Manual Approval of Affiliates – Necessary or Not?
By: Peter Ryan | Posted: 20th May 2009
Fraud is a necessary evil every business owner and company must combat sooner or later. It is one thing to be defrauded to your face, as it would be if someone tried to shoplift from your retail store or abscond with something while your back is turned. At least then, you can take immediate action, apprehending the suspect, alerting authorities, and pressing charges. But what if you have an Internet-based business, one that depends upon your carefully arranged affiliate program to lead customers to your site day in and day out?
Your affiliate program is charged with the duty of bringing much needed customers to your site, yet how can you make sure that all affiliates in your program are behaving properly, dealing with you honestly, and truly maximizing efforts to increase your sales? Tracking your leads and sales to the appropriate affiliate is a concern managed by specifically designed software, but how do you make sure your affiliates are doing what they are purporting to do?
Affiliate programs that operate on a basis of pay-per-click (PPC) or pay-per-lead (PPL) to track affiliate sales or leads are often targeted by scamming would-be affiliates who individually or as part of a team click on links repeatedly, sending bogus "false clicks" your way or filling out multiple registration forms also sending fake customer data into your tracking software. Smarter and craftier cheaters are using high-tech software that has the ability to simulate human activity and clicks in order to streamline their process of sending fraudulent data to consistently fill their pockets to overflowing with their ill-gotten gains. As a business owner or affiliate manager, it is partly your desire to have your links blanketed across the web, allowing the numbers game principle to take effect, namely, that the more pervasive your links, the more chances for sales. With this thought, automatic approval of affiliate sites is king, allowing any and everyone to display your links.
However, the aforementioned cheaters have found it very easy to make money by targeting those with automatic approval. Manual approval allows affiliate managers to pick and choose which sites are allowed and which are not, thereby more accurately ferreting out fraudulent affiliates looking to make a fast buck at another's expense. Manually monitoring would-be affiliates is a necessary and time-consuming task that many affiliate mangers are turning to in order to combat fraudulent commission claims and protect their bottom line.
About the Author: Peter Ryan is an online marketer and representative of Adapp Solutions, Inc. HasOffers affiliate network software, provides affiliate networks with the tools they need to run an efficient and profitable online business. This article is free for republishing
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Tags: registration forms, pay per click, affiliate sites, affiliate sales, business owner, numbers game, retail store, cheaters, affiliate manager, customer data, tracking software, necessary evil, internet based business, ppl