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How to Avoid Affiliate Fraud in Your Affiliate Marketing

How to Avoid Affiliate Fraud in Your Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing generates a significant percentage of the overall income in the digital marketing field. It has been the foundation of many businesses, particularly those in the retail sector. Unfortunately, affiliate fraud can also be a risk, and it can lower your income as well as weaken your advertising efforts.

Many brands claim that affiliate marketing is responsible for a significant portion of their re-commerce earnings even months after their programs are launched. There are many ways to succeed in affiliate marketing if used correctly.

Affiliate fraud is a serious problem that is on the rise. It is possible to protect yourself from fraud by being aware of the many techniques that corrupt people and illegal affiliates use. In this blog, we will discuss six strategies to avoid affiliate fraud.

6 Expert Tips to help you avoid affiliate fraud

Affiliate scammers may attempt to target your company. You need to have a complete approach to verify the authenticity of your partner. These are the best prevention and detection strategies.

Let’s get to the point.

1. Keep track of site traffic

According to Juniper’s Future Digital Advertising, Artificial Intelligence & Advertising fraud 2019-2023, the total fraud loss for advertisers will reach $100 billion by 2023, according to Juniper. It is mostly due to affiliate frauds.

Monitoring the traffic to your partner’s website is one of the best ways to avoid affiliate marketing fraud.

Make sure you have software that allows you to track affiliate Id numbers. This will give you an accurate picture of how many users they deliver. It is important to know how many viewers have successfully completed the conversion phase.

Every vendor has subscribers who are able to accept, reject, or evaluate their exchanges, as shown in this screen capture. Your fraud protection platform can automate all three of these outcomes.

The key point is that you will have enough information to begin separating the good from the bad partners after you have logged each conversion.

What can you do to stop bogus traffic from entering your building? You can investigate device fingerprinting.

Also read: Best 5 Fraud Detection Tools for Ecommerce

2. Use device fingerprinting

Every visitor to your conversion site will bring with them some information. It is also known as a “digital presence” and involves both the hardware and software.

To identify suspicious combinations, you can create IDs using your device’s fingerprint identification subsystem. Here’s an example:

Is the same configuration present on your website? It is possible that you have been tricked by multi-accounting fraudsters. Does the device point to a fraud-detecting emulator like FraudFox or Linken Sphere, Kameleo, MultiLogin, or AntiDetect?

Well, These are among the most popular tools for fraudsters who use bots to abuse affiliate programs. Combining it with other data enhancement tools can make it even more powerful. You have the ability to build a very comprehensive list of subscribers in real-time.

It should be noted that device fingerprint recognition is indeed an excellent tool for combating extra abuse, This includes in the gambling industry, as well as to lower chargeback prices and manual assessments.

3. Monitor user behavior

To track fraud prevention behavior, a set of risk guidelines are used. Each time that user information is compared with the guideline, a risk score is calculated.

The best illustration is a standardized IP assessment. Is the IP address of a user-directed to the same location as the address of an account holder?

The regulations can however be advanced.

  • How many attempts did they make to connect per hour?
  • What speed did they complete the sign-up forms?
  • What was the time it took for them to travel from checking out to your converting page?

When it comes to risk regulations and possessing, there is no limit. A talented group of fraud-detection professionals could make a huge difference.

naturally, this assumes your forgery management platform allows you to create risk guidelines physically – To receive recommendations via an ML (aka machine learning tool)

Also read: 5 Ways That will Help To Identify Fake Online Agencies

4. When using data, be aware of the terms and conditions

Are you able to recall if you looked at your affiliate program agreement recently?

You can close the gaps and protect yourself against affiliate scams by making sure your terms and conditions are up-to-date. An experienced lawyer will spot any weaknesses that you may have missed.

In close connection to the previous point, advertisers should ensure that all changes to your terms and condition, regardless of how minor, are communicated directly to affiliates. If you are given new conditions, make sure to enforce them.

The best way to fight affiliate fraud is to have all the data available to you. Transaction indicators include information from affiliate marketers, referring websites, IP addresses, GPS locations, device fingerprints, transaction patterns, and other sources. You have the knowledge; use it.

You may be asking yourself what you can do, since I didn’t consider retaining data in my past, believing that it would not be of any use. There is a solution! To recover and restore data lost, you can create a data restoration plan.

You have now revised your terms and are ready to impose them. Now you need to understand the statistics that you should scrutinize.

Your top priority at this point is to create a schedule to manage your affiliate program. Each week, set aside time to review reports and spot suspicious behavior.

5. Track records

For testimonials, you should contact the company. Don’t believe everything they say on their website.

To find out more about how the scheme worked in the case of other customers, ask your affiliate partner for their email addresses and the names of individuals you can approach. Do not be discouraged if you receive negative feedback. Some people are simply not cut out to participate in certain programs.

Most likely, things will be fine because there are more positives than negatives. These testimonials can also be used to help you decide what actions to take and what to avoid. If you have to pay a membership fee it could be that you are dealing in fraud online or with a cross-channel program.

If you have any questions or concerns, you should be able to reach the customer service team of your affiliate partner. They should also offer marketing support for their products. Since success will help improve your business’ performance, a legitimate business will strive for your success. You must have a customer service number and an email address.

Sending an email with basic questions to the company is a better way to test it. You should not proceed with the enterprise if they take too long to respond. It is possible they may have internal communication issues.

Also, be sure to check the track record. Check the history of the firm to see if they are trustworthy. To find out if they are reliable, you should look at their homepage.

An affiliate program that is decent has a track record, and it has been around for a while. It will last for many months if it is a good program.

Also read: 15 Mobile Payment Apps for Business

6. Check payment methods

A quick internet search can help you determine the credibility of any affiliated agency.

When it comes to fraud, grievances and negative feedback from customers are inevitable. A few bad reviews should not be enough to stop you from doing business with them.

Another example of a scam is an affiliate program that pays low commissions and can easily be compared to other get-rich-quick schemes. You can find legitimate affiliate programs that offer a high return on your investment. While payouts can be substantial, certain conditions must be met. Avoid programs that offer a commission with no restrictions.

While errors can occur, not all anomalies or strange behavior that occurs within your affiliate program necessarily mean that you are facing a cyberattack. It is best to avoid suspicious activity and be cautious.

It’s better to terminate an account if the user is displaying inappropriate behavior or disobeying your company’s terms & conditions on a regular base. It would be a mistake to put your entire affiliate program at risk or lose money due to one incompetent, malicious, or money-hungry participant.

Conclusion

Affiliate marketing is a powerful and effective way to expand your business, promote products and increase revenue. It is important to take proactive and preventive steps to protect your programs and initiatives against fraudsters. In this post, we discussed six ways to prevent affiliate fraud.

Written by
Aiden Nathan

Aiden Nathan is vice growth manager of The Tech Trend. He is passionate about the applying cutting edge technology to operate the built environment more sustainably.

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