory into a strategy – a thorough and methodical one.

iii) Continuous Education. Commit to a systematic self-education through affiliate marketing blogs, forums, and related news portals. Between changes in legislation, new unethical affiliate practices, and other rising threats, merchants have much to keep track of. Subscribing to RSS feeds of the above-quoted resources will help you to stay on top of the industry’s news, trends and tendencies.

iv) Teaching Others. Seneca, an ancient Roman Stoic philosopher is known for saying that “People learn while they teach.” Learning is always mutual, and while sharing the knowledge with others, the instructor deepens his/her own knowledge as well. Some twenty centuries after Seneca, the famous American novelist, Richard Bach, wrote: “You teach best what you most need to learn.” Start a blog where you would continuously share your knowledge with others. It will help you more than you know.

Self-education will take time. But it is time well-invested. So start today!

Geno Prussakov is the Founder of AM Navigator, and author of “A Practical Guide to Affiliate Marketing” and “Online Shopping Through Consumers’ Eyes.”

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Webster’s Dictionary defines autopilot as “a device for automatically steering ships, aircraft, and spacecraft.” Such systems of directing vehicles without assistance from human beings are excellent when used in the contexts that they were created for. Affiliate marketing is not one of them.

However, numerous merchants run their affiliate programs the “autopilot way,” and many are not even aware that they do.

I’ve found this problem to be more common with programs run on affiliate networks. When a merchant starts a program on a network, they often mistake the affiliate network for a self-adaptive autopilot.

Aerospace avionics expert George Siouris defines this type of affiliate program as one that “measures its own performance, compares it to a standard, and adjusts … parameters until its performance meets the standard.”

Similarly, some merchants believe that once an affiliate program is started on an affiliate network, the network will both measure its performance, and ensure that the program keeps developing according to a “standard”.

However, the job of the affiliate network is to provide the merchant with tracking, reporting and payment solutions. The rest is affiliate program management, and most affiliate networks do not have it on the list of services provided by default.

An affiliate program is a marketing campaign. Launching it on a reliable platform (affiliate network, for example) is only half the job. The second half entails active affiliate program management.

The key management elements are (a) recruiting new affiliates, (b) educating and motivating current ones, and (c) policing all affiliates for compliance with your Terms of Service. Yes, you want to make sure your program has a detailed TOS agreement, in which you specify what affiliate behavior is unacceptable, and what consequences such behavior will bring about.

Examples of the most frequently banned affiliate behaviors include trademark bidding, forcing clicks, cookie overwriting, cookie stuffing, and use of downloadable software.

Besides recruiting and policing, the affiliate program manager is also responsible for reviewing new applications, and maintaining a healthy communication channel with the affiliates.

In February 2009, Econsultancy.com published the UK and the US Affiliate Censuses. Among the top reasons for not promoting a merchant, US affiliates pointed to “slow acceptance to program” (17%), and “bad follow-up communication” (10%). Poor communication has also been mentioned by 12% as the reason for dropping affiliate programs.

UK affiliates have also stated that “merchants do not communicate a variety of issues to them,” and whatever communication does exist, “ranges from bad or impersonal contact” to “failure to convey important information.”

US affiliates echoed this observation by underscoring that “merchants do not communicate enough with them,” and when they do, it is performed in a generic, mass-mailing style.

All dangers of the “autopilot approach” are too many to outline here. If you are serious about your online presence, treat your affiliate program as a serious marketing campaign. Otherwise, gaining genuine trust and loyalty of affiliates will be an impossible task.

Geno Prussakov is the Founder of AM Navigator, and author of “A Practical Guide to Affiliate Marketing” and “Online Shopping Through Consumers’ Eyes.”

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One of the keys to running a fruitful affiliate program lies in understanding that not only should there be a robust affiliate recruitment strategy in place, but also a continuous activation of the recruited affiliates into becoming producing affiliates.

Affiliate activation is one of the most frequently overlooked components of affiliate program management, especially by newly launched programs.

Sooner or later, every merchant realizes that success is not measured by the numbers of recruited affiliates, but rather by the numbers of those whom are truly active.

Over the years of experimenting with different ways of motivating affiliates, I have realized that the best way to activate affiliates is to expose them to activation offers in each step of their interaction with the affiliate program.

Just as banners with a clear call to action outperform those that do not, affiliate programs with a compelling call to activation outshine other affiliate programs.

There are three phases of affiliate engagement… the recruitment phase, welcoming phase, and routine phase.

Recruitment Phase

Here you want to motivate affiliates to not only join your program, but also to put up your links and refer their first orders/leads. This can be done by remunerating the desired actions with a tangible bonus or a commission increase.

This should be practiced throughout the recruitment process – from the outgoing e-mails soliciting affiliates to join the affiliate program, to the very text of the program description on the merchant’s website.

Welcoming Phase

Stop your reading here and take a new look at the application approval e-mail that you are currently sending. Do you sound motivating enough for them to set aside their other projects and put up a few links for you? Does it inspire them to start a few new paid search campaigns to generate a couple of orders for your program within an X number of days after signing up?

Convincing calls to activation in the text of the welcome e-mails are like seeds falling on fertile soil. It is evident just from their application that they have intentions of promoting you. They applied, and you approved their application.

Don’t just send them a “welcome-aboard-you’ll-love-working-with-us” message. Offer them a reason to jump right on it, or you may well be put at the very end of that endless merchants-to-develop queue.

Routine Phase

It is the routine that has “an unbelievable power to waste and destroy” (cf Henri de Lubac). Do not waste your affiliates’ time with predictable monthly newsletters. Turn this part of your routine into fun for them. Run especially aggressive monthly activation campaigns for the affiliates that are already in your program, but are not yet performing.

The market of affiliate programs will only continue to grow more and more competitive. If you want your program to succeed, make it stand out, and weave the calls to activation into the very structure of it.

Geno Prussakov is the Founder of AM Navigator, and author of “A Practical Guide to Affiliate Marketing” and “Online Shopping Through Consumers’ Eyes.”

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One of the major problems in affiliate program management is that many affiliate managers think of themselves as being merely that – affiliate managers.

Management, by definition, entails organizing a structure to accomplish the plan. Affiliate managers’ classic roles are those of recruiting, planning, optimizing, organizing, directing and controlling.

Affiliate managers, either outsourced or in-house, are perceived by merchants/advertisers as “thinkers”, whereas affiliates/publishers are viewed as “doers”.

The problem is that it often stops at that; the impersonal, efficiency-oriented, hardcore management. Such an approach and style works in classic teams, but affiliates are as far from being a traditional workforce as any group could be.

Very few merchants can afford to practice a rational management approach and still run successful affiliate marketing campaigns. Affiliates are generally not tied by contracts, but rather they are the born-to-be-free types, and do not tolerate directing, controlling, top-down management.

I believe many affiliate programs can be greatly improved if their affiliate managers understand the difference between rational management and leadership, and develop the skills and qualities of good leaders.

Richard Daft, author of “The Leadership Experience,” speaks of leadership as an approach concerned with “communicating the vision and developing a shared culture and set of core values that can lead to the desired future state.”

There is involvement of others as thinkers, doers, and leaders. Unlike management, “leadership occurs among people” and is “not something done to people”. 

Some of the best OPMs (outsourced program managers) and affiliate managers I have known are true leaders. Knowing that every soldier is important, they develop unique individualized relationships with nearly every affiliate.

They are not afraid of making emotional connections. They are inspiring and motivating. Their focus on people – as opposed to the concentration on the affiliate program’s ROI and growth only – is one of the prime characteristics of affiliate leaders.

Most of us have heard affiliate marketing is a highly relationship-centered industry, so we should foster relationships with affiliates. Most super affiliates I know won’t start promoting your program unless they have shaken your hand, or known you as a genuine and trustworthy affiliate manager.

What are the important personal qualities for an affiliate manager to develop to compliment his/her approach by good leadership?  

In “Force For Change: How Leadership Differs from Management,” author John Kotter  recommended addressing it on five levels: (a) heart, (b) mindfulness, (c) communication, (d) courage and (e) character.

It is no wonder why affiliate managers who constantly work on their leadership qualities attract more affiliates, have a more loyal affiliate following, and develop stronger affiliate programs.

Geno Prussakov is Founder of outsourced program management company, AM Navigator, and author of “A Practical Guide to Affiliate Marketing” and “Online Shopping Through Consumers’ Eyes”.

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