Click/Tracking fraud, both intentional and unintentional.
Unintentional/Grey area - A lot of our customers go to many similar self-help websites and forums. Affiliates would post their links there, and very often pre-existing customers would wind up registering as commissions when they were just curious where the links led or for convenience didn't realize they were affiliate links.
Intentional - Some affiliates were posting up fake sites offering titles like Alpha Male for free or even fake sites pretending to be ours. Their links would then redirect to our site and pre-existing customers or customers that haven't bought yet but were tricked by fakes would then show up as commissions.
This would seem like common sense in an affiliate system-being able to automatically check and cancel out pre-existing customers, people who visited our site first before an affiliate link, etc. BUT ITS NOT. I wish it was. It created a giant leak in revenue, and while I made sure not to pay out the scammers, it was very disheartening to have to deny many commissions to affiliates who were genuinely trying to make money honestly. Not to mention extremely time consuming for me to cross-reference each commission in about 10-different ways each time someone buys.
This is why it requires custom development. The previous system wound up leaking so badly we would have been better off not having one at all.
Unintentional/Grey area - A lot of our customers go to many similar self-help websites and forums. Affiliates would post their links there, and very often pre-existing customers would wind up registering as commissions when they were just curious where the links led or for convenience didn't realize they were affiliate links.
Intentional - Some affiliates were posting up fake sites offering titles like Alpha Male for free or even fake sites pretending to be ours. Their links would then redirect to our site and pre-existing customers or customers that haven't bought yet but were tricked by fakes would then show up as commissions.
This would seem like common sense in an affiliate system-being able to automatically check and cancel out pre-existing customers, people who visited our site first before an affiliate link, etc. BUT ITS NOT. I wish it was. It created a giant leak in revenue, and while I made sure not to pay out the scammers, it was very disheartening to have to deny many commissions to affiliates who were genuinely trying to make money honestly. Not to mention extremely time consuming for me to cross-reference each commission in about 10-different ways each time someone buys.
This is why it requires custom development. The previous system wound up leaking so badly we would have been better off not having one at all.
Andrew // Site Architect "Attack its weak point for massive damage" -Giant Enemy Crab
