Why Affiliate Marketing has a bad name
As an Affiliate Marketeer I get pretty wound up when I hear people from outside our industry accuse us of being grubby, corrupt, dodgy or just plain bullshit.
However, as I’ve been managing the SecretSales.com affiliate programme for a while now I have to say that my eyes have been opened and I can now see how our industry can be perceived this way from outsiders. To date I’ve had to reject around 20% of applications to the programme. I never thought it would be so high.
Let me share a few of the most common practices that I have come up against:
Fake addresses:
When I review affiliate applications through the Buy.at interface I get to see the following information from affiliates applying to the programme: Affiliate name, organisation, address including postcode and country and telephone number. This is great as it gives us a great starting point to research the potential affiliate. One of the first signs that something is wrong is when affiliates list an address that is obviously made up. I see them all the time, things like “10 High Street, London”. Lol.
Fake email addresses:
I would say that most, if not all legitimate affiliates would always use an email address along the lines of @yourdomainname.com. It’s rare for an affiliate to use a Hotmail or Gmail address. I would say its even more rare for huge online publishers, like say the BBC, The Times or any other major properties to use disposable email addresses. So if I see an application from say The Guardian Online with a hotmail address I reject them.
Fake phone numbers:
As a UK resident I have a reasonable knowledge of area codes in the UK. So when I see phone numbers like 98451564785 then I pretty much know its a fake application.
Lately though there have been some quite good attempts at fake affiliate applications. A case in point this week was when I saw an application from a well known UK business directory. Everything seemed to stack up in the application, the address was the correct business address of the company’s HQ, as was the phone number. The only problem was that the email address was a Gmail address. OK I thought, I’ll call them up and see if it’s legit, maybe they have a business reason for using a Gmail email address. So I call the number in the application and sure enough the number matches the name of the company, looking good. I ask to speak to the person listed on the affiliate application, no problem the receptionist tells me I’ll see if I can reach him. so far so good, the phone number is legit and there is a real person there whose name is listed on the application. Only thing is when I get to speak to him he hasn’t heard of my affiliate programme or Buy.at for that matter. Hmm so someone has obviously went to a lot of trouble to actually find the name of a person who works for this organisation and set up a fake affiliate account…
…one question…why?
What I’m listening to right now: Trey Songz – “In Your Phone”
Sunday, August 3rd, 2008 at 8:30 pm and is filed under Affiliate Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Welcome to my blog. My name is Kieron Donoghue and I run UK Offer Media Ltd. I thought it would be fun to post a daily (well hopefully daily) blog, writing about my experiences in Internet Marketing and more specifically Affiliate Marketing. I'll include some personal stuff too, probably about my other passions, music and cars. Please feel free to post your comments and thoughts too.
August 3rd, 2008 at 9:21 pm
If affiliate managers and networks are as vigilant as you are then these dodgy geezers will never be affiliates therefore affiliate marketing doesn’t get a bad name.
So therefore if they become active - then the fault lies with the AM or network for not picking this up or the network for not being vigilant.
Given that some active big name affiliates have been allowed to get away using 1×1 iframes for example, it’s perhaps not surprising that dodgy geezers see AM as a way to easy money.
Cut them off at source (i.e. don’t let them be affiliates) and a lot of problems get solved.
August 3rd, 2008 at 9:27 pm
Two words: privacy, and trust. People don’t like giving away their real personal information, especially to small companies and networks, because they feel less secure, and they don’t trust the company in question. I’ve used a hotmail address plenty of times before, and I usually try to give as little information as possible, especially when I’m signing up to small affiliate programs and networks. Affiliate marketing has a bad name not just because of shady affiliates, but shady networks too. I’m an advertiser and an affiliate, and it’s all too clear to me that things are wrong at both ends.
August 3rd, 2008 at 10:18 pm
WHY? FRAUD!
I had my identity stolen by a Chinese affiliate fraud ring.
a HUGE one. They made a TON of money committing affiliate fraud in my name. This has happened to Shawn Collins and others too.
They applied to TONs of networks and programs pretending to be Linda Buquet from 5 Star Affiliate Programs. Used my name, my address, my phone and EVEN an email address from my site! Nothing out of the ordinary that would flag you that this was a bonus app. Everything matched my whois!
Luckily some networks that do phone verification called to see if it was really me so I was able to figure it out. But the approval emails from a BUNCH of networks kept coming. I’d email them when I got an approval email explaining it was a fraud app, not me. Then the you’ve made a sale emails started coming.
I tried but could not stop it. Some merchants that don’t know me thought I was the one doing the actual fraud. It was a mess for months.
What they do is sign up pretending to be someone at a reputable company. Then right before they are due to get an affiliate check, they change the pay to address to one of the mailbox/mail forwarding services that gives you an address that sounds real (not a PO box). Then that mail house forwards their mail to them in China.
In my case even when they changed the pay to address it was not even obvious. They set one up right in OC where I lived, so it would not raise much suspicion with AM’s and they’d think I just moved down the street. They were so smart they had PO boxes that sounded like real addresses ALL OVER THE COUNTRY.
I got that local mail house to collect and keep all their mail for a month and send me copies of all the envelopes. Those guys had TONS of checks from TONS of networks made out to a bunch of different peoples names. TONS! We tried to get the FBI involved. I could not even get to anyone that knew enough about the Internet to understand the situation and how big this was.
That was only one mail house. They had mail houses all over the country forwarding checks to them in China.
It was crazy and they were making CRAZY BIG MONEY, from networks and merchants that don’t screen well enough.
TRY TO GET YOUR NETWORKS TO PUT IN A FLAG TO ALERT YOU WHENEVER AN AFFILIATE CHANGES THEIR ADDRESS. As a rule not that many affiliates move. Not so many that it would be incredibly time consuming to check it out. Could save merchants some good money.
Linda Buquet
August 3rd, 2008 at 11:19 pm
Oops sorry. Paragraphs didn’t break so that’s really hard to read. Looked fine in the editor.
August 4th, 2008 at 7:21 am
This is twice now that I have been told gmail addresses look bad for business, however the spam filter on it is excellent, and functionaliry far superior to just an info@domain.
August 4th, 2008 at 9:14 am
Yup - not so easy is it?
Wait ’til you get a really big programme with people brand-bidding, incorrect creative, a and all sorts of stuff. Throw a potentially stroppy client into the mix and you can see how it is! (Obviously not saying that’s the case here).
It gets easier as you get used to spotting the dodgy ones, but it’s not so easy.
Obviously I’m not ‘pleased’ you’ve not just had a plain sail, but it’s interesting to see the comments above - and this is from Buy.At - imagine what it’s like on networks that police their affiliates less? (eg the more sort-of anonymous ones that are just tech providers).
Oh, and Andrew - just redirect all your email to gmail or use Gmail’s pop3 facilities.
August 4th, 2008 at 10:24 am
K,
Think this is a great post - I think too many affiliate managers and programmes get slammed in forums and blogs for things like validation rates completely unfairly. I think the more educated commercial affiliates understand the processes that extend beyond there simple referral of traffic. Those of lower intellect tend to jump in without full knowledge of the facts and stick the knife in.
Good to see you discussing the other side of this issue.
August 4th, 2008 at 10:29 am
As Secret Sales has a lead element to it you’re going to attract more cheats than your average retail programme.
At least Buy.at provide you with enough detail on the affiliates to make a decision. The email address is a big give-away but many networks don’t provide that for fear of merchants running off with them.
August 4th, 2008 at 1:25 pm
Andrew Clapham: Check out google apps. It’s free, and allows you to use your business domain directly with googles mail servers.
August 5th, 2008 at 10:01 pm
It must be very interesting for you to be on the other side of the fence Kieron!
The issues you have encountered are the reasons why we are releasing domain name verification this week. Publishers on our network will need to verify
To improve our quality processes we now require all publishers to verify their registered websites. This adds an extra level of protection for publishers and advertisers. Pretty simple really… bona fide domain owners just paste some code into the HEAD section of their registered domain. Prevents someone masquerading as you, and helps merchants/agencies to vet applications with more confidence.
August 12th, 2008 at 7:51 am
Very interesting post & subsequent comments. I have always ignored and simply deleted emails from affiliate networks that I thought had automatically signed me up to new programs. However, I’m now thinking that these may be fraud attempts.
Kieron - I’m sure I’m not the only one who’d welcome a six month update on your views on this subject, if possible?
August 29th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
[...] Re: Made Up Affiliate Details This blog entry makes interesting reading: Why Affiliate Marketing has a bad name __________________ A gem is not polished without rubbing, nor an affiliate perfected without [...]
September 4th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
[...] telephone, address etc?” Somebody was kind enough to reply to my post and pointed me to this link, Why Affiliate Marketing has a bad name, where there was a comment made by The 5 Star President Linda, and which has to be said was the [...]
September 4th, 2008 at 6:23 pm
Gadget said: “I have always ignored and simply deleted emails from affiliate networks that I thought had automatically signed me up to new programs.”
Yes that’s what happened to me at 1st. I thought “sneaky networks - what a way to try to get new affiliates, sign them up then send a welcome email.” In FACT even when they called to verify me at 1st I thought it was some kind of backward recruiting tactic, since I knew for sure I had never signed up.